Mainframes -> PCs -> Cloud Computing? “I think there is a world market for maybe five computers.” – Thomas J. Watson (1874-1956), former president of IBM. “640 KB is more memory than anyone will ever need.” – Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft. Although there is no documentary evidence of these quotes having actually originated from these two stalwarts of computing, the fact that there is considerable popular literature attributed to them is evidence of the prevailing thought at different times in computing history. So, what do these two quotes tell us? Only that expectations in the computing industry change considerably
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The Next Cloud Computing Superpower? Some time back, I had written on the possibility of India emerging as a cloud computing superpower. (See: Is India The Next Cloud Computing Superpower?). I had based my assumption on the fact that India has a large number of software engineers available to leverage their knowledge in the emerging technology of cloud computing. However, that assumption dealt with the intellectual knowledge India could bring to the cloud computing table, not the rate of adoption the technology will have among Indian enterprises. As far as the latter is concerned, a recent report has been a
Cloud Based Service Level Agreements A common theme in the chatter about cloud computing is the need for SLAs around performance and availability. These SLAs simply don’t exist or are specified in a way that makes them look like they’ll never be violated. For example, Amazon’s availability SLA is around the network connectivity for an entire availability zone. So if you have a single instance that can access the internet (whether or not your app will run on it), there is no violation. This is hardly a new state of affairs and there doesn’t seem to be much change coming
Is Consolidation Coming to Cloud Computing? In recent times, the biggest news in cloud computing has been Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) entry into the sector. And this entry is not a side business; the new CEO truly believes the company’s future lies in the cloud, going on record saying, “Everything that we do in the future will be delivered as a service.” (See: HP Declares Ambitious Plans in Cloud Computing Space). Now, HP is truly a big boy in the IT space, in fact the biggest boy among all the IT companies in terms of annual revenue (by market capitalization it’s a
Recognized for Innovation in Cloud Computing March 21, 2011 – Eloqua, the leading provider of Revenue Performance Management solutions, today announced the company was selected by AlwaysOn as an OnDemand Top 100 winner. The OnDemand 100 is made up of the top, private on-demand and SaaS companies that are shaking up the cloud computing industry with new ideas and innovative technology. The AlwaysOn editorial team along with partners and industry experts from across the globe identified the top 100. These companies were selected based on a set of five criteria: innovation, market potential, commercialization, stakeholder value, and media buzz. Eloqua’s
SAP products to be available on Verizon cloud For several years now, German software giant SAP AG has been at the forefront of enterprise software. Now, the largest software firm in Europe (and the fourth biggest in the world) has decided to tie up with the largest communications company in the US, Verizon, to offer its customer relationship management (CRM) solutions on the cloud. SAP CRM will be available to enterprise users through Verizon’s Computing as a Service (CaaS) cloud offering on the user-subscription license model so customers can pay on a per-user, per-month basis for the software, including cloud
3rd Annual Cloud Computing World Forum 21st& 22nd June 2011 Olympia, London www.cloudwf.com Europe’s Leading Cloud Computing Based Show Show Highlights Include: Europe’s leading 2 day conference on Cloud Computing Over 2,500 attendees anticipated 4 Theatres covering Cloud Computing, Virtualization, Enterprise 2.0, Mobile Cloud Computing and CDN Keynote agenda featuring leading industry speakers More case studies than any other like event Learn from the key players offering leading products and services CDN World Forum – 2 day co-located event on Content Delivery Networks Speed Networking Sessions, Your chance to build future partnerships Evening networking reception and Awards presentation Key Speakers
Cloud Computing Contracts “The universe never did make sense; I suspect it was built on government contract.” – Robert A. Heinlein (1907-1988), American science fiction writer. A contract is defined as “a legally enforceable agreement between two or more parties for the doing or not doing of something specified.” Contracts are the cornerstones of business. Unfortunately, for cloud computing, contracts are still a grey area that has the potential for causing serious problems. In some of my previous articles, I had mentioned how lack of clarity of contracts is holding back widespread adoption of cloud computing. A lot of the
