Tag Archive for 'Cloud Computing'

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Virtualization and Cloud Computing – as a Service

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 29, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Virtualization. 0 Comments

A guest article from the team at Witsbits AB

Introduction

As the IT environment becomes increasingly more complex with new technologies and applications, IT administrators are searching for simplified and cost-effective means of delivery computing resources, required for employees to do their daily work. Virtualization technologies have provided an additional layer of complexity many small businesses do not understand, nor truly have the resources to deploy internally, without expensive training and dedicated personal resources. So how can small companies  (0-99 employees) truly benefit from virtualization without incurring the additional costs and training needed ?

Problem

While there are dominant providers of public cloud services, and major host providers encouraging companies to host their applications externally, there still remain many small companies with the requirement of keeping certain data within their own IT department, from small accounting and medical services firms to financial and legal departments requiring  regulatory compliance, as well as software development companies that prefer internal application testing.

Click to enlarge

Internal and private virtualization infrastructure solutions are also often preferred for reasons of security, quicker and more convenient testing of software patches and compliance to local regulations per country. An example here includes data transfers that must remain within a particular country, region and company. The compliance  and security concerns are of particular interest to  media, financial, medical, military and high security related companies, that want to keep their data internally secured.

Microsoft, Citrix and Vmware

It should also be noted, that although Microsoft, Citrix and Vmware provide feature rich functionalities and free virtualization for basic use,  these solutions require a dedicated IT administrator with virtualization expertise plus additional time / cost to install and manage the platforms, as well as provide the regularly required maintenance.

To quote an analysts and IT consultant in the US, working with small and medium sized businesses “ It is still a pain to build a virtualized infrastructure, today “.   There are over 1 million companies with  fewer then one hundred employees in US. (US census 2007)

In particular for these small businesses, infrastructure management software is too complicated.

So how does Witsbits fit into this marketplace, today ?

Witsbits provides an entry level virtualization and cloud management platform – as a service. Customers, and IT consultants that support small businesses, use Witsbits services for the management of  internal and private virtual infrastructures.

Benefits ?

Witsbits’ management platform is set up in minutes, is software maintenance free for the customer, and very simple to use via a web browser. Pricing is based on a “pay as you go” ( vRam under management) payment model. All data, applications and storage policies remain inside the company and behind the firewall.

The users log into the Witsbits console for the management of their own virtualized infrastructure, and  IT consultants use Witsbits to manage virtualized environments across multiple customer sites at much lower costs, as the web based centralized console is used for one or a multiple of dispersed physical servers running virtual machines. The traditional upgrade per number of physical servers under centralized management is not required.

The newest release of  Witsbits is scheduled for early September.

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9 reasons why VPNs are the next big IT trend

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 23, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Cloud Security. 0 Comments

A guest article by Paul Rudo, editor at Enterprise Features

Virtual Private Networks act as a secure tunnel that safely connects the user to a remote network across a public network.

  • Thanks to VPNs and the abundance of cheap Internet bandwidth, companies no longer have to lease dedicated lines to connect 2 remote locations. Instead, they can establish a secure encrypted channel which can safely transfer data between both locations across the Internet.
  • Another common use for VPNs would be for laptop users who want to connect to corporate systems from remote networks. These can include coffee shops, airports, hotels and other places where network security might not be the most reliable. In order to gain secure access to servers on the internal network, these employees will need to install VPNs onto their laptops.

Courtesy of Mr_Tommy (Flickr)

VPNs are not a new technology. But I strongly believe that this security tool is still very under-used, and that we should soon expect to see a boom in the use of Virtual Private Networks by both companies and individuals alike.

Internet-Enabled Devices

We’re now seeing an abundance of cheap computers embedded into everyday appliances. Everything from refrigerators, to security cameras, to electric meters, to tennis shoes. Anything you can think of has already been turned into a Wi-Fi capable computer.

And when you have an explosive growth in computing devices, you’ll also have an explosive growth in the number of potential attacks. Because of their homogeneity, these electronic “appliances” can be attacked in bulk, and used to perform attacks on other systems.

Who knows? In the future, a hacker might break into your toaster and use it to sniff your traffic.

Free Wi-Fi

Today, it seems like every bus stop, coffee shop, hotel, shopping mall, and school is providing its visitors with free wireless Internet access. Now that Wi-Fi enabled portable devices are so common, these free wireless networks are a cheap way to attract customers and enhance the overall shopping experience.

Of course, these wireless networks are usually managed by minimum-wage employees with no network security experience, and they are also a hot target for hackers. In fact, it’s common for hackers to set up their own publicly accessible Wi-Fi hotspots so that they can steal sensitive information by setting up “Man-In-The-Middle” exploits.

Government Spying

Thanks to laws like the Patriot Act, we can no longer depend on the government to protect our right to privacy. In fact, most police officers will tell you that privacy is dead. There’s even currently a lot of debate over whether or not encryption keys and passwords are protected under the 5th amendment.

