SOA & Cloud Computing

Riding the Enterprise Cloud Computing Wave of Change into the Future

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 11:00:00 EST

The term cloud computing was first coined in 2007. Enterprise Cloud Computing seems to have emerged as a term in 2009. It’s now 2012 and many are trying to ride the wave of Enterprise cloud computing or private cloud into the future. In a short four years, we’ve seen this phenomena of cloud permeate everything. Some question its validity as a technology and a term. If you look at the Gartner hype curve, the mere questioning of cloud can be considered validation. The abbreviated Gartner curve shows the rapid progress of cloud and private cloud from term introduction to the “peak of inflated expectations.” We’re about to dive down into the dreaded “trough of disillusionment.” Maybe the skeptics are already there. Or maybe, cloud will jump from its current holding spot over to the “slope of enlightenment” without spending (measureable) time in the trough. I’ll look forward to the Gartner curve update in 2012. Why do I think it’s possible to skip the trough of disillusionment? Some key reasons were covered in my first talk at Cloud Expo back in 2009. Cloud computing is, simply stated, the next generation of IT architecture. We’ve been moving to the cloud for the past several years through virtualization, improved enterprise management systems, high-speed global networks, wireless access devices, and so forth. It’s a lot less of a revolution and a lot more of an evolution. The ubiquitous, white fluffy physical representation of “cloud” caused much of the initial skepticism, I think. Now, people are comfortable with the word cloud and marketers have found innovative, successful ways to connect the features and benefits for the average technology user.

Cloud Computing Procurement: As Easy as Remembering RFP

Sat, 18 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

When it comes to procurement, any technology or service should be evaluated with a good set of criteria. Executive decisions should not be weighted solely on a single selection criterion such as price. This applies to any cloud computing service as well. The twelve criteria listed below (see Chart 1) forces executives to take a broader review of the many elements of the total cloud computing service, and not just price. Each criteria starts with an R, F, or P which makes it easy to remember the total framework for the Yardstick for Technology Procurement (RFP).

Economical Data Warehousing Using AWS Elastic MapReduce (Hadoop & Hive)

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 16:02:00 EST

We will show how to economically and efficiently process very large volume of data using Amazon AWS' implementation of Hadoop. Big Data is opening new frontiers in what is possible in large volume data processing. Previously unheard of mountains of data can now be efficiently and economically processed. Data warehousing was so far reserved only for the biggest corporations that could afford expensive proprietary hardware and software capable of processing very large volume of data ( Teradata, Netezza ). Latest advances in Cloud technologies and Big Data processing make it possible to process extremely large volume of data at the fraction of cost. AWS Cloud is perfect environment for Big Data and Hadoop processing since you are able to instantly launch hundreds of servers that Hadoop computing model is based on, perform your analysis, and, once analysis is completed, terminate Hadoop cluster (and your costs).

Cloud Control and Managing Your Own Service Level Agreements

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:15:00 EST

Depending on how analysts define it, the market for cloud products and services is growing anywhere from 19% (Gartner) to 27% (IDC ) per year. The growth in public cloud service usage is even more robust. At Amazon EC2, the leading cloud services provider (CSP), average daily instance launch counts grew fivefold from 2008 to 2009, and more than doubled in 2010. A growing percentage of these customers are enterprises using the public cloud in an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) model. Under the IaaS model, all equipment used to support operations is outsourced including compute, storage, and networking components. With that high degree of reliance on the CSP, many organizations are seeking some form of service management to support the specific needs of their business. That need became even clearer when Amazon EC2 experienced an extended outage that took thousands of websites down in April 2011 – some for more than three days. This outage costs organizations days of lost productivity and millions of dollars in revenue.

