It’s hard to find much consensus on any topic among tech industry analysts, but there’s one thing they all seem to agree on: Cloud computing will be a big, big deal this year.
Cloud stopped being a new phenomenon years ago. But for various reasons related to cost, security and management difficulty, the enterprise cloud market has perhaps been slow to warm up. That’s becoming less true with the emergence of cloud management providers who are knocking down the barriers to entry for companies of all sizes.
As Forrester analysts put it in their report last month, “cloud computing is no longer a ‘future’ but a ‘now.’” Continue Reading…
Every day, new information emerges that shows ever-broader electronic eavesdropping by the U.S. government on its own citizens and those of other countries.
The activities are even starting to raise the attention of the courts. And with every revelation of domestic and foreign spying by the likes of the National Security Agency, it gets harder for companies to feel safe storing and moving sensitive data in a public cloud.
The news broke in June 2013, with revelations that the NSA, through an initiative called PRISM, was accessing private communications of people who had used popular Internet services from nine companies, including Microsoft, Yahoo, Google and Facebook.
While many details have yet to come to light, PRISM essentially gives the government access to emails and stored data on certain foreign targets operating outside the United States. Continue Reading…
So far, we’ve seen that there are three types of cloud services. The public cloud makes services like email available via the Internet, with the customer paying the cloud provider to make its offerings available. The opposite of that approach is the private cloud, where the customer builds his own cloud in-house. And then there are hybrid clouds, which combine the public and private approaches.
One reason people jump to public cloud options, in particular, is because of the promise of cost savings. Rather than buying expensive servers, routers and other machines, you essentially rent time on those devices, sharing resources with other customers and paying just for what you use, rather than the entire machines.
If you find your company succumbing to that sales pitch, watch your wallet.
More than one enterprise has fallen victim to unexpected costs that were – how shall we put this nicely? – not exactlyadvertised by the leading public cloud provider.
Unfortunately, some customers have found the public cloud’s cost is greater than they expected when they signed on with large public cloud companies. The bills have driven some companies out of business. Continue Reading…
It’s hard to find much consensus on any topic among tech industry analysts, but there’s one thing they all seem to agree on: Cloud computing will be a big, big deal this year.