The current stance of law enforcement is: “If you don’t have anything to hide, then you won’t mind if we snoop around. And don’t videotape the police.”

Since you can’t trust the government to protect your privacy, you have to take extra steps to protect yourself.

Wireless Is The Default

These days, it’s rare to see a home with wired Internet. Almost everyone relies primarily on wireless routers to distribute connectivity throughout their households and offices. Of course, these home routers are rarely secured using adequate precautions. So “war driving” has become a hot trend within the hacking community in recent years. Even within your own home, you need to encrypt all of your online activities.

Mobile Computing

Today, it’s common for most people to work on at least 2 or 3 different computers as part of their daily routine. They’ll work on their laptop at home, they’ll use a tablet when on the road, and they’ll work on their office PC when at work. And often, these various computers will all be accessing the same resources. It’s absolutely vital that all devices – including mobile devices, laptops and desktops – be secured while sending data over the Internet. A breach on your home laptop could potentially affect you when you get to your workplace desktop machine.

The Cloud

Thanks to SaaS and IaaS, the internal office network is quickly becoming a dying animal. Soon, the Internet will be the primary network for nearly every small company. Enterprise systems will be hosted on remote cloud servers, and employees will work from Software-as-a-Service applications. This means that network security will become much more difficult and much more important.

Censorship

Online censorship is no longer just the domain of authoritarian countries like China and Saudi Arabia. Today, even westernized countries like Australia and the United States are beginning to restrict access to web content. And countries like Canada and the United Kingdom are also enacting gag orders which prevent publishers from discussing certain topics.

This kind of censorship becomes especially important in today’s global business environment, where companies will often have employees spread out across many different countries. In order to ensure that they all have consisted access to corporate resources, their network traffic must be re-routed to a location that guarantees them the appropriate Internet access.

Imagine sending one of your sales reps to China for an important sales meeting, only to have them locked out of the CRM system because of their location!

Easier Access To Hacking Tools

Today, it’s extremely easy for teenagers with virtually no network security experience to perform sophisticated hacking attacks. Today’s hacking tools are designed to be simple and easy-to-use, which is a major reason why we’re seeing so many new attacks by online vandals and political activists.

Anonymity

These days, everything you do online leaves a digital footprint about your past. And once you put something on the Internet, it’s very difficult to take it off. Many would say that removing content from the web is like trying to remove milk from your coffee.

By routing your traffic through an alternate path, you add an extra layer of your protection to your anonymity. This will become even more important as sites like Google and Facebook become even smarter when it comes to sucking out every detail of your private life.

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Enduring Lighting Strikes and Service Outages in the Cloud

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 21, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Cloud Security. 1 Comment

A guest article by Arjan de Jong, Marketing Manager at Jitscale

In early August, a lightning strike at a transformer owned by one of Amazon’s power suppliers caused a major failure in Amazon Web Services’ European cloud. The power outage affected, among others, the Elastic Compute Cloud (ECS) and Rational Database Service (RDS) cloud services.

According to the Amazon Web Services status page, a transformer from an energy supplier for one of the availability zones (EU-WEST-1 region) in Dublin was struck by lightning. An availability zone is a set of hardware that supports cloud services and that functions independently of other zones. According to the site, the cloud services were weakened by the impact. Since the cloud services are composed of complex software components, Amazon had to assign more hardware to restore its cloud services after the power had been restored.

Courtesy of Brilhasti1 (Flickr)

This is the type of event that causes some businesses to doubt the benefits of cloud computing and to believe that it is not a safe or reliable method of hosting data. While these doubts are understandable, the fact is there are a variety of techniques a cloud computing company can apply to mitigate disruption caused by weather events and resulting power outages.

One option, depending on a client’s business requirements, is for the cloud provider to distribute its servers over multiple availability zones (AZ). This redundancy provides excellent protection from localized emergencies such as a lightning strike, power surge or other severe weather related events.

For other customers, monitoring and frequent back ups can mitigate problems when incidents occur. With careful monitoring, engineers will be informed immediately when servers are unreachable. Then, using snapshots of all servers taken on an hourly basis, it is possible to boot the relevant servers in AZ’s that are available.

Several physical redundancies can also help to mitigate problems. These include redundant power supplies and backup generators that are tested to assure they will kick on when the power fails-unlike Amazon’s generators in Dublin. Using redundant Internet connections running simultaneously provides a backup if one provider fails or is performing poorly. Redundant hardware, such as multiple hard drives and other components, can be arranged so that if one fails, another immediately and seamlessly take its place.

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The growth of cloud computing in India

By Olafur Ingthorsson on August 1, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Cloud Security. 1 Comment

As many of my blog visitors come from India, I thought it was interesting to put together a short post about the status of cloud computing in India. It is a common consensus that India will play a important role in the growth of cloud computing in the coming years. This is not at all surprising as the cloud will enable much more companies, not least SMEs, to enter the market quicker and more easily as well as benefit economically. And few countries, if any, are producing more SMEs than India, including IT and technology companies, although several challenges still exist – like lack of Internet access and stable electricity in some areas.

