The public and private cloud markets continue to experience growth, with the public cloud market expected to reach $100 billion by 2016, according to analysts.
With enterprises continuing to adopt cloud computing, analysts see continued growth in both public and private cloud investment – with worldwide spending on public IT cloud services set to exceed $40 billion in 2012 and reach nearly $100 billion by 2016, according to IDC.
"The IT industry is in the midst of an important transformative period as companies invest in the technologies that will drive growth and innovation over the next two to three decades," Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC, said in a statement. "By the end of the decade, IDC expects at least 80 percent of the industry's growth, and enterprises' highest-value leverage of IT, will be driven by cloud services and the other third-platform technologies."
By 2016, public IT cloud services will account for 16 percent of IT revenue in five key technology categories: applications, system infrastructure software, platform as a service (PaaS), servers and basic storage, IDC said. More significantly, cloud services will generate 41 percent of all growth in these categories by 2016.
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Public, Private Cloud Markets Set to Soar as Enterprise Adoption Grows
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IBM Buys Butterfly
IBM Monday said it’s going to buy Butterfly Software, a privately held data
analysis and migration software firm in Maidenhead, England.
It would be nice to know what IBM is really doing with its stockpile of
analytics acquisitions or if it’s just taking them off the market. It expects to
generate $16 billion from business analytics by 2015.
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Cloudcuity™: Thought Leadership Translated to Operational Excellence
As my long-time readers have certainly noticed, the frequency of my posts have lengthened over the past few months. First, I would like to offer my apologies for being remiss in that department but I have had some extenuating circumstances.
For over three years I have been closely observing and actively participating in the government's transition to cloud computing. Many of my observations, experiences and insights have been revealed through "Cloud Musings", "Cloud Musings on Forbes" and in my first book "GovCloud: Cloud Computing for the Business of Government". In parallel, I have also been designing strategies, building processes and creating transition tools all designed to reduce the risk and increase the value of cloud transformation projects. The culmination of my personal efforts and those of the entire team here at NJVC have now all been folded into our new brand for cloud computing operational excellence - Cloudcuity™
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The Role of Open Source in Cloud Computing Innovation
Open source software stacks offer a huge amount of customization so the cloud being built does what is expected – and without huge licensing fees.
A recent article on GigaOm.com asks, “How can open-source cloud management tools like Eucalyptus, CloudStack and OpenStack impact the adoption of cloud technology?”
Lowering the barrier to entry
Most organizations adopt cloud to optimize their IT investment, to improve existing services or to support new business and service models, according to the article. In this scenario, open-source lowers the barriers for new organizations to build their private cloud.
Facilitating custom clouds
Many organizations appreciate that open source allows great customization to meet individual requirements. They can build a differentiated cloud service to meet customers needs.
Open-source clouds beget more clouds
Open source also encourages and supports innovation in the development of new cloud products.
User-supplier collaboration makes a better cloud
Collaboration between technology providers and users is a huge advantage in the open source arena. In open source projects, the project roadmap is driven by user needs. That means features will meet real end-user expectations.
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NJVC Announces the Cloudcuity Government Marketplace
NJVC®, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, and Virtustream, Inc., a leading enterprise cloud software company, today announced a new alliance to provide the Virtustream xChange cloud marketplace to government customers. Under the terms of the agreement, NJVC customers will use xChange technology to shop for on-demand compute services from providers that are looking to sell unused capacity, often at a discount. This service will soon be available to the federal government through the new NJVC Cloudcuity Government Marketplace via the NJVC Cloudcuity Management Portal.
NJVC recently announced its Cloudcuity portfolio of services to support mission- and business-focused cloud computing environments, and is now expanding its capabilities through this alliance.
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Cloud Expo Silicon Valley Keynote Speaker Profile: Jonathan Bryce – OpenStack
With Cloud Expo 2012 Silicon Valley (11th Cloud Expo) due to open in four weeks' time at the Santa Clara Convention Center, CA, let's introduce you in greater detail to the distinguished individuals in our incredible Speaker Faculty for the technical program at the West Coast conference...
We have technical and strategy sessions for you dealing with every nook and cranny of Cloud Computing & Big Data, but what of those who are presenting? Who are they, where do they work, what else have they written and/or said about the Cloud and/or Big Data solutions that are transforming the world of Enterprise IT?
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Europe's New Cloud Computing Strategy
Europe's Commissioner for the Digital Agenda has released a communication called "Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe" mapping how the cloud fits into Europe's future.
The paper outlines a series of actions designed to drive European businesses and the public sector into the cloud, according to the HuffingtonPost.com. The goal is to create 2.5 million new European jobs and boost GDP in the single market to 160 billion euros by 2020.