We Need Cloud UI Standards

Fri, 17 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

If you're like me, you rely on a host of cloud applications to get your job done each day. While the convenience and familiarity of apps built for the web is great, I can't help but notice the difference between each user interface (UI) I use. Currently, all cloud-based ERP software vendors are approaching the user interface with their own design style. For users that work with multiple cloud apps each day, this can be disorienting – not to mention bad for productivity and usability. As more products are built for the cloud, I believe that we ought to start thinking about creating a set of standards for what cloud-based applications should look and feel like. Getting there won't be easy, so it's time to start talking about creating these standards today. Inconsistency in UI design has negative impact on usability and productivity. It results in having to invest in more user training and can lead to costly user errors. A unified and consistent UI, on the other hand, can boost productivity.

Finding Your Cloud Go-to-Market Viewpoint - Follow the Cash Cow!

Thu, 16 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

In my last article, I called on providers to find a unique Viewpoint, "Viewpoint is a framing of the market in the context of your uniqueness. The uniqueness of your team, your capabilities, and your vision. Some call viewpoint thought leadership, some vision with a capital V, and some brand." While there are many frameworks and techniques to capturing Viewpoint, however defined, one of the simplest and most effective way I have, and one the first I usually pull out of my toolset, is to simple create an X and Y set of axis and coordinate labels for the market. A simple 2x2 matrix which will then set your view firmly in one corner of the world, the best one! and I called on providers to set a unique and compelling viewpoint to create breakthrough for their marketing efforts. While there are many frameworks and techniques to capturing Viewpoint, however defined, one of the simplest and most effective way I have, and one the first I usually pull out of my toolset, is to simple create an X and Y set of axis and coordinate labels for the market. A simple 2x2 matrix which will then set your view firmly in one corner of the world, the best one!

Cloud Computing and Precision Time Protocol (PTP)

Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:15:00 EST

If cloud computing is going to spread to more mission-critical type applications, it needs to get more accurate when it comes to transaction-based applications. Trying to keep everything in a structured framework is going to require a more rigorous network infrastructure that includes timing down to milliseconds, if not nanoseconds. One way to accomplish this is to use the IEEE 1588 protocol or “Precision Time Protocol” (PTP), which provides timing. In an earlier article entitled, “Cloud Transaction Synchronicity”, I discussed the need for this type of capability if financial organizations are to look at cloud computing as a real solution for any transactions-based services.

API Strategy 2012: For the Cloud, by the Cloud, as Platforms Emerge

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 08:45:00 EST

What do salesforce.com and Mashery have in common? They are multi-tenant software as a service leaders - both built with billions of APIs - for the Cloud, by the Cloud. The implications this year: API Strategy in 2012 cuts across mobile, social, and cloud. Winning with API's translates to understanding the economics and agility of clouds for scale, speed, and security. In 2010 Delyn Simons, formerly the head of eBay's highly successful developer program stated, "Behind every good app is an API." In 2012, the projection is that "behind every successful app there will be a number of APIs that power it." Apps are becoming big business, with more than 250 million app downloads on Christmas day alone and a record number of Android, iPad, and iPhone sales during the holidays. The world has been mobile for a decade, but now the mobile world is so omnipresent and dynamic that it is altering business and culture at impressive rates.

Why Public Clouds Are More Secure than Private Clouds

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 07:45:00 EST

Conventional wisdom would have you believe that Public Clouds are inherently insecure, and that the only way to meet your organization’s stringent security requirements in the Cloud is to implement your own Private Cloud. Conventional wisdom, you say? Unfortunately, there is precious little wisdom available of any kind when it comes to Cloud Computing, let alone the conventional type! In fact, large software and hardware vendors are largely responsible for the whole “Public Cloud is insecure” canard, introducing fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) into the marketplace. After all, building a Private Cloud means buying a lot of new gear. The last thing the big vendors want is for their customers to move to Public Clouds—unless, of course, they belong to the vendor in question. Don’t be fooled. Public Clouds are typically more secure than Private Clouds, for a number of reasons. Here’s why. In fact, large software and hardware vendors are largely responsible for the whole “Public Cloud is insecure” canard, introducing fear, uncertainty, and doubt (FUD) into the marketplace. After all, building a Private Cloud means buying a lot of new gear. The last thing the big vendors want is for their customers to move to Public Clouds—unless, of course, they belong to the vendor in question. Don’t be fooled. Public Clouds are typically more secure than Private Clouds, for a number of reasons. Here’s why.

