Cloud Computing Archives

Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) Spending to Exceed $72 Billion by 2016

January 3, 2013

According to a Gartner market analysis report on cloud services over 2012-2016, cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) spending will exceed $72 billion, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 42 percent. Cloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) providers offer virtual machines and supporting resources, including networks, firewalls, Internet connection, electrical/facility and other infrastructure needs. Additional managed services might include IT disaster recovery, cloud-based disaster recovery, offsite backup, SAN-to-SAN replication and more managed by certified professionals. A projected 19 percent CAGR in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and cloud-based business application services from 2011-2016 ($13.4-32.2B) provides a healthy market to parallel expected cloud IaaS growth. [Read Global IT Spending, Cloud Computing & Top Growing Industries for a breakdown of each industry by IT spending opportunities]. Gartner reports the IaaS market to have grown from less than one-third of the SaaS market in 2011 to almost equal the size by 2016. Cloud SaaS is a term for any application available via the Internet and hosted on a remote server. SaaS requires vendors to manage the application code and database, while the infrastructure is typically outsourced and managed by a data center operator/hosting provider (cloud IaaS provider). Fronting capital expenses as well as…

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2013 IT Spending Trends – Cloud Computing, Mobile and Big Data Projects

December 20, 2012

As 2012 comes to a close, we look with optimism to 2013 as Gartner predicts that worldwide IT spending will surpass $3.7 trillion dollars next year. According to Peter Sondergaard, senior VP at Gartner, we will see a new trend of spending outside of IT departments. “Every budget is an IT budget,” said Sondergaard during the annual Gartner Symposium/ITexpo. The major influencers are corporate-wide adoptions of cloud computing, big data projects and use of mobile technologies. Sondergaard gives the examples of how sales departments are using cloud-based CRM packages and marketing departments are increasing social media use. This trend will only accelerate as different departments adopt more and more cloud and mobile technologies. With growing technology demands, Gartner analysts also predict that 1.9 million IT jobs will be created in the United States by 2015. Sondergaard believes that only one-third of job positions will be filled due to lack of skilled applicants. So in the upcoming years, CIOs will be tasked with both supporting cloud and mobile technologies while developing their workforce. These predictions solidify the importance for CIOs to look at outside data centers for colocation, managed servers and cloud hosting. If outside department demands accelerate as Gartner thinks,…

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SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) Adoption On The Rise

December 5, 2012

A new Gartner report that focused on the adoption patterns of SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) globally, found its use increasing dramatically both in new as well as established markets in the ten countries around the world that were polled. Much of this adoption is new, Gartner citing that 71% of the organizations polled said that they had been using it less than three years. While this is being found in emerging markets, it is not exclusively so. On-premises applications that were being used are even being replaced with SaaS, and the majority of companies plan to increase their SaaS investments. The report goes on to explain a couple of factors that may have resulted in this SaaS boom: “Initial concerns about security, response time and service availability have diminished for many organizations as SaaS business and computing models have matured and adoption has become more widespread.” Also, it’s projected that SaaS and cloud-based application services will have a 19% Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR). With SaaS becoming a larger component in companies, IaaS (Infrastructure-as-a-Service) cloud hosting is also on the rise. Outsourcing to an IaaS cloud hosting provider can help take the time and costs of your business away from the IT infrastructure and management…

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How the Cloud is Changing the Data Center’s Bad Reputation for Energy Inefficiency

October 16, 2012

A few weeks ago, a New York Time’s article, the first in a series about cloud computing, The Cloud Factories: Power, Pollution and the Internet, (initially titled Data Centers Waste Vast Amounts of Energy, Belying Industry Image), revealed findings from a yearlong study on data centers conducted by the media company and consulting firm McKinsey & Company. Although there is valid reason to turn attention to these big technology hubs with the advance of the information age, I’d like to address a few points (blockquotes below) the article made: User Demand & Data Center Management Most data centers, by design, consume vast amounts of energy in an incongruously wasteful manner…On average, they [data centers] were using only 6 percent to 12 percent of the electricity powering their servers to perform computations. According to VMware.com, “virtualization lets you run multiple virtual machines on a single physical machine, with each virtual machine sharing the resources of that one physical computer across multiple environments. Different virtual machines can run different operating systems and multiple applications on the same physical computer.” This means more can get done with less – resulting in serious energy savings (see Switching to the Cloud below, and the infographic…

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Outsourcing Cloud Computing Security

June 22, 2012

Considering outsourcing security management of your data vs. keeping it in-house? InformationWeek.com and DarkReading.com’s report on Finding the Right Security Outsourcing Balance sheds some light on the benefits and potential pitfalls of outsourcing, as well as the criteria your organization needs to have for any potential providers in order to keep security at a premium. The report recommends asking potential providers questions that speak directly to their level of experience, expertise, employees and workflow: How long has your company been in business, and on average, how long have your current employees been employed? Do you perform background checks on employees, and if so, what type of checks? What kind of security certifications and experience do your employees have? Is there any type of ongoing training to keep employees updated on the latest vulnerabilities and threats, and how to mitigate them? Are your employees trained on how to handle sensitive data to avoid a data breach? Will it be easy to integrate with your company’s services? Can you provide sample reports and documentation of its processes? Who has access to my information? Is data stored, sent or processed offshore? Other well-known advantages of outsourcing include no capital investments; monthly or annual…

