Platform as a Service: Read the fine print I’m surprised at the number of startups that are now going directly to the cloud, bypassing traditional web hosting solutions and avoiding the need to own a server in-house. That’s great news, and at a minimum it shows that the big players — Google, Amazon and Microsoft — are marketing well to the startup crowd. But I am even more surprised at the number of startups that make critical cloud platform selections without reading the fine print. The little details with Platform as a Service (PaaS) are the ones that cause the most
Guest Writers
Part One – Introduction This article is written for IT professionals who are interested in optimizing their Windows Azure cloud applications by dynamically adjusting compute resources to accommodate for changes in demand – in realtime. The need for dynamic scaling is great: without it, your Azure applications will be performing poorly when demand is unexpectedly high and waste a lot of money when demand is low. Your application is charged for all allocated compute instances even if they are underutilized or not utilized at all. There are a number of articles and examples available that allow one to start on
When is cloud suitable for a basic website? I recently argued that cloud is not a suitable solution for the online shops, blogs, forums and content driven sites that constitute the vast majority of the web. After all, these are websites that need nothing more than a CPU and a database, which can be provided at lower annual cost by the numerous VPS and Shared Hosting providers. But even if a shared host is more sensible for your business, you may still benefit from some short-term access to the cloud: The cloud is a great resource for testing the minimum
Cloud computing spending will account for 25% of annual IT expenditure growth by 2012 and nearly a third of the growth the following year. “The battle for Cloud dominance is heating up, with the release of Office 365, it will be very interesting to see where the next big play comes from. Andrew Gradwell Director – Cloud Hypermarket” The Cloud has been around for a little while now. The development of the cloud has taken place over the last few years, led in the most part by Google’s innovations in Email, Document storage Cloud Apps and their SharePoint Alternative in
A lot of startups and SMBs need access to very basic server resources to host their website. They don’t require cloud based REST APIs, automatic scaling or the ability to run their application as part of a high-performance compute cluster. These are your traditional content providers that sell products in on-line shops, host blogs with inline adverts and generally ensure an online presence exists for their bricks’n’mortar business. So I find it surprising when I see such traditional content providers move their online presence to the cloud. This fact, more than anything, shows that the marketing of cloud solutions can
Africa’s mobile market is the fastest growing in the world, growing at twice the global rate. 1 A consistent market growth can be witnessed with the rapid innovation of new products and solutions for the African mobile user by mobile carriers and content developers. In this part of the series: Africa and the mobile handset, we shall delve into details of mobile subscription in Africa, mobile internet that is currently the major focus for most mobile carriers and the recent trends in mobile service(s) pricing. Africa has over 260 million mobile subscribers, with at least 27 in every 100 people
Cloud security is on the top of every CIO’s mind. Apparently some people even consider that cloud risks outweigh cloud benefits. Unfortunately, an overzealous approach to cloud security can lead to arguments that detract from the real issues, with little to no analysis of the specific problems at hand. Below is a list of cloud security issues that I believe affect large organizations: Separation of duties Your existing company probably has separate application, networking and platform teams. The cloud may force a consolidation of these user groups. For example, in many companies the EC2 administrators are application programmers, have access to Security
Practically Speaking about Cloud Computing – Series by Cloudtweaks Practically speaking: Gartner declared that Cloud Computing is at its peak of the Hype Cycle with inflated expectations in 2010. We are witnessing the same in reality now. The talk is no longer about its definitions or security concerns. As cloud computing is entering into the offices of CIOs, CTOs, CFOs and CEOs with a bang, it is execution time. In this Practically Speaking Cloud Computing Series in Cloudtweaks, let us have information-exchange of practical knowledge and experience. Practically Speaking about Amazon Web Services – Part I: “The Evolution of Amazon