Big Data in Telecom: The Need for Analytics

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 06:30:00 EST

Networks have become a strategic asset, the life blood of organizations. Once considered a “techy thing,” networks are now mission-critical for every member of the organization – from the IT manager to the marketing VP to the CEO. An increasing number of companies now recognize the impact network quality has on the customer experience and, in turn, on the bottom line. Providing a great customer experience, every time, is vital for limiting churn and building loyalty. This has led many organizations to adopt a strong quality assurance program to test and monitor all contact center services. This is particularly important in environments that must support multi-channel and multi-service applications. The complex configurations needed to enable voice, video and data to share network resources puts a tremendous strain on bandwidth and creates problems that can be very difficult to isolate. And the proliferation of mobile devices has added an entirely new set of issues and customer behaviors.

Big Data: How Companies Transform Challenges into Business Opportunities

Mon, 13 Feb 2012 05:45:00 EST

Did you know that ninety percent of the data in the world has been created in the last two years? Every day, we create 2.5 quintillion (or 2.518) bytes of data, according to IBM. As corporations across all industries globally are struggling with how to retain, aggregate and analyze this mounting volume of what the industry refers to as Big Data, it also provides a unique opportunity for innovative startups that recognize the business prospects Big Data presents. Big Data is not just unlocking new information but new sources of economic and business value. Interactivity is driving Big Data, with people and machines both consuming and creating it. Digital companies focused on becoming good at aggregating and analyzing the data created by the end users of their product, who then provide their customers with solid insights taken from that data are at a distinct competitive advantage over others in the marketplace.

Don't Punt - Winning the Cloud Marketing Battle

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 09:00:00 EST

Coach Kevin Kelley has figured it out, don't punt. Since 2007, he's won three Arkansas State Championships and over 90% of his games, and he's never punted. Every day, sales and marketing teams in Cloud organizations, that could easily move the trial or experience to the front of the marketing and sales cycle, hang on to conventional wisdom, hiding or gating the actual product experience. Whether this is because of fear of failure or simple rejection of the new, or concern over investor or CEO second guessing, those in the old product mindset are punting away opportunity every day.

Cloud Computing Connectors: Beware of Counterfeits

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

If you are a corporate executive contemplating adding some applications in a cloud computing network, be very aware of the vendors as well as your own internal system architects and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) when they start talking about cost-effective networks, cheaper components and saving you money. What many network pseudo-experts don’t know is that you don’t build cheap networks. There are no “Fire Sales” on quality, especially when it comes to network infrastructures. Like anything else, you get what you pay for when it comes to buying the pieces for your network just like when you buy the parts for your car or materials for your house. There is a growing concern from those in the cabling industry regarding counterfeit and non-compliant components being brought into the country.

Mitigating the Risks of IT Change

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 09:30:00 EST

Global enterprises and growing businesses are harnessing IT to add branch offices, remote sites and enabling mobile users. Simultaneously, they are decreasing the IT administrative footprint, boosting productivity, working with greater efficiency, and improving the bottom line. IT initiatives such as data center consolidation, cloud computing, virtualization, and new application deployments can help meet all of these objectives, but in many cases these projects are major undertakings that consume significant time and resources and are fraught with risk. Planning for these IT changes can be a long and error-prone process, but an accurate and comprehensive understanding of IT infrastructure is a necessity for successful implementations and smoother transitions. To avoid problems and make good decisions, organizations must create high-quality project plans with accurate and detailed information available before, during, and after migration activities. For example, if a business were to move one of its Oracle servers, it would be critical for it to understand all the databases and components that connect to it so that all connections were reestablished after the move. Without precise knowledge of the end-to-end service delivery path, it would be easy to misconfigure the new environment and possibly cause an outage. Some organizations have come to realize that documentation and historical asset inventories are rarely up to date, and the people who built them have invariably moved on, providing an unreliable basis for planning.

