Cloud Computing

(Article taken from Legal Guidelines 11 Shoosmiths)There is no universally accepted definition of Cloud Computing. This is perhaps what underlies so many of the misconceptions and gaps in understanding, and what causes difficulties when it comes to communicating the benefits and risks to the various tiers of a business.Regardless ... read more..

Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) to set the standardTop technology leaders have come together to develop a Code of Conduct to help provide understanding and manage users expectations of cloud suppliers.A newly formed self-regulatory body called the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF), a sub-group of FAST and Investors in Software (FAST IiS), ... read more..

Nikolaos Makris of 2X Software considers the growth of thin client computing (and the environmental implications), and where it is heading in the futureIts official the days of the local desktop OS are numbered! By 2014, Gartner predicts that there will be more than 66 million virtualised desktops globally. ... read more..

tomorrow's technology todayGary Cornell and his views from across the pondI was recently talking to a friend who runs a small company. He told me he was thinking of ditching their use of Gmail for their corporate email because of the recent Gmail outages and return to them doing it ... read more..

The data centre continues to evolve with the need for storage capacity growing so quickly that many organisations struggle to keep up. Even before the global economy took a nosedive, organisations were starting to look for the best way to re-utilise their pre-existing storage capabilities. But now, with the increasing ... read more..

There is an urgent clash of priorities facing the UK when it comes to IT infrastructure We all understand the importance of ICT in a knowledge-based economy. The need for better, bigger, more sophisticated ICT will only continue to increase as Britain strives to compete as a world leader. ICT ... read more..

Today's IT environments are a complex landscape, nearly always encompassing multiple technologies and providers. The key to effective IT management is to see beyond individual devices and connections to get a true picture of how each resource affects the applications and business processes it supports.Business Service Management via Remote Infrastructure ... read more..

This issue covers two important IT trends which have garnered significant attention recently, namely virtualization and cloud computing. IT trends - Cost reduction through virtualization and cloud computing ... read more..

Cloud Computing is a term that has quickly become the hottest topic in the technology sector, with seemingly every major provider and thousands of smaller companies offering Cloud Computing services. But what exactly is Cloud Computing? A recent McKinsey report listed twenty-two definitions of Cloud Computing! The umbrella term 'cloud' has been used ... read more..

2009 has seen the power of social media reach an all-time high with many of us dedicating our precious time daily to blogs, chat forums and popular social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Rob Marcus, director at social networking moderation company, Chat Moderators believes that social media is ... read more..

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is software application functionality offered/consumed over the internet, with minimal or no software installation required to access it. This phenomenon has been a great success in the consumer market (software used for personal use) for email, messaging, ecommerce, social networking, photo sharing etc. SaaS adoption by businesses started ... read more..

Three reasons to move your security to SaaS - and five things to consider before you do. Corporate IT teams are waging a significant security battle on two fronts these days: stopping attacks via the Web and through email. They are tirelessly trying to protect their networks against known and unknown ... read more..

Steve Moyle considers how security in the cloud is vital to its success. Moving to the cloud Cloud Computing has all the hallmarks of being a revolutionary technology - Gartner puts the cloud services market at $56 billion this year and $150 billion by 2013 - a remarkable growth projection in the ... read more..

The network's the limit when it comes to making the most of the cloud In the grip of global recession, businesses are looking at 2009 as a year for cost-cutting. Facing substantially lower revenues, management boards are increasingly taking an active interest in how cost-efficiently business functions such as IT are ... read more..

Implications of the increasing use of web-based applications available in the computing cloud There are important security and compliance implications in delivering mission-critical applications as Web-hosted services. CIOs need to be very aware of the risks they face if they allow the organisation to float off into the Cloud, says Alan ... read more..

How are Cloud Computing, virtualisation and SaaS shaping the future of the desktop? Gone are the days where everything IT-related was confined to the 'computer room'. Over the last three decades, the boundaries of IT's reach have been removed with the advent of LANs, WANs and the Internet. The pervasive access ... read more..

The term 'Cloud Computing' has come to designate everything new, the next big thing incarnate. But its roots are as old as the Internet, when vast amounts of information suddenly became available everywhere. What's revolutionary is not Cloud Computing itself but how the pieces have come together to make doing ... read more..

The recession will mean cutbacks in budgets that will affect IT service provision and training. Mike Summers, General Manager of ILX Group's Performance Support Solutions explores this issue and offers some practical advice for IT managers and directors. To paraphrase Robert Burns, the best laid plans often go awry, and that ... read more..

Randy Clark of Platform Computing tracks the evolution of cloud enabling software from its origins in grid and high performance computing. The buzz surrounding Cloud Computing has reached an all time high thanks to intense media interest and the marketing efforts of big brands such as Amazon and Google. According to ... read more..

Creating a team far greater than the sum of its individual parts. Effective collaboration and communication is one of the leading routes to business success. Research shows that, over the first years of this century, companies with the most effective communications attained a 30 percent increase in results compared to ... read more..

The software industry is entering another age of astonishing innovation. It's a time when not only is software advancing at an astounding rate, but so are hardware devices - where power is increasing as quickly as size is decreasing, and software and computing power is becoming near ubiquitous. Consider this: a ... read more..

RD investment still exists in West Midlands! Despite the majority of ICT businesses in the West Midlands region employing fewer than ten people, almost 500 of them are engaging in research and development, according to a survey by the West Midlands ICT cluster. Even during the recession, 33 percent of the 1,503 ... read more..

On August 12 1981, IBM executives held a press conference in New York to introduce a momentous new computer - the IBM Personal Computer running a Microsoft operating system. At that time we didn't realise that the desktop had been born, at least in technology terms anyway. There followed years of ... read more..

Gary Cornell looks at the growing importance of cloud computing and considers some of the emerging offerings.My theme for this column (with apologies to Steven Sondheim cf: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvzUdM29_uA) is 'Send in the clouds' - cloud computing. Surprisingly, according to my search of Google, 'cloud computing', is a new term perhaps ... read more..