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This Week in Cloud, May 12, 2011: Red Hat IaaS & PaaS play, Microsoft plays keep-away with $8.5 billion Skype acquisition, Which cloud model delivers biggest bang for the buck. And more…
Feature article
Pragmatic Cloud: Private Cloud Delivers No Value (Part 1)
By George Watt, CA Technologies
"Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing" - Oscar Wilde
As a private cloud provider, I dealt with widespread perceptions that private clouds (and internal IT organizations...) are of no value to the business. Recent conversations confirm I am not alone. Though this was partly the result of widely held perceptions (and realities) of IT becoming the greatest point of latency in business transformation, some of which I discussed in a previous article, there were also other forces at work. Read the full article to learn about reconcilable differences, two critical myths to overcome and more.
Cloud News
- At Red Hat Summit this week, Red Hat introduced CloudForms, a platform for creating and managing private and hybrid IaaS clouds and OpenShift, a PaaS offering for developers who build on open source. Read more in this eWeek article. In this InformationWeek article, Charles Babcock says that these announcements are an improvement over earlier cloud offerings from RedHat that required deep open source expertise or a Red Hat consulting contract. OpenShift uses tools familiar to many open source developers and represents an alternative to platforms from Microsoft and VMware.
- Why Microsoft’s $8.5 billion purchase of Skype (a very expensive game of ‘keep away’ from players like Google, Cisco, and Avaya) makes sense: read what Larry Dignan has to say in this ZDNet article. This IBTimes article discusses the benefits to both Microsoft and Skype of the acquisition.
- After four straight quarters of disappointing earnings, Cisco is making changes to overhaul a management structure that investors and former employees say slowed decisions, fueled market-share losses and led to an exodus of senior executives. Read more in this Bloomberg article.
- On the consumer side of cloud, the big news this week was Google launching Google Music Beta, which allows users to upload up to 20,000 songs and stream them anywhere there is an Internet connection. Read more in this Tech News Daily article.
Cloud Views
- In this two-part eCommerceTimes article, Dick Benton explores the different cloud models and explores which model delivers the biggest bang for the buck. Part 1 covers internal and external IaaS. Part 2 covers PaaS and SaaS
- In this audio interview on Cloud Commons, Dr. Chris Harding with the Open Group discusses recent research he conducted regarding the business impact of the cloud. Find out how IT professionals with purchasing power view the cloud and what factors influence their purchasing decisions.
- This Cloud Commons article chronicles the largest security breaches in the last few years from Google and Sony to the European Carbon Trading Market and Stuxnet.
- This Network World article covers 3 steps to ensure SaaS implementations deliver the expected benefits: formally assess the ROI of SaaS applications up-front, continually measure usage and value, and plan an exit strategy. This The Register article covers some of the key considerations in calculating cloud ROI.
- Why Sony’s PSN problem won’t take down cloud computing – read David Linthicum’s perspective in this InfoWorld article.
MSP Corner
- Wired Magazine co-founder Kevin Kelly recently outlined six technology industry trends that are gaining momentum. This MSP Mentor article analyzes what these trends mean for managed services providers.
- Following a recent hard drive failure, Joe Panettieri has some advice to share on selling cloud SMB online backup and disaster recovery services vs. consumer cloud backup services. One key takeaway for MSPs competing with commodity backup and restore services: Backup is important but restore times are even more important.
- NTT Communications has purchased a 70 percent stake in IT consulting and managed services provider Frontline Systems. Read more in this ARN article.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- All About the Cloud: May 23 – May 26, San Francisco
- TMForum Management World: May 23 – 26, Dublin, Ireland
- Forrester’s IT Forum, May 25 – 27, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Cloud Expo East, June 6-9, New York City
- The Business of Cloud Computing: June 13 – 15, San Diego, California
- Hosting and Cloud Transformation Summit : June 28 – 29, London