The potential benefits of cloud computing are growing ever more clear, the study says. It promises to accelerate digital commerce and make robust technology solutions available to more users with greater cost efficiencies than ever before. It will increase flexibility and productivity, especially for small and midsize enterprises, and help with the delivery of public services in Europe and around the world.
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Index To Sessions at 11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley
Who is speaking about what next month at the largest cloud computing and big data event in the world? Here's a quick reference guide for those working out which sessions they most want to attend November 5-8 at the Santa Clara Convention Center, Santa Clara, CA...once the doors open in under 3 weeks' time to 11th Cloud Expo | Cloud Expo Silicon Valley - co-located with 2nd International BigDataExpo.
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NJVC® Introduces Cloudcuity™ AppDeployer to Create and Sell Software Apps
NJVC®, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, introduces CloudcuityTM AppDeployer, a new and innovative platform a s a service that allows developers to quickly create and publish software-as-a-service applications for sale in the cloud. Cloudcuity AppDeployer is part of the NJVC Cloudcuity portfolio of cloud offerings.
"Cloudcuity AppDeployer is a game changer for the software development industry," said Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, NJVC Cloudcuity. "Cloudcuity AppDeployer offers an alternative to writing business applications from scratch the old slow and costly way. With Cloudcuity AppDeployer, developers and independent software vendors can start building applications for free, and potentially take enterprise-class software systems to market in weeks instead of years."
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Virtustream a Visionary in Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant
Congratulations to NJVC Cloudcuity partner Virtustream for being positioned as a visionary in the Gartner 2012 IaaS Magic Quadrant!
Magic Quadrants provide a graphical competitive positioning of four types of technology providers, where market growth is high and provider differentiation is distinct:
Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well positioned for tomorrow.
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Industrial-Strength Version of Cloud Ready for Primetime
One of the main reasons companies are reluctant to take advantage of cloud services isn’t because they don’t realize how cloud can transform business practices, but instead it comes down to a matter of risk, according to an article on HuffingtonPost.com.
It seems executives are concerned with the basic issue of security when deciding whether to use cloud computing to handle mission-critical data or workloads.
Caution, of course, is always prudent, especially when it comes to new innovations. But instead of continuing to question whether the cloud can handle mission-critical computing needs, it's time to realize that an industrial-strength cloud – or one that allows organizations to focus on business innovation rather than continuing to worry about the reliability and safety of data – is ready for primetime, according to an article in the Huffington Post.
The right skills, tools and best practices now exist to make cloud computing secure, no matter the corporate demand. In fact, rather than a major inhibitor of adoption, security can be a critical enabler, making it possible for executives to stop losing sleep over data risks and focus on getting business done. The key is understanding that not all clouds are created equal.
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Cloud Computing: SolidFire’s Solid State Cloud Storage Comes Out
SolidFire, which is positioned as having the only solid-state (SSD) storage designed exclusively for cloud service providers, has gone GA with its cost-effective high-performance SF3010 and SF6010 systems as new customers ViaWest, Databarracks, Calligo and CloudSigma roll out services with guaranteed performance and firm SLAs.
SolidFire storage systems combine up to one hundred SF3010 or SF6010 nodes over a 10GB Ethernet network, making the system capable of delivering over 2PB of capacity and five million IOPS. Both products run SolidFire’s Element OS 4.0, and can deliver an effective storage capacity below $4/GB and a price/performance ratio below $1/IOP.
The products are sold direct.
The company says the widgetry will enable SPs to bring tier-one enterprise applications like Oracle, SAP, Hadoop and NoSQL into the cloud for the first time.
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NJVC Cloud Expert Kevin L. Jackson Launches Second Book
NJVC, an information technology (IT) solutions provider headquartered in northern Virginia, is pleased to announce that Kevin L. Jackson, vice president and general manager, cloud services, launched his second book, GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services—published by Government Training, Inc. This handbook, geared to IT professionals and senior decision makers in both the public and private sectors, explains how the cloud computing economic model can provide enhanced mission or business capabilities without commensurate increases in resource expenditures.
“Too often in the past federal IT projects ran over budget, were behind schedule or failed to deliver promised functionality,” Jackson said. “The cloud computing economic model can reduce or eliminate the expectation of operations and sustainment costs. The time required to realize mission or business value also is substantially reduced. Through this model, the impossible can suddenly become not only possible, but often can lead to new, cloud-enabled mission or business capabilities.”
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Adaptive Revs Moab Cloud Suite
Adaptive Computing, the folks that manage the world’s largest computing installations with their Moab self-optimizing cloud management and HPC workload management solutions, have revved their Moab Cloud Suite.
