Posts tagged information technology
Will cloud computing economics add up for Microsoft?
Jul 30th
By Larry Dignan at ZDnet
Microsoft at its financial analyst meeting made the case for being a cloud computing leader and argued that its economic prospects will improve as information technology shifts to an on-demand model.
The big question: Do you buy the argument that cloud computing will accelerate Microsoft’s earnings and revenue growth? Let’s face it: Every software vendor is talking cloud computing, but the economic theory is that it’s better to cannibalize your own business than allow some rival to do it. Few established software vendors have argued that the cloud will gussy up their financial metrics.
Microsoft CFO Peter Klein, however, made the case that cloud computing is going to be big business, improve the company’s gross margins, cut costs and bring in more customers. And, as noted by Altimeter partner Ray Wang, Klein did a decent job putting cloud computing in financial terms. It’s too early to put any hard data around Microsoft’s nascent Azure efforts, but Klein said that the software giant could grab a bigger piece of the enterprise IT pie. After all, the historical dividing lines between vendors—software, hardware, networking and storage—are melting away.
So how’s Microsoft going to harness the cloud for financial gain? Klein had a few big themes to ponder:
The cloud opens up a broader IT spending pie. In cloud computing, software, hardware and services blend together. You don’t buy servers. You buy capacity. Klein said:
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IBM Cloud
Jul 30th
This new IT delivery model can significantly reduce enterprise IT costs & complexities while improving workload optimization and service delivery. Cloud computing is massively scalable, provides a superior user experience, and is characterized by new, internet-driven economics.
Information technology is changing rapidly, and now forms an invisible layer that increasingly touches every aspect of our lives. Power grids, traffic control, healthcare, water supplies, food and energy, along with most of the world’s financial transactions, now depend on information technology.
Cloud workloads from IBM
IBM has cloud options. Whether you choose to build private clouds, use the IBM cloud, or create a hybrid cloud that includes both, these secure workload solutions provide superior service management and new choices for deployment.
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Top 10 Cloud Computing Venture Capital Firms To Help Build Your Business
Jul 29th
For more than 30 years, NEA has been helping to build great companies. Our committed capital has grown to $11 billion and we’ve funded more than 650 companies in the Information Technology, Energy Technology and Healthcare sectors.
For more than 49 years, Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) has actively partnered with entrepreneurs to build and grow successful businesses. The firm manages more than $3.7 billion in capital, has funded over 450 companies since inception and has demonstrated an exemplary track record producing premier investment returns during differing capital market environments
U.S. Venture Partners
(USVP) has helped build great companies for three decades. Since its inception in 1981, USVP has invested over $2.7 billion in about 450 companies. Throughout, USVP’s partners have worked diligently and consistently with early-stage companies, many of which have become industry leaders.
Ignition Partners
Ignition is a venture capital firm dedicated to helping the best entrepreneurs seize opportunity.
From turning their early idea into a business, to hiring the right team, providing the right industry and functional insight and connections, to growing the business strategically, globally, financially, to realizing the best ultimate outcome, Ignition is ready to go the distance.
Ignition invests in emerging and future leaders in communications, internet, software, and services across business and consumer targets.
Sequoia
Sequoia Capital in the U.S. caters to the founders and management who have selected us as their business partners. We have learned that the only way to help develop a fabulous company is one step at a time. This only happens if the company makes wonderful products or delivers a service that thrills large numbers of customers. If that occurs then founders, management, and employees of these companies prosper. It is only then that the investor deserves to be rewarded. It has to happen in that order. There are no shortcuts.
First Round Capital
First Round Capital is an early-stage venture capital firm. As seed-stage investors, we often provide a company’s first outside capital – and typically invest alongside angel investors. Our typical initial investment in a company is around $500,000 – but we’ve gone both higher and lower.
We’re not afraid of investing in pre-revenue companies, and we understand the challenges of launching a new product. That’s why we like to take an active role in the companies we invest in.
Mission Ventures
Mission Ventures helps build successful enterprises in Southern California and creates superior returns on investment for its investors. This is accomplished by investing in the most promising early-stage companies in high growth, emerging markets, and providing significant assistance to those companies as they develop.
DAG Ventures
- Is a venture capital partnership investing in and helping outstanding entrepreneurs create leading, long-term companies across a range of markets. With roots from the 1980’s in cable TV, infrastructure, media, and wireless industries, the partnership today is privileged to work with world-class entrepreneurs as they build tomorrow’s leaders in the information technology, energy, and life science sectors. DAG Ventures invests in companies with proven technology, from the prototype stage onward. For more information on current investments,
Hummer Windblad Venture Partners
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners was founded in 1989 as the first venture capital fund to invest exclusively in software companies. Through our history, we’ve had the opportunity to invest in the pioneers and leaders of several generations of software applications, architectures, delivery methods and business models. We’ve helped entrepreneurs build companies in desktop software, embedded systems, client-server, distributed network computing, internet, software as a service and cloud computing.