HP Provides More Picks and Shovels to Cloud Miners

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

In two separate recent announcements, HP has affirmed its goal of being the neutral supplier of choice for all things cloud. Last week, HP delivered HP Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) Content Pack 10, bringing with the ability to better manage cloud instances across the enterprise-public cloud continuum, including deep discovery of virtualized workloads' performance inside of Amazon and VMware vCloud clouds. Then this week, HP on Tuesday further thrust its global market-leading LoadRunner performance testing suite -- via partners -- into development clouds, known as platform as a service (PaaS) providers. This is clearly aimed at the fast-growing mobile development and greenfield SMB development spaces.

BBVA Reaches for the Sky with Its Embrace of Cloud Computing

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

If 2010 was the year in which cloud computing made its entry in a big way, then 2011 was the year in which companies took to the concept in an equally strong manner. Hitherto confined to start-ups and SME's which welcomed cloud computing services as a way of reducing their IT spend, the deal between the Spanish Banking giant BBVA and Google raises the pitch for the service. The terms of the deal include covering the entire staff of BBVA worldwide (which runs into a little more than hundred thousand people) to Google's email and shared services platforms like Google Docs and the ever popular Video Conferencing. This is expected to give a fillip to both the parties to the deal. For BBVA, it is one way of jumping on the innovation bandwagon and addressing the increasing mobility of its employees who are dispersed globally and who use mobile computing and work from home as part of their jobs. For Google, the deal could not have come at a better time as the tech giant can now justifiably claim that its cloud computing services are no longer restricted to startups or SME's. Further, the big ticket partnership with BBVA is surely going to enhance the positioning of Google vis-à-vis competitors like Amazon in this market niche.

Why SaaS and ISVs Clash

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 06:00:00 EST

Interest in cloud-based applications continues apace, but hosting can be a complicated endeavor for ISVs. The enduring popularity of Software-as-a-service (SaaS) isn't accidental. Whether you're a technology reseller or a traditional enterprise, there's a lot to like about the use of a service model for software delivery, including low monthly cost, fast time-to-market and few deployment hiccups. But SaaS does not reward all organizations equally. Unfortunately for ISVs, who fall on the 'delivery' side of the service-delivery relationship, the benefits of SaaS are tempered by risks. The nature of being an ISV complicates many decisions about technology and some of these will be amplified when ISVs move toward SaaS delivery. In order to make a smooth transition, ISVs must develop a strategy in full recognition of these unique challenges.

Enterprise Transformation, Enterprise Architecture, SOA, a Splash of Cloud

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 05:15:00 EST

This week, I've been at The Open Group Conference in San Francisco. The theme was Enterprise Transformation which, in simple terms, means changing how your business works to take advantage of the latest developments in IT. Evidence of these developments is all around. For example, when I took a break and went for coffee and a sandwich to a little cafe on Pine and Leavenworth, it seemed to be run by and for the Millennial Generation. True to type, my server pulled out a cellphone with a device attached through which I swiped my credit card. An app read my screen-scrawled signature and the transaction was complete. Then to make dinner reservations, the hotel concierge tapped a few keys on her terminal and, presto, we had a window table at a restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf. No lengthy phone negotiations with the maitre d'. We were just connected with the resource that we needed quickly and efficiently.

Information Creation, Interpretation and Extrapolation Needs Optimization

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

The world is packed with information in the form of data. This is not news of course, but the undeniable groundswell of data creation, interpretation, extrapolation and perhaps even interpolation driven by Internet-based services is beyond the normal limits of human comprehension. Worthy enough web sites such as internetworldstats.com estimate the total number of web users on the planet to be 2,095,006,005 as of March 2011. If that number is out of date, it’s not that important – after all, this is a figure that we can not really make sense of in our own minds due to its sheer size.