The widgetry now improves the time to cloud deployment by means of out-of-the-box integration with existing infrastructure. It also enables IT to provision different organizational groups more easily by streamlining the tasks required with a new dashboard portal and automated budget allocation.
The 7.2 update integrates with virtualization, management and other cloud platforms, such as VMware Center and HP Cloud Services, via connectors, which is supposed to extend the value of the customer’s existing investments and help them avoid vendor lock-in since the widgetry is extensible or will be.
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NJVC to Spotlight Cloudcuity at Gartner Data Center Conference
NJVC, an information technology solutions provider headquartered in Northern Virginia, announces it will spotlight its Cloudcuity framework for delivering secure and unified cloud management solutions at the Gartner Data Center Conference, December 3 – 6, at The Venetian Resort Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas. The company’s cloud brokerage, cyber analytics, IT enterprise management virtual storefront and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) tools will be featured at booth 511 on the exposition floor. Through demonstrations and one-on-one meetings, attendees will be able to learn about the following Cloudcuity solutions.
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Cloud Computing Aided Resiliency in Wake of Sandy
Hurricane Sandy brought with it a heavy dose of disaster, but utilizing the cloud helped mitigate what could have been even more difficulties faced by businesses.
“Overall, I think cloud does help,” said Stephanie Balaouras, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Tier one cloud and SaaS providers such as Google and Amazon operate their cloud services from multiple data centers and can simply shift workloads to other locations as needed. They are also able to deliver a level of availability that many organizations could never achieve themselves. This includes the resiliency of the data center infrastructure itself to the resources that they invest in high availability and disaster recovery capabilities,” Balaouras said, according to an article on SearchCloudSecurity.com.
“Cloud computing can absolutely help in BC/DR operations,” said Kevin O’Shea, information security practice lead at engineering, construction and technical services firm URS Corporation. “For example, we saw several large webhost providers switch to alternate locations when their primary data centers went offline in New York City. However, businesses must be organized in such a way as to be able to offload critical applications and data to a cloud provider,” he said.
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More Businesses Using Cloud
Companies are continuing to move along with adopting cloud computing even though they haven't completed their formal strategies for using it, according to ZDNet.com.
Analyst IDC found that nearly three-quarters (69 percent) had already started using private cloud technologies, with nearly half (40 percent) saying they were using public and hybrid cloud.
But while some companies are already taking the plunge, 64 percent of UK organizations said they are still "considering" what to do with the cloud (compared to 60 percent in France and 52 percent in Germany).
Most enterprises' cloud strategies aren’t particularly sophisticated, however, and focus on the technology-related drivers for cloud adoption, such as cutting the cost of IT, rather than business-related drivers, such as creating new revenue streams, according to IDC.
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The Government Cloud on KCUR-FM Central Standard with Jabulani Leffall
A big THANK YOU goes out today to KCUR-FM Central Standard host Jabulani Leffall, producer Matthew Long-Middleton,and associate producer Danie Alexander for having me as a guest on this morning's show!
Today the focus was on the US Government's mandate that federal agencies consider cloud computing as they make new IT investments. Along with Joe Tierney from Umzuzu, a Kansas City cloud service company, we discussed cloud computing benefits and challenges. I also had the opportunity to discuss my new book, GovCloud II: Implementation and Cloud Brokerage Services.
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How Will Technology Impact Your Business in 2020?
Human-like technology. The potential downfall of the data center. Hyper-personalization of data. These are some of the responses IT leaders gave to us when we asked, “What will business technology look like in 2020?”
In 2020, tech experts say, computers could learn from experience, much like the human brain. The end of the data center as we know it might arrive. And technology will know the most important things about us to help us become more productive.
In our new ebook, Business Technology 2020, the experts — who represent organizations such as Intel, IBM, Frost and Sullivan, Aberdeen, ATLANTIC-ACM and Current Analysis and more — also cover topics that include the cloud, health care, cognitive computing and the role of the CIO, giving a holistic preview of how technology will impact your business in and leading up to 2020.
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Cloud Computing IT Outsourcing Contracts Triple
Worldwide IT services deals with a cloud computing element have tripled since 2010, according to research from IT outsourcing consultancy ISG.
ISG used its TPI index to analyze IT outsourcing deals and found 2012 will bear 300 IT contracts awarded that involve cloud computing services. This compares with 110 in 2010 and 220 in 2011.
Stanton Jones, emerging technology analyst at ISG, said the move to standardized platform-based services which are difficult to customize is a step-change for the IT services sector.
“Cloud services, especially shared platforms, are a new terrain for providers and clients alike, as they are highly standardized and can’t be easily customized – the antithesis of traditional outsourcing,” said Jones.
He added that the greatest potential for growth and momentum is in Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) – especially for human resources (HR), customer relationship management CRM) and collaboration.
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