Posts tagged cloud computing resources

The Top 10 Cloud Computing Trends

Aug 19th

Posted by cloudtweaks in Browser

3 comments

Cloud computing is the technology of today and  tomorrow.

People, companies, businesses, and organizations are fast shifting to cloud computing from client-server model. It is very hard to guess what cloud computing will exactly look like in the future or how it will bring changes in IT. However, we can see some trends, IT and business world are setting in cloud computing.

Following are the top 10 trends observed in cloud-computing;

Building Private Clouds

Larger organizations and enterprises are building their own private computing cloud. IBM’s “Blue Cloud” is such an example. Microsoft introduced its private cloud just last month. Private clouds are huge datacenters possessing information and data of all types. They remove the security concerns about cloud computing.

Shift in IT skills of the Professionals

With the paradigm shift from client server model to the cloud computing model, IT workers will need new sets of skills. They won’t have to operate and maintain IT infrastructure, but now they will have to know how to extract and use the best information from computing clouds.

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Ideal Testing Tool For Cloud Computing Applications

Apr 22nd

Posted by cloudtweaks in Amazon

4 comments

Cloud Computing is fast emerging as a preferred technology for application development and deployment. Though the concept of Cloud Computing has been in existence for quite some time, the Technology has gained wide recognition only recently. Cloud Computing makes use of several servers placed at various locations connected to one another by high-speed network connections.

The idea governing the Cloud Computing concept is utilization of several different servers in various locations to host applications and data instead of using a single server in one location.

With Cloud Computing, consumers and businesses can access various applications without installing anything. In short, one can access any application from any computer that is equipped with an Internet connection. This is of immense benefit to businesses, in particular, as there would be no necessity of having to be at a particular computer to execute a task.

Cloud infrastructure services are offered on rent by service providers. Payment is made only for the cloud computing resources that are actually used. This is efficient as unnecessary expense is prevented.

Cloud Computing is being increasingly preferred by businesses for its many benefits, including user-friendliness, flexibility and scalability. Another increasing use of cloud-based environments is in software testing. They are being employed increasingly for software testing for their flexibility and cost-effectiveness.

This shift to Cloud environment demands Cloud-based Testing tools as conventional testing tools are ineffective in Cloud Testing. In Cloud Testing, aspects such as the network, desktop, and the impact of alterations within the Cloud, need to be focused on. As such, Testing tools   employed for Cloud Testing should be so equipped that they enable software developers and testers analyze the above-mentioned aspects.

There are many Open Source software testing tools being published for Cloud environments currently. PushToTest’s TestMaker is a leading automation testing platform capable of running tests on test equipment or in a Cloud Computing environment, or both.

Full Source:  Cloud Computing Applications

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Symantec: Cloud Computing Security Approaches Need to Catch up to Adoption

Apr 5th

Posted by cloudtweaks in Amazon

6 comments

A joint survey from Symantec and the Ponemon Institute painted a less than rosy picture of enterprise approaches to cloud computing. For many, security seems to be on the backburner.

A new survey of IT professionals has painted a troubling picture of enterprise approaches to cloud computing security.

According to the survey, which was done by Symantec and the Ponemon Institute, many organizations are not doing their due diligence when it comes to adopting cloud technologies – a situation that may partly be due to the ad hoc delegation of responsibilities.

Among the findings: few companies are taking proactive steps to protect sensitive business and customer data when they use cloud services. According to the survey, less than 10 percent said their organization performed any kind of product vetting or employee training to ensure cloud computing resources met security requirements before cloud applications are deployed.

In addition, just 30 percent of the 637 respondents said they evaluate cloud vendors prior to deploying their products, and most (65 percent) rely on word-of-mouth to do so. Fifty-three percent rely on assurances from the vendor. However, only 23 percent require proof of security compliance such as regulation SAS 70.

The researchers speculated this may be due to a gap between the people employees think should be responsible for evaluating cloud vendors and who actually is. For example, 45 percent said that responsibility resides with end users, while 23 percent said business managers. Eleven percent said the burden belonged to the corporate IT team, while nine percent said information security.

However, a total of 69 percent said they would prefer to see the information security (35 percent) or corporate IT teams (34 percent) lead the way in that regard. Most often, security teams are not part of the decision-making process at all when it comes to the cloud. Only 20 percent said their information security teams played a part on a regular basis, and 25 percent said they never do.

“Cloud computing holds a great deal of promise as a tool for providing many essential business services, but our study reveals a disturbing lack of concern for the security of sensitive corporate and personal information as companies rush to join in on the trend,” said Dr. Larry Ponemon, chairman and founder of the Ponemon Institute, in a statement. “In order to properly address information security concerns we encourage organizations to immediately incorporate policies and processes for determining vendor qualifications. In addition, cloud computing vendors must also be willing to adopt a more transparent posture.”

