Why hackers and spooks want our heads in the cloud
by John Harris, Guardian, guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 April 2011 20.00 BST
Our unthinking embrace of these giant data centres is throttling the giddy anti-authoritarian computing dream
Imagine this. A notorious multinational is on the lookout for new business. For the sake of argument, let’s imagine it’s Lockheed Martin, the defence, security, and “advanced technology” corporation that has lately been seeing to the census. From somewhere in their R&D division comes an idea: “personal lifestyle security services” for millions across the planet. The wheeze is simple enough: sign up and hand them your personal correspondence, financial records, bank details, ID documents, and more. They’ll have all your stuff, and you’ll have a unique password whenever you want a look. And just think: more clutter shunted out of your life, leaving you to glide through the minimalist bliss of 21st century living.
Read MoreIron Mountain Abandons the Cloud
Iron Mountain abandons the cloud
Company withdraws its low-cost public cloud offerings to focus on more specialized services.
By Dan Hatch, 12 Apr 2011 at 15:22
Cloud computing
When people everywhere are talking-up the benefits of the cloud, it seems almost bizarre to learn one company is abandoning some of its cloud storage services.
It has been reported this week Iron Mountain Digital, a company which has been in the cloud for little more than a year, is planning to completely phase out its online storage business by 2013.
No other major cloud storage player has ever pulled-out of the sector.
But it’s not a complete retreat. Iron Mountain has reportedly notified its customers it is only withdrawing its Virtual File Store and Archive Service Platform commodity cloud storage solutions.
That means the company isn’t competing with the massive players like Amazon and Google for a share of the low-cost public cloud storage market, and instead allows it to focus on more specialised services.
Iron Mountain is a provider of records management and storage, including paper documents, scanning and digitizing services, shredding and media destruction and intellectual property management, among other services.
The company even stores some of the world’s most valuable historical artifacts and cultural treasures.
For further coverage of cloud computing visit our sister site Cloud Pro
Read More here: http://www.itpro.co.uk/632746/iron-mountain-abandons-the-cloud
Compliments of FileMan research
Read MoreInfoboom post that means a great deal to the CRC Industry
• Group: Midsize Business Leaders
• Subject: New on Infoboom: Inside the Mind of the Smart Consumer
IBM asked 30,624 consumers in 13 countries what factors are influencing them and found that consumer expectations are growing in light of the increasing amount of information suppliers are collecting about them. “You have to…really know them,” the report says. Read our summary and download the entire report. http://bit.ly/LI031611a
Also, watch this video about commerce and the connected customer. It explains in simple drawings and narration how businesses need to serve their customers’ needs at every turn. http://bit.ly/LI031611b
The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) expects to save 40% over the next five years by switching its financial management application to a cloud computing vendor. http://bit.ly/LI031611c
Bernard Golden came away from the CloudConnect conference astonished by how quickly the cloud is becoming pervasive in mainstream businesses. http://bit.ly/LI031611d
Forrester Research has some advice on how to help re-center IT design on the business and prevent the growth of silos that seem to naturally develop in large organizations. http://bit.ly/LI031611e
IBM is delivering two turnkey appliances that help organizations turn the focus from away from technology and toward what really matters: minimizing interruptions of core business processes and simplifying the implementation of business strategies. http://bit.ly/LI031611f
Marist College’s Roger Norton watched the Watson Jeopardy! Challenge says we have “witnessed a breakthrough in analytics and the way that Big Data can be extracted, transformed and managed.” That’s going to be a big opportunity for college students. http://bit.ly/LI031611g
A series of eight short videos produced by IBM shows how the cloud is optimizing operations and making what was once impossible affordable. http://bit.ly/LI031611h
What’s the best cloud computing platform for a startup? http://bit.ly/LI031611i
Which areas of the business benefit most from social media? http://bit.ly/LI031611j
How secure is cloud computing compared to on-premise computing? http://bit.ly/LI031611k
Our weekly Twitters is about PhotoFunia.com. Lots of websites will let you insert your face into photos of strange and exotic scenes, but this one automatically identifies the face in a photo and integrates it with the rest of the image in ways that really make it look like you were there. http://bit.ly/LI031611a
Posted By Paul Gillin
Compliments of FileMan Research
Read MoreFree eBook — [ A Security Practitioner’s Guide to the Cloud ] PDF Version
Free eBook — [ A Security Practitioner’s Guide to the Cloud ] PDF Version
Best Practices
Linkedin Groups Midsize Business Leaders Free eBook — [ A Security Practitioner’s Guide to the Cloud ] PDF Version Started by Paul Hayes Free Download: http://goo.gl/UkR5f By Paul Hayes
Read More: http://goo.gl/UkR5
Compliments of FileMan Research
Read MorePART I – Hyperbole in the cloud: Welcome to the Wild, Wild West
July 9th, 2010 // Cloud Computing, Software as a Service // Justin Alexander
The state of the cloud
It’s hard to find a technology magazine, blog or portal today that doesn’t contain some article or advertisement for cloud computing. It’s even on the evening news!
All of this excitement is for good reason. The migration of computing capacity from private corporate networks to shared public clouds represents a huge opportunity to make IT departments more responsive to the businesses they support. New technology solutions can be deployed more quickly, additional capacity can be added to existing systems “Just in Time” (JIT), and unneeded capacity can be removed before the next billing cycle begins.
The ability of cloud hosting providers to meet demand for heterogeneous technology solutions using a generic pool of computing cycles also promises to dramatically lower costs for companies of all sizes. Computing capacity appears to be nearly unlimited, and customers only pay for the resources that they use.
The analysts certainly agree. In a recent study, Gartner predicted that cloud computing would grow from $58.6 billion in revenue in 2009 to $63.8 billion in 2010. By 2014, the global cloud computing market is expected to be an impressive $148.8 billion. That represents an annual growth rate of more than 16%.
A modern land grab
But the cloud is not limited to silver linings. In fact, there’s a lot of vapor up there. This is an immature market that has just completed its second wave of incubation. There are no clear leaders yet. Literally thousands of startups and established vendors are vying for their piece of the pie. Commonly accepted standards, operating procedures and legal precedents don’t exist. We’re effectively witnessing a virtual land grab, not unlike the Western expansion experienced in the 19th Century.
A point of convergence
It’s easy to be skeptical about such glowing predictions. Indeed, no one – not even Gartner, can reliably predict the future. However, I personally believe that the cloud computing services trend is real. The most compelling evidence at my disposal is the observation that cloud computing isn’t a single product or even a specific service. Rather, it the convergence of several technical and business trends that, when combined, create the basis for a new generation of computing solutions that solve real-world problems. In no particular order, these trends are:
Virtualization
Simply put, the cloud would not exist without virtualization because it allows the cloud to scale efficiently. Virtualization is what transforms a server from a single-tenant platform dedicated to a single purpose into a generic set of computer cycles that can be consumed by anyone to accomplish anything.
Gartner predicts that 60 percent of server workloads will be virtualized with an average density of 10 servers per physical server by 2013. That equates to 5,708 new virtual machines being created each and every hour of every day. They also predict that this workload will be achieved using only 10 percent of the total number of physical servers sold within the same timeframe. In other words, 60 percent of the world’s computations will be accomplished using only 10% of the physical server capacity.
In my next blog post, I’ll share more trends that are leading to new computing solutions.
Compliments of FileMan Research
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