Tech Child’s Play: Is the Cloud Still a Kid? A new Information Week article, penned by well-respected expert Art Wittman, condemns cloud computing as a horny youngster still in the grips of puberty. Perhaps Wittman doesn’t attack the cloud so colorfully. But he solidly argues that, in terms of how IT people commit to its use the popular technology, cloud suffers from growing pains. Wittman reveals the results of a survey to IT organizations, asking them, “’What are your company’s plans for cloud computing?’… Two-thirds of [them] either have decided the cloud isn’t for them or have yet to pull the
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What’s Special about the Joyent Funding Round? There is nothing special about small companies or startups getting funding, other than the obvious vindication of the opportunities in cloud computing. In fact, such funding stories have been the focus of several articles here (See the latest one: Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money: UPDATE 8). However, there’s something different, and in my opinion, special, about the $85 million round of funding closed by San Francisco cloud services provider Joyent (http://www.joyent.com/). What’s special about this round of external financing is not the amount (which, by prevailing standards, is quite impressive) or the
Is Nicira a Game-changer? Maybe. Harbinger? Definitely While Nicira’s Network Virtualization Platform (NVP) has been out since February 9th, little more has been said about it’s game-changing properties, especially where it involves Cloud Computing. Networking has always been the hardware bottleneck that no one has actually overcome in Cloud Computing, but according to Nicira this is no longer an issue. However, rather than be the giant-killing game-changer, I can’t help but feel that it is more of a harbinger of things to come than the next up-and-coming giant. At little more than 10 or so days from its last announcement,
Amazon Releases The Simple Workflow Service (SWF) Amazon Simple Workflow Service (Amazon SWF) is a workflow service for building scalable, resilient applications. Whether automating business processes for finance or insurance applications, building sophisticated data analytics applications, or managing cloud infrastructure services, Amazon SWF reliably coordinates all of the processing steps within an application. With traditional development approaches, it is both time-consuming and costly to build and track processing steps that run at different times and have different durations, while ensuring they are executed reliably and without duplication. When the execution of applications is distributed across multiple systems, the coordination of
What Will The Taleo Purchase Bring To Oracle? On 9 February 2012, Oracle announced its purchase of human resources management software maker Taleo Corp. for $1.9 billion. Taleo’s cloud-based talent management solutions optimize how organizations hire, manage, develop and motivate employees to improve performance and drive growth. The $1.9 billion price values Taleo at $46 a share, an 18% premium to the company’s closing stock price of $38.94 the day before. Even for a company as large as Oracle, this represents a significant amount of money. So, what will this acquisition bring to Larry Ellison and company? First of all,
HP Helps Save Enterprises From Supplier Sprawl New services help reduce complexity and costs of managing internal and external suppliers HP today introduced new services that enable enterprises to integrate, manage and govern complex multivendor environments, resulting in reduced risk and costs. According to Forrester Research, “business groups are adopting cloud 2.5 times faster than IT groups. Procurement of cloud services from external suppliers by business groups separate from services developed by IT is creating ‘supplier sprawl.’” “Managing and measuring complex IT sourcing environments in terms meaningful to the business has become a pressing need for the CIO, particularly with
Can The US Government Assuage Cloud Privacy Concerns? Even as the world tries to find a balance between individual privacy and the eternal vigilance of a nanny state, cloud computing is a casualty of the heightened security concerns in post-911 America. This is something that I had explored in earlier articles, from the ramifications of the PATRIOT Act (See: Is Cloud Computing a Threat to Consumer Rights?), to how rivals of American cloud vendors are actually touting the latter’s vulnerabilities to government investigation as a key business differentiator (See: Your Data in Australia is subject to the US Patriot Act).
Cloud Computing In China Looks Set To Soar China is notorious for being a closed market, however, as the largest single market in Asia it could prove to be the game changer necessary to tip the scales of Cloud Computing adoption (at least in Asia). While we all know that a single grain of rice can tip the scales, China’s expanding Cloud Computing market is rapidly growing out of the boundaries set by the country’s Great Firewall of China. Everything looks set to be in place enough that China may be the game changer for your cloud enterprise or startup
