Register now!
Get weekly insight from the experts at Cloud Commons.
Special Offer
Subscribe now for a chance to win a $500 Apple gift certificate*†
This Week in Cloud, June 30, 2011: Office 365--uphill battle? Perspectives from GigaOm Structure, Cloud Index Fund, What we can learn from the 10 worst cloud outages. And more…
Cloud News
- Microsoft released Office 365, the cloud-based extension to its Office franchise, further intensifying its competition with Google. In this eWeek article, several analysts weigh in on the uphill battle Microsoft is facing. In this blog, Google is asking followers to contribute to a list of 365 reasons why Google Apps is a better choice.
- Orange Business Services will be offering hosted collaboration services based on Cisco’s Hosted Collaboration Suite. Orange’s Business Together as a Service offering includes telephony, unified messaging, instant messaging, audio, web and video conferencing, mobile device support and a contact center option, according to this eWeek article.
- In this The H Open article, Cisco’s CTO Lew Tucker talks about his company’s role in the OpenStack open source cloud initiative and its plans to add network services to the OpenStack model.
- In this Network World article, Bernard Golden shares his perspective gained from attending two recent cloud conferences: ‘The Business of Cloud Computing’ by Opal Events and the GigaOm Structure conference. He shares comments from IT executives who presented at the events, passes along some staggering stats from AWS, and discusses sessions on DevOps, PaaS, and the role of APIs.
- More from GigaOm Structure: This GigaOm blog summarizes the discussion from a panel at on cloud mergers and acquisitions with participants from IBM, SAP, CA Technologies, VMware and EngineYard. This DataCenterKnowledge article profiles the hot cloud start-ups that competed in the Launchpad competition, namely: dotCloud, Acunu, BeyondCore, Big Switch Networks, Cloudability, Cloud Floor, Genie DB, PHP Fog, Real-Status, vCider and Zerto.
- The only clouds we’ll see next week will be from all the Fourth of July fireworks: In honor of the U.S. holiday, This Week in Cloud will not publish an edition next week. We’ll return to our normal schedule the following week
Feature article
Costing out the Cloud
By Doug Bartholomew, Smart Enterprise Exchange
Understanding the economics of cloud computing is sort of like going for a swim at a hidden lake — the water looks inviting, but you'd be smart to carefully check the depth before taking the plunge.
In fact, checking the waters in the wilderness may be a whole lot easier than costing out the cloud. "It's the due diligence that is often lacking," when businesses consider cloud services, explains Ravi Rajagopal, Vice President for Cloud Strategy at CA Technologies and an adjunct professor at New York University. "CIOs need to perform a detailed return-on-investment analysis," before, not after, they've made investments. Read the full article.
Cloud Views
- This Computerworld article describes the 10 worst cloud outages and, more importantly, what can be learned from them. Yes, the April downtime at Amazon Web Services made the list, but so do many others including Microsoft’s Sidekick, several email services, Rackspace, and Intuit.
- A new exchange traded fund is offering investors the ability to invest in an index of public companies in the cloud computing space. The First Trust ISE Cloud Computing Index Fund tracks 40 stocks. The largest holdings are currently with Teradata, Blackboard, Amazon, TIBCO, RightNow and Aruba Networks, according to this DataCenterKnowledge article.
- While momentum around SaaS continues to build, this TechTarget article describes some of the pitfalls involved. Author Alex Barrett describes the concerns IT managers have, the characteristics that make some apps not quite as “SaaSy” as others, and explains why Opscode was forced to launch an on-premise companion to its Hosted Chef configuration management SaaS offering.
- This ITBusinessNet article offers 5 tips for building and deploying cloud-based apps: Design apps for performance and scalability, build upon existing assets, determine the right amount of isolation and sharing of assets, don’t ignore taxonomy and governance procedures, and allay security concerns before committing to a vendor.
- Healthcare sector embracing the cloud: one-third of healthcare organizations are already implementing cloud-based systems. They expect to spend 21% of their budgets on cloud computing over the next two years. For more detail, read this BusinessComputingWorld article.
MSP Corner
- Five MSPs (and editors from MSP Mentor) weigh in on the significance of Microsoft Office 365 for MSPs in this article.
- Squiz, which offers a web engagement suite built on open-source technologies, has launched a private cloud to support customers who want a fully managed and supported environment. They are offering the Squiz WEB suite as a SaaS offering built on top of the CA AppLogic cloud platform. Customers can also publish their websites and web applications within the hosted environment. Read this CMSwire article for more.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- IEEE Cloud 2011: July 4 – 9, Washington DC
- VMworld 2011: August 29 – September 1, Las Vegas