Challenges and Best Practices for Load Testing with the Cloud (Part 2)

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 05:00:00 EST

In Part 1 I described how the cloud is revolutionizing load testing and the advantages it provides to ensure that your web applications perform well in production. We also looked at what capabilities you should seek out when selecting a load testing solution. In Part 2, I will offer the limitations of a test strategy that relies solely on cloud-based testing, highlighting the need for a complementary internal load testing solution. I will also discuss several best practices for load testing in the cloud. Understanding how to apply the right tools and practices to make the most of the cloud is fundamental to cloud-based testing and vital to ultimately going live with total peace of mind. The advantages to load testing with the cloud are clear, but internal testing still has its place in the overall test plan, particularly when testing from outside the firewall is not feasible. Internal testing also helps you to isolate effects that are due to your own application or infrastructure from those that are outside your firewall and potentially beyond your control.

Data Services: The Cloud and SOA

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 06:15:00 EST

Enterprises AND software companies seeking competitive advantage through IT innovation should be aware of this technology shift and actively defining strategies for capitalizing on it. The principles behind Service-Oriented Architectures (SOA) were established long before the Internet became a force, and certainly before the appearance of Cloud infrastructure. Although many people consider SOA as well as Cloud to all about ways of building, deploying and managing applications, these technologies and methodologies are also important in making "big data" useful and manageable. Indeed, SOA and Cloud are increasingly becoming so intertwined as to cause major confusion in the marketplace. Let's be clear - there's SOA, and there's Cloud and there's the intersection of SOA and Cloud. That intersection is a very exciting place to be. I remember long discussions on things like CICS which embodied many of the principals behind SOA, and I'm sure there are technologies (and methodologies) older than that which similarly embody various principals of Cloud as well as SOA). Like so many things in this industry, the more things change, the more they seem strangely (though never entirely) similar. I suppose that's evolution for you.

Big Moves in Big Data: EMC's Hadoop Strategy

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 05:30:00 EST

To date, Big Storage has been locked out of Big Data. It’s been all about direct attached storage for several reasons. First, Advanced SQL players have typically optimized architectures from data structure (using columnar), unique compression algorithms, and liberal usage of caching to juice response over hundreds of terabytes. For the NoSQL side, it’s been about cheap, cheap, cheap along the Internet data center model: have lots of commodity stuff and scale it out. Hadoop was engineered exactly for such an architecture; rather than speed, it was optimized for sheer linear scale. Over the past year, most of the major platform players have planted their table stakes with Hadoop. Not surprisingly, IT household names are seeking to somehow tame Hadoop and make it safe for the enterprise.

Stop Buying Database Licenses: You Have All the Capacity You Need

Fri, 03 Feb 2012 10:00:00 EST

Any organization that has deployed a business application has experienced the joy of procuring database licenses. Most database software licensing models are based on the quantity and type of compute processing cores in the underlying database server – the more cores in the processor and the more processors in the server box, the higher the cost of the database software license. Depending on the application and the business’s expectations, the tolerance threshold for performance can vary. This is typically considered during the design and testing phases of an application deployment lifecycle. Once the application goes into production and data accumulates in key areas supporting mission-critical business processes, performance starts to take a hit. Performance tuning is an art, requiring the skill and experience of the highly coveted and paid performance database administrator (DBA) – an employee who has been, incidentally, identified by industry research as being problematic to retain. [1] That performance guru will add database indexes, rearrange queries, or add additional database objects solely targeted at improving application performance. At some point, performance tuning will only get you so far and returns will start to diminish. DBAs will request more processing power to meet SLAs; more processing power turns into more database licenses not only in production but for every copy of the data. When data is copied to a data warehouse for reporting, to a test or development environment for product support activities, or to a disaster recovery site and there is a corresponding performance expectation for that environment, the production server upgrade now turns into several server upgrades – each with a corresponding increase in database license upgrades.

