Featured on Cloud Commons
IT Procurement Best Practice - Nine Contractual Terms to Reduce Risk in Cloud Contracts
When it comes to cloud contract negotiations and SLAs, certain terms can often be unclear or overlooked. This Gartner report (available free of charge on Cloud Commons) defines the nine key terms that you should be aware of to help your organization recover damages and help prevent against potential threats that could have a serious impact on your business.
Cloud News
- IBM made a number of cloud announcements, including introducing IBM SmartCloud Application Services, a PaaS offering that it claims can reduce the time needed for routine management tasks. Read more in this PC World article. IBM also is enabling partners to white-label its public and private cloud offerings, as described in this Redmond Channel Partner article. IBM also announced the acquisition of Platform Computing, a software company focused on grid management, to bolster its private-cloud and big-data management efforts. Read this ZDNet article for more.
- At its VMworld user conference in Denmark, VMware made a number of cloud-related announcements, which are summarized in this Information Age article. VMware launched the IT Business Management Suite 5.0, which displays IT management metrics such as financial indicators, service level agreements and systems performance indicators to help CIOs manage their IT operations. They also upgraded vCenter Operations to include new dashboards for health, efficiency and risk exposure, and unveiled the vFabric Application Management Suite to let software developers and admins see key operational metrics of a given application.
- Symantec has introduced new security features to its cloud user authentication service, Symantec VIP. The new features, called VIP Intelligent Authentication, uses system fingerprinting, user behavior monitoring and geo-location access monitoring to provide authentication. Read more in this CBR Online article.
- Spending on public cloud services will grow five times faster than overall IT enterprise expenditures, according to Gartner research cited in this Information Management article. In this IT Business Edge article titled ‘Goodbye to the Small Data Center?’, Arthur Cole analyzes data from Gartner about the growth of hardware sales through at least 2015, which will largely be driven by increasingly large deployments.
- Cloud OS startup Nimbula announced support for VMware Cloud Foundry and VMware vSphere within Nimbula Director, according to this Data Center Knowledge article.
Feature article
The Dirty Little Secret of Cloud Computing
By Andi Mann
Without question, there is a great deal of buzz about public cloud computing and what it means for the future of IT. Right now, IDC estimates that over the next five years as spending on public IT cloud services expands at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 27.6%, from $21.5 billion in 2010 it will reach $72.9 billion in 2015.
So what exactly belongs in – and out of - the public cloud is much more than just an academic question - it is a fundamental and high-value business decision. Read the full article.
Cloud Views
- As PaaS begins to gain traction in the marketplace, Mike Jones with OutSystems asks whether cloud cannibalism is afoot. Is PaaS killing SaaS? Read this GigaOm blog to find out.
- Cisco’s James Urquhart writes about new network models that are emerging with cloud computing in this CNET blog.
- This Search Cloud Computing article covers what to look for when planning to leverage an external cloud service provider for test and dev environments.
MSP Corner
- N-able Backup Manager has been updated to better support virtualized environments. MSPs can now do backups at the host level and do migrations to on-premise and off-premise virtual machines with minimal risk, according to this MSP Mentor article.
- Managed services firm All Covered added cloud servers to its mix of outsourced IT services, according to this CRN article.
Upcoming Cloud Events
- CloudExpo: November 7 – 10, Santa Clara, California
- CA World: November 13 – 16, Las Vegas, Nevada
- Gartner Data Center Conference: December 5 – 8, Las Vegas, NC
- Up 2011 Cloud Computing Conference: December 5 – 9, Mountain View, CA