Cloud Valley: China’s Cloud Computing Initiative and the Man behind It The whole world knows about Silicon Valley in California; however, very few are aware of Cloud Valley in China. While calling the 7,000-square-meter technology campus in a Beijing suburb as a “valley” may be an exaggeration, there’s no denying the immense possibilities of this place. As anyone familiar with the history of technological clusters will tell you, all of them – from Silicon Valley and Boston Route 128 in the US to Silicon Wadi in Israel – had their origins in a few brave beginners. Moreover, with the growth
Computing
Continued from Part 2 The Cost of Cloud Clearly, there is great return potential associated with Cloud-based model. However, transition to Cloud-based model from an on-premise model is not without cost. Direct Ongoing Cloud Costs While the cost savings associated with a cloud-based model over an on-premises model are clearly substantial, there are two areas where an IT organization will face new costs associated with Cloud: those associated with the Cloud platform (~5%) and those associated with Cloud databases (~4%). However, these are operational expenditures – pay-as-you-go costs, that depend entirely on the business’ demand. On-time Migration Costs In addition
Business in the Clouds in 2012 The year 2012 is quickly approaching and I would like to add my thoughts about what will might see. I have nothing to add about the end of the world ending in 2012. My daughter was frantic about it several months ago but now even the teenagers seem to be moving on to the next big thing. I personally believe it will be a new beginning for computing technology, a big year for the cloud. Of course, the advances of the cloud is well and truly underway, as an infographic from CEO.com suggests: 70%
The Cloud and Babies: Parents and Umbrellas I was a member of the first generation of humanity to grow up with computers. We surfed the web as babes, toddlers turning HTML into child’s play. The infants of the 2010s will be the first to mature alongside technology’s own robust, promising infant: cloud computing. What to make of this realization? I did a little research to determine my thoughts. Let’s begin with the heartwarming. HP’s official blog, Data Central, wrote a clever piece last year on Kenyan babies, the cloud, and President Clinton. It revealed how the President’s Health Access Initiative partnered with
Infographic: Look Who Is Using The Cloud Source: Microsoft
Calculating the ROI on Cloud – Part 2 Continued From Part 1 Productivity Enhancement Productivity enhancements are more subjective in nature than direct cost savings; they are dependent on the type of business and the current organizational set up. Application Development The notion of Platform as a Service (PaaS) is to extract the common set of services as a platform and enable the cloud developer to become more productive and agile. The set of services provided by the platform can be categorized as Middleware – Identity, authentication, worlflow, mashup Computation – logic execution, messaging, transactions Data Layer – Relational data,
Deloitte’s New Cloud Offering – CloudPrint Deloitte, the second largest professional services firm in the world (having recently lost that title to PwC), has expanded its consulting services in the cloud computing space with Deloitte CloudPrint, a “proprietary delivery framework has been designed to help guide clients through the process of becoming a cloud service provider or subscriber.” While the name of the service maybe somewhat misleading, bringing to mind offerings like Google Cloud Print, the name refers to process of printing or stamping out something rather than literal printing on paper. CloudPrint for Providers: a suite of services covering
CloudSigma Introduces Innovation in Cloud Computing with Solid State Devices (SSDs) Now, Switzerland can add innovation in cloud computing to its list of achievements that include banks, chocolates, cheese and fine watches. The country’s leading Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider CloudSigma (www.cloudsigma.com) recently set the cloud computing world buzzing by announcing the addition of solid state drive (SSD) storage to its public cloud portfolio. SSD, or flash memory as it is better known, has significantly faster access capabilities and reduced energy consumption as compared to the traditional hard disk drives (HDDs) that sit inside servers powering cloud computing. It’s only a few
