I am excited to write my first blog on the Connectloud website. My co-bloggers Habib and Zeeshan have written extensively on public vs. private clouds. As the vice-president of business development, I find a large piece of Connectloud’s innovation embedded in our use of open-source software.
At first blush, open-source technology seems to have no place in the world, much less the cloud. Who builds open source? Who tests it to see if it’s working? What about security?
But a closer look reveals that, especially in the world of cloud management platforms, open source makes a lot of sense.
For one thing, open source is free for anyone to use. Forget pricey licensing fees and going to the altar with proprietary vendors’ consultants. On the whole, open source provides substantial price savings, which in turn frees up capital for other projects within an IT organization.
Another advantage of using an open source cloud platform is flexibility. With proprietary systems, for instance, if you feel a given feature is missing, you must wait for the vendor to build it. In open source, you can use the underlying source code to create it yourself. Or you can modify open code to improve what somebody else has already created. Continue Reading…
As we explored in our previous blog entry, there are a number of reasons a public clouds might not be the best fit for enterprise computing, from a lack of control over data to concerns over security.
That leads many companies to explore private clouds when they want to virtualize machines – the term given to the practice of using software programs to emulate the functionality of hardware systems.
Private clouds eliminate fears over security and allow companies to provision virtual servers as they are needed. They also allow a dramatic reduction in the space and energy required for enterprise computing – all without losing IT control.
There are multiple options for companies looking to set up their own clouds. Each has its own set of limitations that must be considered. Continue Reading…
There are three flavors of cloud computing, a buzzword that, generally speaking, refers to making software, number-crunching ability and storage technology available through servers that are located off-site from where the user is.
Any of the three can be – and are – used today by enterprises to conduct their business. However, not all these ‘flavors’ are equal in terms of security and resilience, and it’s important that organizations know the difference.
The Trouble with Public Clouds
Probably the best-known type is what’s known as the “public cloud.”
In this form, technology services are made available to the general public via the Internet. Gmail, Dropbox and Office 365, to mention some examples, are on public clouds. In some cases, the service is free. In others, the customer pays the cloud provider to make a service available. In both cases, it’s the cloud company’s job to juggle which servers are used when, what security measures are in place, and so on, subject to any service-level agreement.
The trouble with using a public cloud is that your business essentially has to trust the provider to secure the network properly. If something goes haywire, the company can lose control over its data. Continue Reading…
As we’ve seen, the roots of cloud computing extend back to the 1950s, when the operators of large mainframe computers shared capacity on the machines with multiple work stations.
But it’s only been in the past decade or so that the information technology world has begun to turn en masse to the cloud, a buzzword for making software, number-crunching ability and storage technology available through servers located offsite from the user’s physical desktop computer.
The reason more companies are turning to the cloud for their IT is that it brings multiple benefits, some well-publicized, some not. Continue Reading…
I am excited to write my first blog on the Connectloud website. My co-bloggers Habib and Zeeshan have written extensively on public vs. private clouds. As the vice-president of business development, I find a large piece of Connectloud’s innovation embedded in our use of open-source software.
