Cloud computing will turn the IT-value chain upside down. That will lead to dramatic changes in the way hardware and software is being marketed and managed. These changes will be most profound for IT departments and value added resellers (VARs), but computer manufacturers will feel the heat too. To illustrate this point we can take a high level view of where servers are being deployed. more»

Cloud Marketplaces Help Cut Through Confusing IaaS Pricing

A recent study from 451 Research reveals some interesting facts about the nature and complexity of cloud pricing. In theory, one of the major benefits of using the cloud is that on-demand pricing makes it easy to know exactly how much a company will be spending and avoid large-scale capital expenditure. That's certainly true, but the cloud space has yet to develop into a fully mature market, which means that companies have to tangle with wildly different pricing models and the cost itself can vary between vendors. more»

Identify DDoS Attacks with External Performance Monitoring (Part 2 of 3)

In Part One of this series, we examined internal server, network and infrastructure monitoring applications. Now let's take a look at another way to capture DDoS information: external performance monitoring... Unlike network/infrastructure tools - which are usually installed inside a customer's network - external performance monitoring solutions are typically provided by a third party and leverage monitoring locations from around the world. more»

Why Mid-Sized Businesses That Embrace the Cloud See Improved Revenues

According to a recent study from IBM, mid-sized businesses that embrace cloud technology see nearly double the revenue and increased profit growth compared to their more hesitant peers. The study, which included 800 leading global IT professionals, found that the 20% of organizations that had committed more resources to the cloud were reaping significant cost-cutting advantages and improved levels of efficiency. more»

Making Sense of MIIT's Category of Telecommunications Services

This morning I read a catchy titled article on CircleID "China Closing the Door to New Technologies". I was trying to make sense of what all the fuss is about... So I called up my friends in Ministry of Industry and Information (MIIT) for lunch to find out what's going. more»

China Closing the Door to New Technologies

2013 may be a promising year for global trade in technology with the kick-off of the International Technology Agreement expansion discussions, the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, and as the Trade in Services Agreement gets going. But China calls its own tune, and is now threatening to restrict its market for Internet-enabled technologies through a clever device that could cost its trading partners billions. more»

How to Manage and Secure Big Data

Several developments are coming together in cloud computing that are creating shockwaves throughout society and in the economy. Over the last five years we have seen the debate about cloud computing hotting up. There was the hype around the new development at the same time as warnings regarding security and privacy, and for a while the market seemed subdued about the new development. However the economic reality of cloud computing meant that enterprises and government bureaucracies had little choice but to move ahead with cloud computing... more»

Don't Overlook the Network When Migrating to the Cloud

The success or failure of public cloud services can be measured by whether they deliver high levels of performance, security and reliability that are on par with, or better than, those available within enterprise-owned data centers... IDC forecasts that public cloud IT spending will increase from $40 billion in 2012 to $100 billion in 2016. To provide the performance, security and reliability needed, cloud providers are moving quickly to build a virtualized multi-data center service architecture, or a "data center without walls." more»

High-Performing Cloud Networks Are Critical to M2M Success

Machine to machine (M2M) communications may not be new, but with the rapid deployment of embedded wireless technology in vehicles, appliances and electronics, it is becoming a force for service providers to reckon with as droves of businesses and consumers seek to reap its benefits. By 2020, the GSM Association (GSMA) predicts that there will be 24 billion connected devices worldwide, while Forrester predicts that mobile machine interactions will exceed the number of mobile human interactions more than 30 times. more»

Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Industry Soon to Be Largest Source of Co2 Emissions

Although on the production side the tar sands are one of the biggest sources of CO2 emissions, the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) industry, globally is the fastest growing and soon will be the largest source of CO2 emissions on the consumption side of the equation. ICT emissions are produced indirectly from the coal generated electricity that is used to power all of our devices. Currently it is estimated that ICT consumes around 10% all electrical power growing at about 6-10% per year. more»

A Look at Why Businesses Buy Cloud Services?

If you are a cloud provider, whether you are pure play or an internal IT department, it is very interesting to know who is buying cloud services, and why. In a recent survey by PB7 sponsored by EuroCloud Netherlands and others, a group of Dutch companies was interviewed about their motivations and hesitations around cloud computing. The survey's results were quite a bit more interesting than the usual lot. In this article I have cherry picked a few observations from the larger survey. more»

IP Address Management as a Service on the Cloud

Consumption of software as a service with a usage-based business model has gained incredible popularity in recent years. On the other hand, other cloud services such as infrastructure and platform as a service are just starting to pick up. While compute and storage are by the far the most commonly used cloud infrastructure services, few consider core network services such as IP Address Management (IPAM) as something that could be utilized over the cloud. more»

Cloud Security Hinges on IP Addressing

In the first part of this trilogy, I discussed the importance of automatically provisioned second generation DNS in connection with Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Software Defined Data Centre (SDDC). In the second post, I talked about IP addressing, private enterprise networks, and how DHCP does not meet the requirements of multitenant Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud environments. I will now wrap up this trilogy by putting these two thesis into real-life context. more»

Maslow's Hammer Meets the Software Defined Data Center

In my previous post, I talked about the significance of DNS in connection with the Software Defined Data Center (SDDC) and Software Defined Networking. Although the second generation DNS provisioning model I outlined should have seemed straight-forward enough, in real life it is anything but. In my view, the real-world complications of a seemingly trivial issue are largely related to how the network industry approaches IP addressing. more»

Software Defined Data Centre Needs DNS

During 2012, Software Defined Networking (SDN) seemed to be all the rage. The VMware acquisition of Nicira during the summer doldrums for US $1.26 billion validated the fact that the SDN paradigm is expected to have some serious legs over the coming years. I guess the same applies to virtualized network services in general, although the acquisitions in that space were not quite as high-profile as the ones in SDN. more»