From the Editor

The Future of Cloud Computing: Industry Predictions for 2012

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 05:00:00 EST

With 9th Cloud Expo - Cloud Expo Silicon Valley - in full swing at the Santa Clara Convention Center in California, what's being said about the future landscape of cloud computing? In this round-up we asked a variety of members of the cloud computing ecosystem, from CIOs to independent consultants to marketeers...here are their views on what's in store in 2012. Listed as one of the Top 100 Bloggers in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem, Peter joined Salesforce in 2007 after 18 years as a senior contributor to the enterprise IT journals eWEEK and PC Week. Based in the Los Angeles area, he works with IT professionals and ISVs to build a global community based on Force.com: the salesforce.com Platform Cloud.

The Top 100 Bloggers on Cloud Computing

Mon, 26 Sep 2011 04:15:00 EDT

Ever since I first published here my tentative list of Top 50 Bloggers on Cloud Computing it became clear that an expansion would be needed before too long. Thanks to community feedback via my Twitter account (@jg21) here goes with an expanded roster, listed as before in alphabetical order since I am making no attempt at this stage to rank the various blogs, merely to map - and celebrate - their existence.

How to Mirror Server Folders to Windows Azure

Sat, 27 Aug 2011 10:58:00 EDT

You may have several important folders on the windows server that you want to protect online. Also as part of the cloud adoption strategy, you need the near term protection turned into a long term cloud migration. With these goals, it makes sense to mirror these important folders into a cloud storage service such as Windows Azure Storage or Amazon S3. In the near term, it fulfills the off-site backup purpose. In the long run, you can migrate your storage to these cloud storage services since your data is there over time. This tutorial focuses on Windows Azure Storage and how to set it up so your folders are protected by Windows Azure. The steps are similar if you want to replace Windows Azure with Amazon S3 or Rackspace Cloud Files.

How Four Months Can Very Soon Feel Like Four Years

Tue, 12 Jul 2011 06:45:00 EDT

Strange just how much can happen in one-third of a year.

Four months ago to the day, I was wheeled into an operating theater in Denmark's top hospital. In the intense few hours that followed, a gifted surgeon and a deeply professional team obtained a dream result.

Abiquo Already Has What Other Cloud Management Players Are Just Adding

Sun, 11 Apr 2010 06:45:00 EDT

A recent commentary confirms how far ahead Cloud management innovator Abiquo is of the rest of the pack. Announcing how the Enterprise Edition of Eucalyptus was this week joining forces with GroundWork, a news and analysis site acknowledged that the Eucalyptus/GroundWork alliance was a response to the convincing lead established by Abiquo.

SOA & Cloud Bootcamp: Comparing Cloud Computing Providers

Tue, 16 Jun 2009 09:45:00 EDT

If your business relies on the speedy resolution of an issue from your cloud provider, then test them before you try. Send them that email out-of-hours to see how quickly and how useful the reply actually is. Try and reach someone on the phone. Look around the forums to see how many questions are left unanswered.

SOA & Cloud Bootcamp: Who Ya Gonna Call? Cloudbusters!

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 10:00:00 EDT

As the theme tune to the classic 1984 Ghostbusters movie goes, "If there's something strange, in your neighborhood, Who ya gonna call?", I am left wondering what we'll all be singing (shouting?) when something goes wrong in our cloud world. When you've got your whole business in the cloud and there is an outage, just what happens to your bottom line? What happens to your customers? What do you do?

Adobe and Social Media Terrorists

Tue, 26 May 2009 08:00:00 EDT

"Mass psychology" scientists study this kind of phenomena and the "mass psychology of fascism" is of course the most famous lab case. The extraordinary experience SYS-CON Media lived through became part of a Forbes Magazine investigative cover story called "Attack of the Blogs" that found that "Web logs are the prized platform of an online lynch mob spouting liberty but spewing lies, libel and invective. Their potent allies in this pursuit include Google and Yahoo." The lies, libel and invective we are living through today is another such episode. Our partners, readers and the industry in general know the facts and what's going on but in a rare example like the email below, we can't be sure if everyone is on the same page as the rest of us.

SOA World Expo: Virtualization-in-a-Box?

Fri, 08 May 2009 20:30:00 EDT

Earlier this month I attended the IBM Impact conference in Las Vegas. The core theme of Impact was "Smart SOA" and how cloud computing comes together in the enterprise, with the emphasis on private clouds. The core notion of private clouds for IBM is really about extending their experience in virtualization, which is vast, into the more modern world of cloud computing. They hope to sell some hardware and software in the process.

Clouds Do Blow Away - Live With It

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:45:00 EDT

If you were to believe the hype from the media and certain so called industry experts, you would be forgiven for thinking that cloud computing is the second coming. The answer to all our scaling and usage problems. Everything to everyone. The notion that the "cloud" is always on, or up, is a myth that is being propogated, irresponsibly, around the corridors of tech. As they say, what goes up must come down and software is no different.

Twenty-One Experts Define Cloud Computing

Sat, 24 Jan 2009 06:15:00 EST

It is the infrastructural paradigm shift that is sweeping across the Enterprise IT world, but how is it best defined? I refer of course to 'Cloud Computing' - the phenomenon that has as many definitions as there are squares on a chess-board. To try and narrow it down we bring here a round-up of some recent attempts to bring welcome precision where there risks being unnecessary vagueness.

The Future of Cloud Computing

Sun, 18 Jan 2009 07:18:00 EST

As new offerings like Amazon's CloudFront, Microsoft's Azure, and VMware's vCloud are rolled out, the worldwide cloud computing momentum continues to grow. Here, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal surveys a globe-girdling network of leading infrastructure experts, IT industry executives and technology commentators for their views on The Shape of Cloud Computing To Come.

Cloud Computing Is Coming of Age

Sat, 10 Jan 2009 05:20:00 EST

SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal seeks to boost your understanding of Cloud Computing concepts and to bring you the latest news, views, and developments - but we couldn't do so without our amazing high-energy pool of contributors, including many of the hard-working executives driving some of today's most successful Cloud strategies, technologies and techniques.

i-Technology Predictions for 2009

Wed, 07 Jan 2009 08:10:00 EST

Every year SYS-CON polls the Internet technologies community and asks them to share their thoughts on what's around the corner in the world of i-Technology and Web-based enterprise. The main themes were very clear. Cassatt Corporation's CEO Bill Coleman, for example - famous in a former life for being the 'B' in BEA Systems - is adamant that 2009 is going to be The Year of Cloud.

Cloud Computing Journal: Current Themes & Topics

Sat, 03 Jan 2009 18:30:00 EST

From Amazon EC2 and App Engine from Google to Utility Computing, Virtualization, and Walled Gardens - there's no aspect of Cloud Computing that hasn't already been addressed at some level of detail in SYS-CON Media's Cloud Computing Journal (www.cloudcomputing.sys-con.com). Here's a round-up of the world of Delivering Scalable IT as a Service, seen through the lens of the many contributors whose thoughts and ideas have already appeared there since it first appeared in June 2008 as the world's first journal devoted exclusively to the delivery of massively scalable IT resources as a service using Internet technologies.

[Flashback to 2008] Is Google the Elephant in the Cloud?

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 03:30:00 EST

While cloud computing reporting has recently been focused on Microsoft's Azure announcement and Amazon's upgrade to EC2, there's an elephant in the cloud: Google. According to a well-researched article in SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal, Google filed as long ago as February 2006 a provisional patent application with 91 different numbered claims that arguably makes it clear that Google has a multi-year lead in cloud computing.