Service Desk Optimization via the Cloud

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 10:15:00 EST

Service management systems are IT’s online face to the business. Sure, enterprise apps and personal productivity tools may be how users get their jobs done, but when someone in sales or marketing has a problem or needs something, they turn to the IT service system for satisfaction. They’re often disappointed, leading to dissatisfaction with IT in general and widespread use of informal systems. Left unchecked, this unfriendly face can lead to elevated service resolution costs, extended cycle times, and frustration within IT itself, all the while leaving end users convinced that IT isn’t a suitable business partner.

Cloud Finance: Best Practices for Implementing Rolling Forecasts

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 08:00:00 EST

Rolling forecasts allow finance executives and key decision makers to see both a financial and operational vision of the future, by projecting four to six quarters or twelve to eighteen months ahead. It also helps them assess next steps in their execution of their plan, understand critical pivot points in the plan and better judge the impact the changing economy may have on their plan.

Is Your Integration Platform a Relic?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 06:30:00 EST

As companies increasingly adopt more and more SaaS/Cloud based applications, as more and more data are cloud-based, and as social networking data becomes increasingly critical to sales, marketing and customer satisfaction applications, the "old style" integration stacks that were originally created to run on PCs or On-Premises Servers will be a non-optimal solution. This is the normal evolution of things. The mainframe-centric nature of computing gave way to Client/Server which in turn gave way to Internet and then SaaS/Cloud. Just like Mainframe-based applications could never really be retrofitted to be good client/server applications, or how non-relational databases never really worked well with SQL front-ends slapped on, Older architectures (Server or LAN-based application integration suites) can't simply been retrofitted or wrappered to become sky-based.

Cloud Configuration Management

Mon, 30 Jan 2012 06:45:00 EST

You want the ability to deploy, update, and repair your entire application infrastructure using nothing but pre-defined, automated procedures. Ideally, you want to automatically provision your entire environment from bare-metal (hardware with no operating systems – or anything else – installed on them) all the way up to running business services completely from a pre-defined specification, including the network configuration. Furthermore, there should be no direct management of individual boxes. You want to manage the entire Cloud deployment as a single unit.

High Impact Cloud Marketing - A Formula for Success

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 12:45:00 EST

Most CEOs I talk to have a jaded, if not skeptical view of marketing. While they recognize the importance of marketing to their long term success, they have a hard time understanding and measuring how well marketing is doing. And while more mature organizations have a good handle on very well tuned marketing metrics and measurement, the question is still always out there. With the advance in marketing automation, new channels of communication, and the avalanche of marketing data now available, marketing has evolved, in many CEOs view, from a black art, to a black science. Hidden behind the dashboards and metrics lies a more fundamental problem. In today's hyper competitive, global, instantaneous market, where buyers and consumers have nearly unlimited access to information and each other, the fight for attention and share has become a treadmill of constantly faster speed. With this high velocity market, we need a new HIGH IMPACT marketing formula to feed the machine.

Enterprise Security and Gaining Insightful Insight into “Insight”

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 08:45:00 EST

Security specialists are fond of using expressions like “robust protection” and “multi-layered defenses” when it comes to setting out their stall and telling us exactly how they are able to protect our data and applications. Looking closer at enterprise security, we see that lower down the buzzword pecking order for some reason is the word “insight” in its various forms. It seems insight means more than one thing in information technology these days, but perhaps it’s no coincidence that every meaning or interpretation of the term essentially falls somewhere under the umbrella of enterprise security.

If You Think Your Data Is a Mess Now...