Courtesy of Rachel in Wonderland (Flickr)

Cloud computing growing fast in India

According to IDC, India is facing an information explosion with digital data growing from 40.000 petabytes in 2010 to 2.3-million petabytes in 2020 – with the cloud in the middle as Indian companies look for leveraging cost advantages.

As a testament to this development, several research analysts have published predictions on the cloud growth in India:

According to a Gartner survey, Indian companies expect to adopt new cloud services in 2011 much faster than originally anticipated, with two-thirds of CIOs expecting the majority of IT to be running in the cloud within the next four years.

In earlier news, IDC reported that the Indian cloud computing market would grow at a CAGR of 40 percent by 2014, and to become a $3 billion dollar market by 2015.

A study for EMC, conducted by Zinnov Management Consulting, finds that private cloud in India will deliver up to 50% saving to Indian enterprises creating in the process 100,000 additional jobs by 2015.

Furthermore, the CEO of Zinnov claims that cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by generating new opportunities for IT vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings.

Cloud providers are preparing
However, not only research analysts are forecasting an impressive future for cloud computing in India, several large US companies like Google and Symantec are already taking aggressive steps in leveraging the Indian market. Few big names which recently joined the Google cloud are Indian Youth Congress, Indiamart and Punj Lloyd - a large engineering and design company.
Likewise, Symantec expects that within a year cloud computing will be blooming in India, although many Indian executives have listed concerns over security issues in the cloud. To address this concern, Symantec is interested in providing cloud-based security solutions specifically targeted at Indian businesses.
It is going to be very interesting to monitor the growth of cloud computing in India in the coming months and years. Undoubtedly, will both hear of a number of US companies making large investments in the Indian market as well as seeing some Indian firms become powerful global cloud providers.

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Users happy with UK cloud providers

By Olafur Ingthorsson on July 25, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Cloud Security. 0 Comments

According to a new survey from the Cloud Industry Forum of 450 organizations in the UK, almost half (48 percent) are already using cloud computing in some shape or form.

The survey showed high levels of satisfaction with cloud service providers, but lingering confusion about business interruption issues and the consequences of downtime.

Courtesy of Edwård (Flickr)

The Cloud Becomes Mainstream

The survey suggests that cloud services are no longer a buzzword, but already in widespread practice. Not surprisingly, the private sector is leading the way, with far higher uptake of cloud services than seen with their public sector counterparts. Medium to large companies are at the forefront of cloud adoption, as opposed to the small businesses with less than 20 employees or the public sector.

The survey findings also show that the decision to migrate to the cloud is now predominantly made by the head of IT, rather than CEOs or managing directors (MDs). In smaller companies without IT departments, the decision is mostly taken by the MD or owner.

Cloud services are maturing

An overwhelming majority of respondents (94 percent) is satisfied with the use of cloud services and happy with the results of their use of the cloud. This definitely indicates that the market is maturing and service providers are successfully offering cloud services that are meeting customer expectations. Only a few mid- to large-scale enterprises mentioned difficulties with the migration to the cloud, which should not come as a surprise.

Increasing cloud adoption rates

Similarly, the majority of respondents expect their use of cloud services to increase significantly in the next 12 months, especially with email services, data back-up and data storage services. Also, one-third of those not currently employing cloud services claimed that they anticipated adopting them in the next year, and almost two-thirds believe that their companies will eventually employ cloud services.

Data security and location

Not surprisingly, many respondents claim that they are reluctant to move sensitive data to the cloud, especially employee information, account/financial data. Data security and data privacy were cited as the number one concern.

Also, the physical location of data and jurisdiction was another area of concern for cloud users, preferring to have the data stored in the UK or EU. This development is interesting as it reflects natural concerns driven by regulation and that national law provides a higher level of comfort to cloud users. Enterprise users clearly want to know where their data is stored in the cloud at all times and be aware of the legislation of the particular jurisdiction where the data resides.

However, as a sign of immaturity of the cloud market, only about half of respondents employing cloud services negotiated the legal terms of their contract with their cloud service provider (CSP), with larger organizations more likely to do so. Furthermore, the study reveals that users are in the dark over questions of liability, indemnity, insurance and ownership of content in the cloud. Some uncertainty also exists about the issue of business continuity and risk management. Forty-three percent claimed that their insurance covered business interruption from a disaster at the CSP’s data center or a data leak. Two-thirds believed this should be covered by the CSP – indicating an uncertainty of responsibility and accountability. Certainly this reflects the importance of establishing a wider insurance industry and best practices guidelines.

Flexibility is the primary driver

When it comes to the primary driver of cloud adoption the overwhelming reason is flexibility, according to 53 percent of respondents. Interestingly, cost savings were cited by only 16 percent as the primary driver for initial cloud adoption – a contradiction with the emphasis that cloud service providers have put on cost savings as the primary selling proposition. It seems that the cloud is affording businesses large and small, public and private, the flexibility they need to adapt to the ever changing business environment.

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Cloud Computing and QoS Compatibility for Business Video Conferencing

By Olafur Ingthorsson on July 21, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

A guest article by Allen Drennan, CTO, Founder and Chairman, Nefsis.com

The widespread adoption of cloud computing in business-critical applications such as storage and CRM has set the stage for conquering another, video conferencing cloud computing offers compelling, fundamental advantages in this product category: lower cost, automated fail-over, and much easier to scale versus video-specific routers, multipoint control units (MCUs) and other infrastructure hardware solutions.  But as experienced IT managers know, there’s more to video conferencing than meets the eye, literally.  What about bandwidth consumption and manageability?

From Santorini Greece (click for url)

In recent announcements Nefsis highlighted the advantages of its cloud-based delivery platform with respect to bandwidth efficiency and manageability, too.  In summary, Nefsis uses a combination of 1) dynamic video scaling, i.e., adjusting video quality and bandwidth consumption in real-time, on a per-connection basis; 2) QoS mechanisms; and 3) built-in diagnostic tools to provide a complete IT toolkit for efficiently using, managing and capping bandwidth consumption.

The QoS mechanisms allow IT staff in QoS-enabled environments to assign different traffic priorities or performance levels to the Nefsis video conferencing application and its users.

These video conferencing QoS mechanisms include:

  • Tagging data packets so traffic is managed on QoS-enabled network segments
  • Compatibility with QoS policy controls that reserve resources
  • Negotiating a network connection to determine if adequate bandwidth is available, receiving admission and adapting bandwidth consumption as required
  • Lowering bandwidth consumption  – on  a per connection basis – if network conditions degrade via Nefsis’ dynamic video scaling

Nefsis cloud-based video conferencing features and these detailed bandwidth management tools provide IT staff a complete, business-grade video conferencing solution that can easily be tested and deployed throughout their organization.

Cloud-Based Video Conferencing Benefits Network Users and IT Staff

In a typical video conferencing application, first the feature-functional requirements must be met for its intended users. Then, IT staff concerns regarding security, desktop reach (aka firewall and proxy traversal), and bandwidth manageability must be addressed.

A good business-grade video conferencing solution pick-ups where consumer online services fall off, adding security, multipoint HD video, advanced collaboration tools, and firewall and proxy traversal as needed to support both desktops and conference rooms.

Nefsis cloud computing and multi-core, parallel processing technology easily handles these communications and processor-intensive tasks.  With Nefsis, you can even play an HD media file, such as a training movie, and discuss it during your video conference.

And, with the latest tools mentioned above – dynamic video scaling, built-in diagnostics, and QoS compatibility – Nefsis video conferencing addresses IT staff concerns regarding bandwidth consumption and manageability.

Now, it’s easy to start small.  Business-grade video conferencing can easily be accomplished over most existing networks, with no major investment in infrastructure hardware or bandwidth expansion.  This benefits small-to-medium sized businesses by dramatically reducing the financial risk of video conferencing, while providing distributed enterprise networks an easy way to scale video conferencing as needed.

Moving Video Conferencing to the Cloud 

While this article focused on QoS and related tools for managing bandwidth, it’s important to note that these capabilities are in addition to the fundamental advantages of moving video conferencing to the cloud: load balancing, automated fail-over, and scalability versus previous generations of infrastructure solutions.

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Improving the Mobile Cloud

By Olafur Ingthorsson on July 18, 2011 in Cloud Computing and Mobile Cloud Computing. 1 Comment

Although most agree that mobile cloud computing holds a great promise for delivering cloud solutions to individuals and even critical corporate applications to employees by enabling access from anywhere, there are still several barriers that need to be addressed to elevate its usefulness and capabilities. For mobile cloud computing to reach its full potential, the following three critical challenges need to be addressed, as detailed in a recent article by Bryan Betts:

  • Lowering network latency to meet application and code offload interactivity
  • Increasing network bandwidth for faster data transfer between the cloud and devices
  • Providing adaptive monitoring of network conditions to optimize network and device costs against the user’s perceived performance of cloud applications

(Photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/vizzzual-dot-com/2476109235)

None of these are easy to accomplish, but service and network providers are already making important steps to improve the mobile cloud experience.

Overcoming latency limitations

Latency increases with distance, and the number of network nodes that the data needs to pass. As a result, moving  applications as close to the user as possible decreases latency effects. There are examples of providers taking steps to address this. Ericsson, for example, made a strategic partnership with Akamaiearlier this year which will enable service providers that run on Ericsson infrastructure to route internet traffic intelligently based on user location and add caching capabilities to a mobile network. This technology is expected to increase user experience and advance mobile e-commerce and banking. Dynamically moving the data towards the mobile user is clearly the best way to minimize latency issues and save bandwidth.

Improving bandwidth utilization

More and more mobile service providers have started offering 4G/LTE mobile services within restricted areas. One of the greatest advantages of LTE is capacity. Each LTE cell supports up to four times the data and voice capacity when compared to HSPA (UMTS High-Speed-Packet-Access). Other advantages include low latency, plug and play, and support for both frequency division multiplexing (FDD) and time division duplexing (TDD) in the same platform.  In theory, LTE is capable of downlink peak rates of 100 Mbps and an uplink of at least 50 Mbps. Similar to GSM and UMTS, LTE operates at different frequency bands and can be deployed in clear spectrum with bandwidth as wide as 20 MHz of paired spectrum (20 MHz Uplink, 20 MHz Downlink).

Dynamic Network Monitoring

Several new technologies promise a more intelligent deployment of network resources and may minimize latency. For example, HTML5 offers data caching , allowing users to experience fewer problems due to intermittent network performance or network congestion. When it comes to the mobile cloud, network performance management becomes increasingly important. Better mobile network monitoring systems enable dynamic traffic re-routing and swapping, or handover, between cells based on traffic load patterns and user location.

All these will help to improve the mobile cloud user experience and make it more viable for corporations that are interested in providing mobile access to many of their core applications.

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Opening for business: Your new cloud?

By Olafur Ingthorsson on July 4, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 0 Comments

A guest article by Ditlev Bredahl, CEO, OnApp

Cloud computing is high on the agenda for all UK businesses, particularly for companies with substantial IT infrastructure – hosting providers, and large enterprises.  Whether its building a private cloud for internal users, or a public cloud on which to host paying customers, the first challenge is finding the best way to “cloud-enable” that IT infrastructure.

While some companies build their own clouds from scratch, the quickest path to the cloud, for most, is to invest in a third party cloud deployment and management tool. There are many available, and this is a guide to the ten tips a would-be cloud businesses should consider when choosing the right tool to help build and manage their cloud.

1. Fundamentals

When choosing a hosting provider make sure you choose a provider with real understanding and experience of what businesses need to successfully deploy a public or private cloud.

2. True cloud, not just virtualisation

Insist on functionality that gives you maximum automation and efficiency. Above all, find a product that gives you the flexibility to adapt to the market as it evolves.

3. Time to “cloud-readiness”

Remember a lengthy cloud deployment increases the risk of late entry into the public cloud hosting market where early adopters have become established leaders. For enterprises, slow cloud transition risks both the need for fresh capital expenditure on new hardware and operational inefficiency of the existing infrastructure. Measure your deployment in days, not months.

4. Cost

Every planned transition to cloud computing will be carefully scrutinised in terms of cost. Launching a public cloud business for hosts requires complete transparency from your cloud software provider. The cloud management software market is increasingly competitive, and best-in-class functionality can be yours for little or no up-front investment. You need to have a very good reason to insist on software with monolithic licensing and prices for integration, implementation and support.

5. Billing

Don’t assume that moving to the cloud means you have to adopt new billing platforms, utility billing models and a small set of billing options. Billing flexibility will be critical to the success of your cloud project.

6. Hardware compatibility

Compatibility in server and storage hardware is a critical success factor for cloud projects. Focus on platforms that support the widest range of hardware types and performance levels; that enable you to re-use your existing servers and SANs; and providers that can help with any hardware investment you need to make.

7. IOPS monitoring

Unless you have good reason, avoid cloud management systems that cannot monitor IOPS or that don’t offer flexible tiered storage and swap disks.

8. User permissions

Look for cloud software that gives you granular control of user limits and permissions, with an API that lets you exploit that control to create exactly the cloud service your customers need.

9. Usability

Focus on the UI from an internal as well as a customers’ viewpoint, and favour cloud platforms that enable you to customise the user experience easily – either directly, or through the API.

10. Support

Since this is the platform on which you’re running your cloud business, insist on free, high quality, 24×7 support from your cloud software provider.

 

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More Trends in the Fast-Growing Mobile Apps Market

By Olafur Ingthorsson on June 14, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 0 Comments

According to a new Nielsen report, already one in four US adults have smartphones that are more powerful than the computers initially used to send men to the moon. Nielsen predicts that by the end of 2011, the majority of mobile subscribers in the US will have smartphones. What may that mean for mobile apps? Let’s take a look at some data on recent trends.

Mobile Apps

Since 2009, the Nielsen Company has issued an annual survey called the Mobile Apps Playbook, monitoring and providing information about the mobile app ecosystem. According to the latest survey, games continue to be the most popular category of apps for both smartphones and feature phones.

Not surprisingly, Facebook tops the list of the most popular apps on all smartphone operating systems. Other popular apps include Twitter, the Weather Channel, Google Maps and Pandora music service. No surprises there. Most applications are found through searching and through recommendation from friends and family members. Ratings and reviews are important when it comes to deciding which apps are downloaded.

Interestingly, Apple App Store users tend to download nearly twice as many apps as those who download Android or Blackberry apps and iPhone users are more willing to pay for apps. Furthermore, iPhone users claim that they are willing to pay for one in three apps they download in general, while Android and Blackberry users are less willing to pay for apps. Perhaps some of the reason has to do with how early Apple started charging for applications – making users accustomed to the paid apps model.

Mobile ads

When it comes to advertising, younger users are more receptive, with 58 percent saying that they “always” or “sometimes look at ads.” According to the report, men are more receptive to mobile ads than women. Users prefer to view mobile ads within an app rather than on the outside or when searching. However, those who viewed a mobile ad most often took the action of using a search engine to find out more information. Only eight-percent purchased advertised product/service immediately.

Connected devices

When it comes to mobile devices beyond cellphones, the iPod Touch currently sees the most app downloads, followed by Sony PSP and Apple iPad. The Nielsen report concludes that app download will increase enormously for all kinds of connected devices in mobile media.

Some of the interesting conclusion from the report include the preference of Android users for free apps. One of the reasons could be a younger and less affluent user segment compared to iPhone users. This segment is more likely to click an ad within an app, which spells a clear monetization opportunity for mobile advertisers.

Moreover, Blackberry users lag behind both iPhone and Android users when it comes to app download, even with the newer Blackberry Curve and Bold. This probably has to do with limited selection in the Blackberry App World compared to Apple App Store and Android Market.

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, apps are still a very young market and leaders of today may become the laggards of tomorrow. Therefore, there remains plenty of room for new innovative apps. Some of the new app categories to follow include augmented reality and various mash-ups.

 

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Will the Mobile Cloud resolve Fragmentation?

By Olafur Ingthorsson on June 6, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

A new survey called the “Q2 2011 Mobile Developer Report” conducted by Appcelerator and IDC holds some interesting information about the mobile cloud and smartphone platforms.
According to the survey, interest in the Android platform among mobile app developers has recently plateaued, primarily due to concerns around fragmentation and disappointing results from early tablet sales running Android. At the same time, momentum is shifting back toward Apple and its iPhone and iPad. Furthermore, the survey reveals increased interest in the mobile cloud and mobile web that partially addresses the problem of fragmentation.

Fragmentation is a Drawback for Android

Interest in Apple iOS remains high, where 91 percent of survey responders say they are “very interested” in iPhone development and 86 percent in iPad development. However, reported interest in Android phones fell to 85 percent and to 71percent for Android tablets. Almost two-thirds of respondents claimed that device fragmentation in Android poses the biggest challenge to the platform.

At the same time, other mobile platform providers like Microsoft and Research in Motion (RIM) are expected to have a hard time catching up with market leaders Apple and Google. Two-thirds of responders think it‘s simply impossible at this point for any mobile platform to reverse the significant momentum advantage that iOS and Android now have.

From mobile app developers point of view, the greatest challenge lies not just in the Android handset fragmentation but in fragmentation of skills, e.g. Objective-C vs. Java, and the fragmentation of capabilities, e.g. iOS vs. Android vs. WP7).

The Mobile Web/Cloud Resolves the Fragmentation Issue

When it comes to the mobile cloud, most agree that it has a rosy future. Over 80 percent of mobile app developers said they are building or plan to build mobile websites this year. The theory is that the mobile web will solve the cross-platform and cloud fragmentation dilemma.

However, the mobile cloud growth will be restrained at least as long as the user experience still favors mobile application, i.e. applications running natively on the handsets. End-users are already used to downloading native-apps to their handsets. In essence, the preference for mobile web favors reach, ease and speed over market opportunity and customer demand. However, the economic model strongly favors mobile apps as developers see a path to direct monetization with apps that is missing from the mobile web.

Still, the mobile web can also be seen as a good way to quickly get cross-platform coverage that is additive to mobile apps as a complement, not as a replacement. Therefore, a mobile strategy could be about a mobile-optimized website rather than necessarily a mobile app – as a complimentary channel.

Clearly, a lot has still to be figured out when it comes to mobile cloud deployment, especially mobile apps. It seems logical and beneficial from a business point of view. For example, as many businesses are in the position of determining a mobile strategy in the light of increasing complexities and fragmentation of mobile platforms and devices, the mobile cloud promises a way to overcome these limitations. Certainly it would be simpler to consider developing for the mobile cloud rather than fragmented platforms and devices. However, it still might be some time until this strategy becomes mainstream.

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Cloud Office War: Google vs. Microsoft

By Olafur Ingthorsson on June 2, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 2 Comments

A guest article by Jerry Wang, Founder of Cloud Drive Software

Google and Microsoft are two leading companies in Cloud Computing.  As an Internet, the Big G is trying to move everything to the Cloud and eliminating any desktop applications.  While Microsoft, as a traditional desktop software provider,  is trying hard (and painfully) to step to Cloud Computing platform to face the new challenge.

Whether for enterprise or individual, an Office system is always one of the most important application.  Google Docs is a very attractive cloud app for individuals and small businesses. Microsoft also launched their online office system – SkyDrive,  to compete with Google.  In this article, we would like to make a review on  Google and Microsoft’s cloud office solutions.

Products  involved:

Google:  Google Docs,  a fairly good online office .
Related product: Google Apps, Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Contact

Microsoft: SkyDrive ,  an online office system which is compatible with Microsoft Office.
Related product: Microsoft Office, Live Mesh

Features:

Google Docs:

  • Create, edit and share Document, Presentation, Spreadsheet and Drawing files.
  • View and share Image, PDF, Video, Audio files.
  • OCR is supported
  • Powerful share settings
  • Excellent search (does this need to be mentioned on Google product?)
  • Folder uploading/downloading/moving is supported.

For Google Docs users, especially enterprise users, Google Docs can be a comprehensive office solution by being well integrated with Gmail, Google App domain, Google Calendar, Google Contact, as well as  lots of third party apps on Google Apps Marketplace.   Comparing to Microsoft Office/Exchange, Google’s solution is much cheaper and flexible,  so it is welcomed by small businesses. Based on Google’s statement, there are more than 3 millions Google Apps enterprise users now.

Google launched an Android client for Google Docs recently, but there is no clue if and when a desktop client of Google Docs will be launched by Google. However, you can find a third party desktop app for Google Docs, which is a small and convenient tool.

SkyDrive:

  • Create Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote files online with Microsoft Office compatibility.
  • View and share photos and videos.
  • Share files easily.

Compared with Google Docs, Microsoft SkyDrive falls behind on features, collaboration and speed. And the user experience is also not as good as Google Docs.

The biggest advantage of SkyDrive is: It can seamlessly connect with Microsoft Office 2010, which means that the user can use Microsoft Office 2010 to create and edit a file and save it directly on SkyDrive online space. Additionally, any office files on SkyDrive can also be opened directly by Office 2010.

Another tool we would like to mention is a Sync app based on SkyDrive : Live Mesh, which can sync any folder on your local computer to the 5GB free online space of SkyDrive.  Pretty cool!

Conclusion:

Which one is better, Google Docs and Microsoft SkyDrive?

For individual users:

If you are a cloud computing fan and want to do everything online, Google Docs is your perfect choice.

If you like handling with local office system and just want to experience the benefit from cloud storage,  Microsoft Office + SkyDrive should be your choice.

For business users:

For any enterprise user, if Microsoft Active Directory, Office and Exchange are also well deployed inside your corporation,  there should be no reason to transfer to Google platform.  Incorporating more cloud elements like Microsoft SkyDrive, Live Mesh to the original system should be the best choice.

For small startup business,  constructing the office system on Google platform can cost much less than Microsoft Office solution, as well as bring  a much more effective collaboration.

 

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AMD Reveals Global Cloud Adoption & Attitudes in New Research Report

By Olafur Ingthorsson on June 1, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 0 Comments

SUNNYVALE, Calif. — June 1, 2011 — AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the results of a global research study on adoption, attitudes and approaches to cloud computing, surveying IT decision makers in public and private sector organizations across the United States, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The findings reveal both global and regional trends in cloud computing adoption and usage, highlighting the importance of both infrastructure and workloads in considering a cloud computing model. Findings include:

  • Cloud computing is maturing rapidly, with 70 percent of respondents indicating they are either using or currently investigating cloud computing for remotely hosted applications or to store data.
  • Of those organizations that have deployed cloud solutions, 60 percent reported that they are already seeing business value.
  • Among current cloud users, 92 percent stated that infrastructure was an important part of their decision to move to a cloud computing model.

“Based on the findings of this global study, AMD believes it is time for the industry to re-shape the way we think about cloud technology,” said Patrick Patla, general manager and vice president, Server and Embedded Divisions. “The findings point to the fact that while the era of cloud computing has arrived, there are radically different attitudes, approaches, concerns and levels of maturity depending on business environment.  As an industry, we must provide clear guidance about how to optimize hardware and software for all types of clouds, focusing on custom parts for specific workloads that are prevalent in the cloud and the appropriate balance of performance, power and cost efficiency they require.”

Billions of Dollars Stored in the Cloud

As cloud adoption continues to increase, so does the value of the data that lives in the cloud. Sixty-three percent of those using the cloud to host data estimated they store more than $250,000 worth of data in the cloud, and by evaluating this survey field alone as a sample of the industry at large, it can be estimated that billions of dollars in active data currently lives in the cloud.

CIOs Drive Strategic Shift to Cloud

This new era of IT is being driven by the CIO, head of IT or IT Director more than 50 percent of the time, placing a huge amount of importance on the technology at the core of the cloud. Ninety-two percent of respondents currently using the cloud stated that infrastructure was important in their decision to adopt cloud computing, dispelling the myth that cloud customers do not care to know about the physical servers housing and running their data. Global private sector respondents also identified the workloads they believe most suited potentially for cloud computing as email, finance/accounting and Web serving, in that order.