Figures from the Evans Data Cloud Development Survey released earlier this year found that 61 percent of the more than 400 developers said at least part of their organizations’ IT resources “will move to the public cloud within the next year.”

According to the Symantec/Ponemon study, the most popular uses of the cloud include business applications (71 percent) such as Salesforce.com as well as peer-to-peer applications. With adoption growing, enterprises are still “flying blind” in regards to security, opined Justin Somaini, chief information security officer at Symantec.

“Today, organizations need stronger information governance for managing corporate information and enabling confidence in the cloud,” he said in a statement. “The success of cloud computing hinges on the trust and confidence that can only occur when the information security teams have better visibility into the security posture and operations of cloud initiatives.”  Full Source

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IBM Provides Universities with Free Cloud Computing Services

Feb 10th

Posted by cloudtweaks in Blogs

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As part of an effort to ingrain the concepts being promoted under its Smarter Planet campaign in the minds of students, IBM today announced that it will give universities free access to cloud computing resources to be used across a broad range of research projects.
The IBM move follows a similar announcement from Microsoft under which it said it will work with the National Science Foundation (NSF) to provide free cloud computing services on its Azure cloud computing platform to projects designated as being worthy of such support by the NSF.
Beyond trying to indoctrinate students into their respective computing platforms, Mark Hanny, IBM vice president of strategic partnerships, said IBM is trying to educate both business and technology students about how to think about applying technology to innovate a business process.
Hanny says that IBM routinely hears from its customers that they lack the internal skills to leverage technology to reinvent business processes. To that end, IBM is hoping to advance the careers of a broad range of business process architects that Hanny said should lead to redefining what it means to be an IT professional in the context of business.
Specifically, the issue that IBM is trying to get at is that there are not enough business executives who have an appreciation for what IT can accomplish, while most IT people are still have little understanding of the business processes they are trying to support.
As for universities, these free private cloud computing services basically eliminate all the IT administration required to set up a research project, which in theory should encourage them to launch more research projects.
Down the road, Hanny said it’s likely that IBM would extend this new cloud computing services to education institutions of all types, including corporate research projects aimed at advanced business processes in specific vertical industries.

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Microsoft and the National Science Foundation Enable Research in the Cloud

Feb 5th

Posted by cloudtweaks in Business

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Agreement will offer free access to new computational and collaborative services to accelerate scientific discovery for research communities.

REDMOND, Wash., and ARLINGTON, Va. — Feb. 4, 2010

Microsoft Corp. and the National Science Foundation (NSF) today announced an agreement that will offer individual researchers and research groups selected through NSF’s merit review process free access to advanced cloud computing resources. By extending the capabilities of powerful, easy-to-use PC applications via Microsoft cloud services, the program is designed to help broaden researcher capabilities, foster collaborative research communities, and accelerate scientific discovery. Projects will be awarded and managed by NSF. More details about funding opportunities are available at http://www.nsf.gov/dir/index.jsp?org=CISE.

Microsoft will provide cloud computing research projects identified by NSF with access to Windows Azure for a three-year period, along with a support team to help researchers quickly integrate cloud technology into their research. Windows Azure provides on-demand compute and storage to host, scale and manage Web applications on the Internet through Microsoft datacenters. Microsoft researchers and developers will work with grant recipients to equip them with a set of common tools, applications and data collections that can be shared with the broad academic community, and also provide its expertise in research, science and cloud computing.

“Cloud computing can transform how research is conducted, accelerating scientific exploration, discovery and results,” said Dan Reed, corporate vice president, Technology Strategy and Policy and eXtreme Computing at Microsoft. “These grants will also help researchers explore rich and diverse multidisciplinary data on a large scale.”

Today, scientists are operating in a world dominated by data, thanks to increasingly inexpensive sensors and a growing trend toward collaborative data projects. Analyzing and synthesizing this mass of data remain a challenge. The goal of the new program is to make simple yet powerful tools available that any researcher can use to extract insights by mining and combining diverse data sets.

“We’ve entered a new era of science — one based on data-driven exploration — and each new generation of computing technology, such as cloud computing, creates unprecedented opportunities for discovery,” said Jeannette M. Wing, assistant director for the NSF Computer and Information Science directorate. “We are working with Microsoft to provide the academic community a novel cloud computing service with which to experiment and explore, with the grander goal of advancing the frontiers of science and engineering as we tackle societal grand challenges.”

About the National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. In fiscal year (FY) 2010, its budget is about $6.9 billion. NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives over 45,000 competitive requests for funding, and makes over 11,500 new funding awards. NSF also awards over $400 million in professional and service contracts yearly.

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