Thu, 26 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

If you think your data is a mess now...just wait. It will get worse, if you're not careful. Maybe even if you ARE careful. That loud rumbling sound you hear isn't thunder, or an earthquake--it's the noise from an avalanche of exploding volumes of data, in places and formats that never existed before. This explosion is making a difficult situation even more challenging, and what's worse, it has a direct impact on business productivity. Only 21% of CEOs have the comprehensive information they need about their customers to make strategic decisions, according to a PriceWaterhouseCoopers CEO report. As with so many other data challenges (such as data quality), the best approach to managing exploding volumes of data--data in a multiplicity of new places and formats--is planning. The avalanche of disparate data, formats and applications has exacerbated a classic organizational challenge: critical data about customers stored in a myriad of different places and formats inside the enterprise, ranging from spreadsheets to databases to various enterprise systems (such as CRM or ERP) as well as various types of structured and unstructured data files.

Cloud Computing: Beyond Best Practices

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

“How resilient are the cloud computing solutions being sold today?” This appears to be a question not asked often enough by those who are immediately lured by the hyped positives of the concept before there is enough data to substantiate the claims made by the vendors as well as the documentation of failures of applications. One concept that I have preached and that has held true for decades is “leading-edge organizations do not maintain their position with trailing-edge technologies.” The need to constantly evaluate, assess, select and apply new technology-driven capabilities is a continual process. This holds true for cloud computing and our competitive global markets today. That being said, according to experiences of executive reviews of procurement of Information Technology products and services, which include cloud computing, universal solutions are never universal. There are applications that work and applications that simply cannot be melded into the hyped “one-size-fits-all” solution for organizations that many vendors seem to sell.

From SOA Abstraction to SaaS

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 08:15:00 EST

Service Oriented Architecture: Service Oriented Architecture is the first attempt in aligning the IT with the business and this is now almost a default architecture for all the new applications created in today's enterprise. Definition of SOA emphasizes the following, Service-Oriented architectural style has the following distinctive feature , It's based on the design of the services - which mirror real-world business activities comprising the enterprise (or inter-enterprise) business processes. Service Identification Approaches: While it is always easier to think the new applications from the point of view of business and design them to represent the business view, but most enterprises in their journey to SOA have faced with the challenge of accommodating a huge set of legacy components and applications which are already developed over the years and are working fine for specific needs. This has made enterprises to adopt multiple approaches towards SOA.

An Inconvenient Truth of the NIST Definition of Cloud Computing

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 07:15:00 EST

For many IT professionals, cloud computing is confusing. And this article points out some of the ambiguities embedded in the NIST definition of cloud computing. Amid the many benefits of having the NIST SP 800-145 as a tool to facilitate the understanding, the classification and some definitions of the four deployment models are redundant and inconsistent. Particularly, the definition of "community cloud" is a redundant of that of a private cloud, the deployment models are defined with 2 set of criteria, and "hybrid cloud" is a confusing, ambiguous, and extraneous term. SP 800-145 is the de facto standard in IT industry of describing what cloud computing is with five essential characteristics, three delivery methods, and four deployment models. The five essential characteristics well specify the qualifications and expected behaviors of an object qualified with the term, cloud. The three delivery methods signify the essence of cloud computing centered on the concept of a "service."

Cloud Transaction Synchronicity

Mon, 23 Jan 2012 12:15:00 EST

High-Frequency Trading (HFT) and secret algorithms have become the new competitive strategy in today’s global financial industry. The faster traders can turn around trades, the faster they can get in and out of quick markets and short time pockets of opportunity. Having accurate records of when a transaction occurs is critical as to processing the trade and valuating the transaction. There are many articles and white papers discussing cloud computing and shared services. New services that are being touted are things like SaaS (Software as a Service), PaaS (Platform as a Service), and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). What is missing is the ability to sync up transactions coming from various outbound originations. What is necessary is the ability to provide Timing as a Service (TaaS).

