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This Week in Cloud, July 28, 2011: Cloud can save billions in energy costs, CA & cloud choice, Cloud2 Commission recommendations, GSA completes cloud email migration. And more…
Cloud News
- Energy savings & cloud: The Carbon Disclosure Project released a report that found that cloud computing may save large companies $12.3 billion a year in energy costs by 2020, also avoiding 85.7 million metric tons of carbon emissions. Read more about the findings in this GreenBiz article. Another report by WSP Environment & Energy and Salesforce.com found that companies could realize per-transaction emission reductions of 95 percent on average by moving to the cloud. In this GigaOm blog, Jonathan Koomey explores four reasons why cloud computing is generally far more energy efficient than using in-house data centers.
- CA Technologies issued a number of new and enhanced cloud management offerings to help address the issue of ‘cloud choice’ – that is, to help companies decide if and when to move an application to the cloud. CA supports a lifecycle approach to cloud deployment that covers planning, design, delivery, security, and assurance. This CIO.com article describes the updates CA made to the products and cloud portfolio for enterprises and service providers.
- The General Services Administration (the first federal agency to embrace the cloud) has completed the process of migrating its more than 17,000 employees to Google Apps for Government for cloud-based email and collaboration, according to this InformationWeek article. Unisys, which performed the migration in six months, said the agency should see a 50% cost savings over the next 5 years.
- Bob Muglia, former president of Microsoft’s Software and Tools Business, is moving to Juniper Networks to help drive their cloud strategy. Read this Computerworld article for industry reaction and behind-the-scenes speculation.
- Piston Cloud Computing CEO Josh McKenty (who was also one of the founders of OpenStack) describes how the company will spend its recent infusion of $4.5 million of venture capital in this Information Week article. He says that Piston will adhere to the OpenStack open source core, but will focus on adding enterprise performance and security.
- Rackspace outlines its plans to migrate all of its cloud services over to an OpenStack-based infrastructure in this Network World article.
Feature article
Setting the stage for cloud adoption: Cloud2 Commission Unveils Recommendations
By Adam Famularo, CA Technologies
In April, I was pleased to accept a role as one of the commissioners on the TechAmerica Foundation's CLOUD2 Commission, whose mandate was to provide the Obama Administration with recommendations for how government could better deploy cloud computing, and for public policies that will help drive innovation in the cloud and spur economic growth.
Today the CLOUD2 Commission released its recommendations, which are focused on four broad themes that are critical enablers of the cloud: building trust into cloud solutions, fostering transparency, enabling transformation through changes in federal acquisition and budgeting, and addressing data sovereignty and privacy. Read the full article.
Cloud Views
- This New York Times article describes the movement toward cloud amongst European companies, and profiles how British courier Shutl was able to overcome restrictive data privacy laws to run a business exclusively in the cloud.
- How to choose a cloud storage provider: this Information Week series will cover the criteria you should keep in mind when choosing a cloud storage provider, namely security, availability and flexibility. The first article in this series focuses on the topic of security.
- This Cloud Commons article identifies 8 steps to build an agile business leveraging the cloud.
- Government & the cloud: Valeh Nazemoff of Acolyst shares her views on applications the government will move to the cloud and some of the issues and implications with regard to governance risk and compliance, in this Q&A on Cloud Commons.
MSP Corner
- This Business2Community article describes the increasing trend of channel partners morphing into managed service providers and the impact this will have on vendors.
- In this MSP Mentor article, Joe Panettieri explores whether Cisco, in spite of the announced 6500 job cuts, will be able to maintain its focus on MSPs and cloud services providers.
- En Pointe Technologies, a VAR of computer systems, will be among the first companies to offer a unified communications service based on Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Service, and may beat Verizon and AT&T to market, according to this Information Week article. The article describes EnPointe’s planned service offering and includes some commentary on why this is an attractive market for VARs.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- VMworld 2011: August 29 – September 1, Las Vegas
- Hosting & Cloud Transformation Summit: September 25 – 27, Las Vegas
- MSPWorld: September 13 – 15, Austin, Texas
