US Military Asks for Private Sector’s Help to Understand Cloud Computing The US military has always been at the forefront of technology. From transportation to materials science, from detection to communication, US military technology has always led its commercial counterparts. The Internet, GPS, jet aircraft, even the non-stick material Teflon – all these were developed for military purposes before finding civilian applications. By anecdotal accounts, US military technology leads civilian technology by at least a decade, if not more. However, it seems to have dropped the ball as regards to one of possibly the most influential technologies of the future
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Cloud Computing – Threat or Opportunity? Part 2 In Part 1 of this two-part article, I had discussed whether cloud computing is a threat or an opportunity for IT companies (See: Cloud Computing – Threat or Opportunity? Part 1 ). In this concluding part, I discuss the same issue from the IT employee’s point of view. Let’s start with a real-life example, albeit in a different industry. When Japanese automakers started using robots, there was obviously a drop in employment; one robot, effectively, could do the work of multiple humans. Consequently, there were cost savings and increased quality, leading to
Top 110 Cloud Computing Enablers Gaining Mind Share in 2Q 2011 Happy 4th of July! I hope you enjoyed your holiday weekend (if you happen to live in the U.S.) Today we take a look at the first half of 2011 to see which Cloud players are gaining mind share. In addition to the, “Top 110 Cloud Enablers Gaining Mind Share”, I have included, “The Leaderboard”, 120 Up and Coming Cloud Innovators, Movers and Shakers. So far the segment has been brimming with excitement as large enterprise information technology companies continue their rapid restructuring to an on-demand cloud computing model by enhancing
What’s In It For Me? – The Key Question Companies Ask of Cloud Computing “What’s in it for me? I’ve got to ask, If it’s only more tears Then I’ll have to pass. If you’ll open up Then I can see, Deep in your heart What’s in it for me?” – John Berry, American country singer and songwriter. The key to selling anything – a product, a service, an idea – is the ability to convincingly answer the one question every customer has on his or her or its (if you are selling to an organization or company) mind –
UPDATE: June 2nd, Intuit Goes Down… Based on a recent visitor tip to CloudTweaks. FYI — Intuit is in the midst of another payroll server outage right now (June 2, 2011) and it has been going on since noon yesterday, June 1st. Hundreds of small business owners are outraged over the lack of service by Intuit and the fact that their planned Friday payroll will not be available as a result of Intuit’s lack of sufficient disaster planning. ——————————————————————————————————————— In the second and concluding part of this article, I look into some of the recent cloud computing failures that have
Environmental Challenges to Cloud Computing Cloud computing has been popularly considered to be environment-friendly. In fact, I had written an article along those lines, although I had expressed some skepticism on the extravagant claims being made on this issue (See: How Green Is Cloud Computing?). However, a recent report by environment watchdog Greenpeace does raise some questions the industry will have to answer. According to this report, provocatively titled “How dirty is your data? A Look at the Energy Choices That Power Cloud Computing”, the data centers that power cloud computing account for about 2% of global energy demand and
