Virtualization

Debate continues over the definition and strategy of private clouds

In trying to come up with a common definition of private clouds, I've been speaking with a wide spectrum of IT executives, analysts and systems integrators. Many of them contributed pearls of wisdom to my story about what the term

The Feds tap NIST to accelerate adoption of public cloud standards

How serious is the Obama administration about cloud computing? Federal CIO Vivek Kundra has assigned the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) the task of "accelerating" the government's secure adoption of cloud computing. NIST is being called on to lead "efforts to develop...

Converged infrastructures promise to simplify private clouds

Just when you thought you understood private clouds, along comes converged infrastructure. You wouldn't be wrong to wonder, are they the same thing?

A private...

Offshore outsourcing: China runs the sun, will it rule the cloud too?

Gartner came out with its annual list of the top 30 countries for offshore outsourcing. Despite my complicated relationship with lists (totally sucked in and deeply skeptical), I've found the Gartner lineup an interesting window on the global economy over the years.

Public cloud computing risks must be overcome as part of IT strategy

Public cloud computing carries with it great promise and great risk. Enterprises are hesitant to get on board, despite continuous advice last year from industry experts to embrace it rather...

FUD or foresight? A debate continues over risk in the public cloud

The topic of risk in the public cloud elicits a strong emotional reaction from IT executives. In response to one of my recent stories about the WikiLeaks episode, I heard from readers on both...

Whether public, private or hybrid, it’s time to get a cloud strategy

Waiting in line at a recent data center conference, I struck up a conversation with an enterprise architect at a major appliance manufacturer who said he was there with a mission: to figure out how to articulate a cloud strategy to get funding for cloud services.

Formulating a cloud...

Budgets, big data and staffing among top CIO concerns

There's good news for CIOs who need to find a way to do more with less: most IT budgets will stay flat or even increase by as much as 10% in 2011, according to a live survey...

IT metrics, measurements and monitoring: It’s all about the numbers

A little while ago, I asked the CIO of a multinational distributor of electronics equipment what he most needed to read about. His answer? Application monitoring.

It's an area ripe for development, as I discovered this week while looking into

‘Trucknet’ to what’s next for cloud data delivery: WAN accelerators

The idea of a FedEx truck picking up your data for transport to a cloud provider might elicit either chuckles or groans, depending on your point of view. It's one solution to a bandwidth crunch, but what enterprises really need for enterprise-to-cloud deployments are wide area network (WAN)...