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This Week in Cloud, January 20, 2011: Rackspace and Amazon wars heat up, what Muglia’s departure means to Microsoft, surprises in the Gartner Magic Quadrant IaaS Report. And More…

Feature Article

Audits and Certificates Won’t Erase Cloud Security Concerns

By Gregor Petri, CA Technologies

In every cloud survey, security consistently comes out as an inhibitor to cloud adoption. Even though this has been the case for several years, many feel that it is a temporary barrier which will be resolved once cloud offerings get more secure, mature, certified, and thus accepted. But is this indeed the case or do we need another approach to overcome this barrier? Read the full article.

Cloud News

  • Rackspace & AWS wars heat up: Following the heels of Amazon Web Services launching a Platinum cloud support package aimed at the enterprise (as reported in this CRN article), Rackspace counters that AWS still falls short of its own “fanatical support.” Rackspace also announced it is partnering with Akamai to speed application performance on its clouds (read this Channel Register article for details.) A Cloud Performance Benchmark Series paper on Cloud Commons compares the cost and performance of Amazon EC2 and Rackspace.
  • Meraki announced a series of cloud-managed routers that can be deployed in a data center and managed remotely via a web browser without requiring a local network monitoring solution, according to this PCMag article.
  • Salesforce.com has acquired Dimdim, a provider of real-time communication capabilities including presence, messaging and screen sharing, according to this TMCnet article.
  • Oasis has formed a new committee to define ways in which ‘privacy by design’ can be applied to applications, in particular in cloud computing environments. This v3 article providers more details.
  • Following the ouster of long-time Microsoft senior exec Bob Muglia, InformationWeek’s Bob Evans postulates that the decision may signal a move to emulate the enterprise-stack approaches being taken by IBM and Oracle. Also in Information Week, Bob Muglia shares his thoughts on why Microsoft needs a broader cloud strategy.

Cloud Views

  • This Connected Planet blog by Susana Schwartz cites some surprises in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service and Web Hosting. Verizon and AT&T were identified as leaders, but Amazon was called visionary but unproven because of its lack of managed services and standards for collocation and non-virtualized servers. The topic also kicked off quite a bit of discussion with the author, Gartner analyst Lydia Leong (@cloudpundit on Twitter) about the meaning, terminology, and transparency surrounding Gartner’s report. Leong then posted this blog saying that Gartner is NOT dissing Amazon’s cloud.
  • In this blog, Forrester Research analyst James Staten cautions that, whereas many enterprises are planning to build private clouds in order to provide an internal alternative to public cloud solutions, many organizations aren’t investing in the processes that are necessary for success. In this Cloud Commons webcast, Staten provides guidelines for success with private clouds.
  • This CIO article analyzes hiring trends for jobs focused on cloud computing and virtualization.
  • This Channel Insider article reports on the results of an IBM survey into investment priorities of midmarket companies (defined as companies with 100-1,000 employees.) Two-thirds said they are planning to implement or currently implementing cloud-based solutions.
  • This CIO Insight article includes opinions from Gartner, the Washington Post and the Guardian Life Insurance Company about the best and worst about cloud computing today and what they expect from vendors in the next five years.

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Cloud Commons is an independent online community of IT professionals, analysts, technology providers, and industry experts. Members can ask questions, learn from experts, and find the latest cloud-related news. Cloud Commons offers a forum to contribute and discuss best practices and successes, as well as research vendor solutions. Sponsored by CA Technologies, Cloud Commons has been growing steadily since its launch in May of 2010.

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