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Evaluating Cloud Hosting Providers with the FedRAMP

June 5, 2012

While the FedRAMP (Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program) is intended for government entities and their criteria and processes for assessing and monitoring cloud products/services, it’s still a good security standard model that many organizations could follow to minimize security risks in the cloud. The most applicable standards used for evaluating cloud hosting providers includes: Security Assessment Documenting security controls is the first step that any organization should require of their cloud provider – this includes: Document the controls implemented in the cloud and the cloud environment. Policies around user behavior – with details around use and access. An IT contingency plan – a disaster recovery plan that defines how the organization intends to recover information system services and manage disruptions. Configuration management plan – a plan describing how changes to the system are managed and tracked. Incident response plan – similar to breach notification clauses that should be included in any business associate agreement, for healthcare organizations concerned with HIPAA, an incident response plan outlines how incidents are detected, reported, escalated, handled and remediated. Any authentication that will be used in the cloud, including a required authentication level – two-factor authentication is one method that may be easily employed…

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Chilly Climates Ideal for Data Center Locations

May 29, 2012

A recent article in the NYTimes.com reports on the draw of chilly nordic countries and their ideal climate for data centers – Facebook is building its first international data center in Lulea, Sweden, a small coastal city tucked up on a peninsula near the Gulf of Bothnia. Why is this ideal for a cloud computing hub? Climate, climate, climate. The city’s subarctic climate typically does not exceed an average of 52 degrees Fahrenheit over the entire year, and six months out of the year, its average climate stays steadily below 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Google’s new facility in Hamina, Finland, a former paper mill, uses the naturally cold seawater to provide cooling by means of a system that pumps the water to the facility, transfers data center heat through a heat exchanger, and then returns the water to the gulf. They have a great video explaining the entire process. What does this mean for cloud data centers? With power expenses accounting for 70-80 percent of the total costs of running a data center, it’s logical that data center operators want to keep their cooling costs down. Owning and operating a data center located in a region with natural cooling for the…

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2012 Cloud Computing: Private Clouds Dominate

April 24, 2012

Over 34 percent of IT budgets are spent on cloud computing solutions, according to a recent article by Forbes.com and the IDG Enterprise Cloud Computing study conducted in January 2012. More specifically, the majority of the budgets are allocated for private cloud hosting solutions, at 24 percent, as deduced from the survey of 1,682 IT and business executives. When it came to what type of cloud activity the respondents expected to conduct over the next five years, 27 percent planned to perform the majority of their IT operations in the cloud. Thirty-five percent stated only a few selected IT operations would be performed in the cloud, while 21 percent plan to limit their cloud activity to private clouds. Additionally, 63 percent agree or strongly agree there will be long-term cost savings realized after adopting the cloud, despite higher short-term costs for implementation. Again, security comes into play when it comes to hurdles to adopting the cloud (70 percent). Access to information is next at 40 percent, while concerns about information governance is third at 37 percent. What can help ease security concerns for companies looking to outsource their private cloud? Check their audit history for dates and scope of compliance…

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What to Look for in a Cloud Hosting Provider

April 5, 2012

A recent study by KPMG on federal cloud adoption reveals main drivers, demotivators and tips for what to look for in a cloud hosting provider for both private and the public sector. The study reported findings on governments, citizens, cloud service providers and IT leaders. Security is a major concern when it comes to the cloud, but certification could help – while 47 percent of government respondents cite security as their most significant concern, nearly 80 percent claimed they would be more confident if cloud services were certified by a government entity. Cost is the main driver for both government and the private sector to move to the cloud, with 73% and 75% respectively claiming it was necessary to realize cost reductions and savings in order to move to a cloud environment. But how significant would those savings need to be in order to make the transition? At 43%, the private sector only needs 1-10% reduction in IT or non-IT costs to switch over, while the public sector appears to be confused, with 29% claiming they didn’t know what percent reduction in budgetary costs they needed in order to make a cloud decision. In addition to cost, technical drivers, such…

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Cloud Computing in 2012: Ready for Enterprise?

March 30, 2012

It’s no surprise that computing, applications, and data storage have been creeping ever so more and more into the idea of “the cloud.” Cloud computing is becoming more and more prevalent in everyday computing and has no signs of slowing down from a personal perspective, and soon to be from an enterprise perspective. From a personal perspective, I can say that cloud computing is definitely the future and is here to stay. I can remember a few years ago when I would use my school’s email address and attach papers and homework to emails and send them to myself in order to print later that day, using it as a means to access my data at another computer. That’s the reason why the cloud is popular among personal users. Having that freedom to access data in multiple locations is the new wave of computing and is slowly being enveloped by today’s society. We are seeing the cloud being used in everyday personal use more and more as Apple’s iCloud, Windows SkyDrive and Dropbox become increasingly integrated into some of our favorite websites and programs. From a enterprise perspective however, we have seen, for quite some time, that many believe the…

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