Shasta Ventures
Was formed expressly to help entrepreneurs build great companies, our primary objective is to provide outstanding service to the companies in our portfolio. It means we have the time to work with early-stage companies because we serve on a limited number of boards. And it means we care about the companies we invest in—not only the businesses, but the people as well.
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DreamWorks signs cloud computing deal
Jul 28th
DreamWorks SKG has signed a multi-year deal with Cerelink for cloud computing access.
Instead of rendering movies like How To Train Your Dragon on thousands of its own computer cores, DreamWorks will use elastic compute resources housed in Cerelink’s supercomputing-class facility at the New Mexico Applications Centre (NMCAC).
“Elastic” cloud computing allows clients like DreamWorks SKG to dynamically adjust technical capacity to meet their real-time business needs.
Cerelink is a high performance cloud computing (cloud HPC) provider to the motion picture industry. It provides private clouds for rendering and other content creation and management application, based on a combination of data center space, scalable high performance computing and networking, in the form of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS).
The Cerelink facilities include access to several thousand square feet of secure data centre space located in Rio Rancho, NM. That space is fed by redundant electrical power grids. It has access to LambdaRail (pdf), the 12,000 mile US coast-to-coast fast broadband network, and to a supercomputer at Encanto.
This offers a theoretical peak speed of 172 teraflops (peak theoretical speed) from its Altix ICE 8200 cluster, with 133 teraflops sustained operation. The ICE 8200 consists of 1,792 nodes (14,336 cores) of quad Xeon 3.0 GHz processors housed in 28 racks.
Cerelink’s private cloud computing service was used by DreamWorks Animation to render parts of Shrek Forever After and How to Train Your Dragon this year. Cerelink itself was founded by a group of ex-Intel managers in 2005.
James Ellington, its CEO, said: “We forecast growing our technical capacity by 20 times by the end of 2011 – this will create one of the largest cloud computing arrays for motion picture production in the world.”
This represents a threat to suppliers of in-house HPC compute and storage facilities to the movie rendering industry, such as BlueArc, DataDirect, Dell, HP, Isilon, and NetApp. If their customers start hiring rendering and animation HPC capacity from service suppliers such as Cerelink, then there will be less demand for in-house kit.
It is some distance from the movie mecca at Hollywood to New Mexico, raising the question of why the movie moguls should look at doing their rendering and animation in New Mexico?
The State offers film production incentives, like a 25 per cent tax rebate, for projects done in the state. Also, Cerelink and the NMCAC, in collaboration with the University of New Mexico, and the New Mexico Department of Information Technology, use an ultra-high-speed network link to link New Mexico to Hollywood.
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CloudTweaks Media Partner For The Cloud Security Alliance Congress November 16-17
Jul 20th
CloudTweaks is pleased to be a Media Partner with the MIS Training Institute and The Cloud Security Alliance Congress.
Read more information on the Workshop Below.
Conference Overview Cloud Security Alliance Congress
November 16-17, 2010
Optional Workshops: November 15 & 18, 2010
Expo Dates: November 16 & 17, 2010
Hilton Disney World Resort
Orlando, FL
The Cloud Security Alliance, the world’s leading organization on cloud security and MIS Training Institute are assembling top experts and industry stakeholders to discuss the state of cloud security and best practice for cloud computing. This two day event will consist of four tracks consisting of Legal and Compliance Issues, Federal, Management and Security and Securing the Cloud.
Cloud computing represents the next major generation of computing, as information technology takes on the characteristics of an on-demand utility. The ability to innovate without the constraint of significant capital investments is unleashing a wave of new opportunities that promises to remake every business sector.
While the massive changes underway are unstoppable, our collective responsibility to good governance, compliance, managing risks and serving our customers must remain. Security is consistently cited as the biggest inhibitor to more aggressive cloud adoption. With this in mind, we have created our first annual Cloud Security Alliance Congress, the industry’s only conference devoted to the topic of cloud security. Our speakers’ roster and confirmed attendees represent the key thought leaders and stakeholders shaping the future of cloud security, which is the future of the cloud itself. On November 16-17, 2010, Orlando will be the epicenter of the movement to secure the cloud. Please join us.
Among the Topics to be Presented
+ Enabling Secure and Compliant Information Services in Hybrid Clouds
+ Audit Trail Protection: Preventing a False Sense of Security
+ Practical Ways to Measure Data Privacy in the Cloud
+ Bringing Cloud Operational Benefits to Security
+ Security in a Hybrid Environment
+ Top Threats and Risks to Cloud Computing
+ Disruptive Innovation and Cloud Computing Security
+ Latest CSA Research Findings
+ Cloud Identity and Access Management
+ Objectivity and Transparency in the Decision-Making Process
+ Security in a Hybrid Environment
+ Disruptive Innovation and Cloud Computing Security
+ Latest CSA Research Findings
+ Gain insight into how to streamline enterprise provisioning and access control
+ Find out how to use the CSA Controls Matrix to assess cloud security providers
+ Understand federal specific compliance requirements related to cloud computing
+ Learn from case studies detailing attacks against cloud computing infrastructures
+ Discover a framework for identifying customer governance and internal control requirements
Keynotes:
