An article by chief technology officer at Savvis, Bryan Doerr, has highlighted the strength of cloud computing as an IT tool to help combat the recession.
As the recession has forced many companies worldwide to examine their outgoings in all departments, the unmistakable economy of the IT department - which, for many companies, is the costliest - has not escaped attention.
However, solutions have readily sprung up in order to help businesses reduce IT costs, one of the foremost being cloud computing, which allows organisations to scale their wares in accordance to company demand, whilst also being used to reduce servers, cut power usage and pay only for what they use.
Mr Doerr wrote: “With the uncertain economic times requiring many businesses to severely curtail IT budgets, outsourcing their IT operations to managed services providers with cloud capabilities in particular, enables companies to dramatically reduce their investments in hardware - hardware that tends to be underutilised - while giving them greater business agility.
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Tags: bryan doerr, cloud economics, savvis
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Google CEO Eric Schmidt has called cloud computing technologies even greater than the advent of personal computers at a conference in Utah. Schmidt has reputedly been foretelling the explosion of the technology, which is injecting new life into the veins of the IT industry, for over 10 years and acknowledged that it is one of the most significant technologies to arrive in the sector in recent years.
At the conference, it was also revealed that a recent Utah Technology Council survey asked 172 companies to reveal whether their businesses were thriving, growing, holding steady or in a state of decline. Eight per cent revealed they were thriving in spite of the recession, with an impressive 58 per cent disclosing that they were experiencing rates of growth. 29 per cent are remaining steady at their current position and only 5 per cent are experiencing decline.
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Tags: cloud popularity, Eric schmidt, google CEO, google cloud
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An expert has weighed in on the benefits of switching over to the cloud, citing that, if the landscape is going to happen anyway, it’s better to be the instigator than caught off guard.
Kicking off Google’s Atmosphere event in London, tech expert Nicholas Carr told audiences: “With the PC, everyone got their own computer; with cloud computing, everyone gets their own data centre.”
He explained that the ideas behind cloud computing are actually ones that have been around for many years. He likened it to past examples of innovation and change, where once innovative technologies were replaced by newer ideas.
According to publictechnology.net, the expert said: “If you look backwards to around 1850 . . . Burden built the most powerful waterwheel in the world and became the main supplier of horse shoes to the Union army
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Tags: cloud disruption, cloud future, cloud technology, google atmosphere, nicholas carr
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In spite of an ever-toughening economy, some things are still going strong and enjoying reaping the rewards that come from offering expansive services at affordable prices. Cloud computing is one such technology, which can mean that enterprises are equipped with the ability to rapidly scale their wares quickly and easily whilst only paying for what they use.
Corporations are continuing to invest in cloud computing and virtualization, a service which can similarly be used to slash the number of servers needed to handle substantial amounts of corporate data, because it has been shown that both can be a excellent money saver within IT departments.
According to Gartner, over the last year, cloud computing has seen fast-paced sales from organizations hoping to save that could exceed $56 billion this year, a fifth up from 2008. This result comes despite a decline of five per cent industry wide. The analyst also predicts that the technology will continue to flourish over coming years to reach just over $150 billion by 2013.
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Tags: cloud computing money saver, IT spending, recession, recession cloud, saving on IT
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President Barack Obama’s budget for fiscal year 2010 has been revealed to include $75.8 billion to be spent in information technology - a seven per cent increase on last year’s total. This brings great opportunities for the government to develop its IT sphere and utilize cloud computing in order to achieve considerable savings.
Cloud computing is expected to feature heavily in this year’s federal plan, with the government making moves to benefit the most from the technology’s cost-effectiveness.
According to Sys-Con, the budget report said: “Of the investments that will involve up-front costs to be recouped in outyear savings, cloud-computing is a prime case in point. The Federal Government will transform its Information Technology Infrastructure by virtualizing data centers, consolidating data centers and operations, and ultimately adopting a cloud-computing business model.”
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Tags: barack obama, federal cloud, government cloud, IT budget, us government cloud
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Analyst firm Gartner has unveiled its strategic technology list for 2010, listing the top 10 strategic technologies that businesses “can’t afford to ignore” in the coming year.
Cloud computing tops the list, which was presented by Gartner analysts David Cearley and Carl Claunch at the Gartner Symposium in Orlando. Cloud computing has risen from third place in 2009 to be the most significant strategic technology for firms in the coming year according to Gartner’s list. Virtualization, which was deemed the most strategic technology for 2009, has fallen to ninth place.
The presentation from Cearley and Claunch made it clear that businesses will need to form teams to examine cloud computing models in order to develop their own strategies for its use and governance.
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Tags: cloud computing hype, cloud hype, Gartner, Gartner cloud, Gartner list
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A Gartner researcher has claimed that full cloud storage for IT departments is never going to happen.
The comments came at a panel discussion at the Storage Expo, where senior research analyst with Gartner, Rene Millman, spoke alongside head of IT Technical Strategy and Security for Burberry, Shawn Scott.
According to Tech Central, Mr Millman referred first to virtualization and then cloud computing. He said: “There are people and vendors out there that would love us to virtualize everything [but] that’s never going to happen.
“Lots feel the same with [putting everything in] the cloud as well, but that won’t happen either.”
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Tags: cloud storage, full cloud storage, Gartner, virtualization
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The increasing attention given to cloud computing technologies has spurred some commentators to dismiss the service as “all talk and no action”.
According the InsuranceNetworking.com, a report by strategy consultancy Celent said that there is far more “talk” about the service than “actual use”.
The report, which is entitled Cloud Computing, SaaS, and Technology Outsourcing for Insurers stated: “There is a lot of talk in the insurance industry right now about cloud computing.
“This talk is coming more from vendors and journalists than it is from insurance companies, and this means there is a lot of talk, but not as much actual use.”
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Tags: celent, celent report, cloud confusion, cloud talk, report, security
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If cloud computing technology is expected to form part of a lasting relationship with consumers, the security of the service must be taken far more seriously.
A cloud computing expert, Simone Brunozzi, emphasized the importance of security, explaining that business are already resistant to change and, if there was any doubt that the cloud could put their private files and applications at risk, they would be even further deterred from taking on the technology.
He also said that it was crucial for vendors to be able to prove that their cloud offerings were secure in order to achieve a greater level of customer trust - though they also must deserve such trust.
Speaking about the importance of security, Mr Brunozzi told audiences at the Storage Expo 2009 conference: “Paranoia is never too much for security.
“Storage is a lasting relationship, which means that we have to trust it.”
The Stage Expo 2009 conference was staged to showcase new technology in the IT industry, meaning that cloud computing was a main contender for attention at the event.
Research carried out across the expo revealed that 40 per cent of companies believe the key to judging an IT director’s effectiveness lies in how they maintain and improve capacity levels - something that cloud computing is known to excel at. As cloud computing stores data and apps on the internet, a great deal of space can be utilized by an organization as is convenient to them and they only pay for what they use, meaning infinite, flexible scaling that suits their needs.
Tags: cloud security, security, simone brunozzi, storage expo
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F5 Networks services education and evangelism officer Lori MacVittie has written an article for ZDNet describing how disturbances in the arrival of cloud computing into the mainstream IT sphere would not deter users from adopting the technology.
Ms MacVittie mainly spoke about the end users, who would largely be unaware of any changes in the way their computers operate. She noted that, in spite of cloud being hailed as something that would appear soon as “center stage, in data centers across the world”, its implementation would remain largely internal - thus barely affecting those who will actually be utilizing the service.
“For consumers of applications,” she wrote, “cloud computing changes nothing.”
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Tags: cloud users, internal cloud, users
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