With such a clear level of importance placed on the IT infrastructure of the cloud, it is imperative for vendors to move beyond the hype and talk about the real issues at the core of the cloud. Email, finance/account and web serving are all fast-growing workloads in the cloud, yet have significantly different compute demands. AMD is taking the lead in approaching cloud computing from a workload-based model that provides differentiated solutions based on the unique requirements of the cloud provider and customer.

Public Sector and the Cloud

AMD also specifically examined public sector attitudes toward the cloud, revealing that local and federal mandates are having a significant impact in accelerating cloud adoption. In the US, public sector respondents felt government policies have accelerated a move to the cloud more than twice as many times as those who felt it has decelerated adoption, primarily citing the shift as a way to reduce costs. Nearly half of the worldwide public sector respondents indicated budget restrictions are driving a more rapid adoption of cloud solutions.

One key hurdle that still remains for the public sector to fully embrace cloud computing is having the necessary IT skills in-house to support the deployment of cloud solutions. Currently, 43 percent of public sector respondents did not feel they had the skills in place to support cloud versus only 23 percent in the private sector.

Highlights from the report include:

  • The State of Cloud Deployments: Seventy-four percent of US organizations are using or investigating cloud solutions, followed by 68 percent in APAC and 58 percent in Europe.
  • Trust in the Cloud: Nearly 1 in 10 organizations in the US estimate they store more than $10 million worth of data in the cloud. However, 63 percent of global respondents still view security as one of the greatest risks associated with the model.
  • Understanding and Preparation for the Cloud: For those currently using the cloud, 75 percent had the necessary IT skills to implement the solution versus only 39 percent of those who are currently investigating cloud today.
  • Cloud Clients: Cloud users are able to access their services primarily via a PC (90%), followed by smartphone (56%), tablet (37%) and thin client (32%)

 

In the coming weeks and months, AMD will be releasing detailed information about the infrastructure requirements of different cloud deployment models, and will also be introducing new technology to market that helps partners and customers implement flexible and robust solutions that can deliver the right mix of price, performance and power depending on their needs. This builds on AMD’s cloud strategy established with the AMD OpteronTM 4000 Series platform. To learn more, go to www.amd.com/cloud.

 

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You get what you get – and you don’t get upset

By Olafur Ingthorsson on May 30, 2011 in Cloud Computing. 0 Comments

This is a guest article by Lilac Schoenbeck, Sr. Manager, Cloud Computing at BMC

IT hasn’t necessarily had a tradition of extraordinary customer service. Typically, requests took too long – and the black box by which the technology was delivered was a mystery to all but the most entrenched individuals. Technology takes time. That was the message.

Enter cloud computing. Whether or not your company is virtualized or automated or even living in the modern age, business users are now seeing alternatives in the market that promise speed, agility and lower costs. All of a sudden they see a credit card paying for a web server, and the system is ready in minutes.  Technology is instantly available.

So the business is beating down the walls of IT, rightfully demanding their long overdue service. And many IT groups are responding admirably, setting up cloud environments that deliver fast, standardized chunks of cloud that look.. well.. like operating systems. Faster Linux. Faster Microsoft Windows. Cheaper too. But somehow, this isn’t quite meeting the business need. Why?

a)      No one really wants more Operating Systems. Can you think of a single business use case that wants a nice naked OS? No one needs that. That’s just faster virtualization – on speed. A real business user wants a real business service. SharePoint. Their Business Intelligence environment. A web server. An app server. A fully configured development environment.

b)      It takes too long to configure and load applications. And, let’s face it, most of our users can’t do it. IT has taught them for years how to NOT do this, since we harp on standard configurations and change management – but now we are giving them a bare OS and tell them they are on their own.

c)       They will never give it back. The whole point of cloud is that services are provisioned, and ultimately retired. Someone wise told me recently – if I’ve gone to all the trouble of installing my applications and configuring my environment, I am not giving it back. Sure, you might provision me another OS in 5 minutes flat – but that doesn’t help my time-to-value.

The clear need: Full business services in the cloud. Those are full-stack, multi-tier applications, configured to deliver value right away. And customers need configurable options – since not every instance of SharePoint is the same. Some are bigger, smaller, compliant, external, etc. To deliver real business value in cloud, you have to deliver real business services to meet real business needs.

BMC feels strongly about this. As a company that hung its hat on the Business Service Management vision, we are extending this vision to our cloud management capabilities – bringing the full weight of business value to the domain of cloud computing. But that’s our vision. I’m curious what you see as alternative approaches and what more we could be doing to make the cloud a reality for your operations. One thing we know for sure, the days of telling users “You get what you get” are over because if you do… they will get upset.

You can follow Lilac on Twitter @lilacschoenbeck or read her blog.

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