HP Ecosystem Provides Support for VMware Virtualized IT Environments

Sat, 21 Jan 2012 12:00:00 EST

Advanced and pervasive virtualization and cloud computing trends are driving the need for a better, holistic approach to IT support and remediation. Virtualization isn’t just server-by-server, but really impacts the entire data center. You need to think about it more holistically, particularly in regard to things like security, performance and how your brands and businesses are perceived across the globe. Many of the companies that I deal with day in and day out are up at 80 percent and even 90 percent virtualized. When they think about virtualization, they go beyond just server virtualization. It’s really now looking at storage, applications, networks and even the end-user desktop experience, or desktop as a service (VDI). Successful virtualization is no longer just about servers, it’s about managing complexity when you get beyond the 20 percent or 30 percent level and expand into converged infrastructure virtualization without failures.

The Five Rules of Cloud Computing Litigation

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 11:59:00 EST

“Cloud computing is the major approach that most organizations should be adapting for their applications in this new era of mobile computing.” You have all read the ads and the articles that hype it, along with all the overnight experts that tout how they know that Cloud Computing is the universal solution for today’s and tomorrow’s organizations. Now, let’s get back on the ground and understand what some of the real potholes and obstacles are on the road to a more efficient and effective IT infrastructure. There are many “experts” out there touting all the positive aspects to Cloud Computing but like anything else, there are issues and concerns to address.

The Open Group Releases SOA and Cloud Computing Standards

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 10:00:00 EST

The Open Group has announced this week the availability of two new industry standards to integrate fundamental elements of service oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing into a solution for enterprise architecture (EA).The new standards are: SOA Reference Architecture (SOA RA) and the Service-Oriented Cloud Computing Infrastructure Framework (SOCCI). The Open Group has released updates to The Open Group Service Integration Maturity Model (OSIMM), which has now been ratified as an ISO and IEC (ISO/IEC 166880) International Standard. OSIMM gives organizations a common model for developing a roadmap for achieving the right level of service adoption to meet business objectives.

ISVs Caught in the Chasm: Between Heaven and Earth – SaaS and On-Premises

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 09:00:00 EST

The SaaS/on-premises tension sets up a complex series of challenges for the ISV including questions of business models, maintenance of multiple product versions, and updating of software to name a few issues. With apologies to last century’s poet Robert Frost, smart money may rest on the ultimate victory of SaaS, but there are miles to go before on-premises sleeps. Software as a Service (SaaS) is the darling of today's real world, enterprise-impacting cloud computing use cases. Industry analysts and research firms are tripping over each other extolling mega-CAGR for SaaS, with the 451 Group going so far as attributing 75% of PaaS spending for use cases that are attached to SaaS deployments. In its 2011 research report "Cloud Computing Takes Off," Morgan Stanley is bullish on the future of PaaS stating, "The low capex requirements, robust cloud enablement and rapidly improving developer toolsets are significantly lowering the barriers to entry for new application development [emphasis mine] - both in terms of cost and time to market.

Sending Your Application Portfolio to the Dentist's Chair

Tue, 17 Jan 2012 07:00:00 EST

The topic of performance management in information technology circles has, by and large, been a relatively thorny issue at times. Part of the problem with post-deployment solutions is that code may be buggy and troublesome, functionality may not be close enough to original requirements and (often most important) real-world data volumes supersede that which the system might have originally been designed for. Yes cloud computing can provide a route to much needed flexibility in both processing power and data storage capacity, but users want a software system that works right from the start and has the modularity to grow too.

Oracle Fills Another Gap in Its Big Data Offering

Fri, 13 Jan 2012 08:15:00 EST

When we last left Oracle’s big data plans, there was definitely a missing piece. Oracle’s Big Data Appliance as initially disclosed at last fall’s OpenWorld was a vague plan that appeared to be positioned primarily as an appliance that would accompany and feed data to Exadata. Oracle did specify some utilities, such as an enterprise version of the open source R statistical processing program that was designed for multithreaded execution, plus a distribution of a NoSQL database based on Oracle’s BerkeleyDB as an alternative to Apache Hive. But the emphasis appeared to be extraction and transformation of data for Exadata via Oracle’s own utilities that were optimized for its platform.