Tag Archives: IT Departments

Amazon introduces the AWS Private Cloud, and the question that arises is if this new service enables the deployment of real Private Cloud..

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Amazon has introduced today the new AWS Virtual Private Cloud service, more details on it could be found here: http://aws.amazon.com/vpc

On the follow up of this new service, some doubts have arisen about the real type of the cloud built with this new service, and also if this kind of cloud could even be difined as Private Clouds.

Using the NIST definition:

” Private cloud. The cloud infrastructure is operated solely for an organization. It may be managed by the organization or a third party and may exist on premise or off premise. ”

It’s very clear, a Private Cloud could be on premise or off premise. The next question is what should be considered the premises of the cloud. Should it be the wall of the datacenter, the box of the server or the VM where the OS is running? For one company their premises could be a single room, whereas to another it could be the entire building, in the cloud computing paradigm the private cloud is, in my perspective, a sandbox, which has boundaries well definite and on which we trust. These boundaries are the set of features that are available (CPU, network, storage, development API, etc) and the trust comes by means of contracts, cloud provider reputation, etc…

It’s easy to understand that this kind of definition are not closed to discussion, but in my prespective, the service introduced by Amazon should be consider a very interesting tool to build effective Private Clouds.

White Paper: An Essential Guide to Possibilities and Risks of Cloud Computing

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Cloud Computing is quite possibly the hottest, most discussed and often misunderstood concept in Information Technology (IT) today.

In short, Cloud Computing proposes to transform the way IT it’s deployed and managed, promising reduced implementation, maintenance costs and complexity, while accelerating innovation, providing faster timeto-market, and the ability to scale high-performance applications and infrastructures on demand.

But business managers know that in spite of the benefits of every new technology/business model there are also risks and issues (like for example: trust, loss of privacy, regulatory violation, data replication, coherency and erosion of integrity, application sprawl and dependencies, etc.) and that rushing things when it comes to Cloud Computing can be a very bad decision, but blowing off Cloud Computing all together because you think you can secure your own stuff better than a service provider or because many claims, made about Cloud Computing, have lead you to the point of “irrational exuberance” and unrealistic expectations, isn’t smart, either .

The goal of this White Paper is to provide a realistic perspective of the possibilities, benefits and risks of Cloud Computing; what to look for, what to avoid, and also some tips and best practices on implementation, architecture and vendor management strategies. It is important to consider all those aspects before you decide either to move (but without putting the carriage before the horse) or not to move your systems, applications, and/or data to to the “Cloud”, in a “hype free” approach.

Click here to download the White Paper (or click on the image at left side)

Thanks and please let me know how I can help you.

P.S. And of course your comments, feedback’s and thoughts are always welcome.

Cloud it or not to Cloud it?

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Cloud it or not to cloud it, will be for certain one of the major questions that the IT departments will have to face in the 2009/2010 period. They are always confronted with the need to reduce their platform costs and to increase the performance. In the upcoming times they will have to confront these necessities or challenges more than ever. With all the experts (if we forget the existing skeptics) saying that with Cloud Computing we will increase availability, performance, security, and despite that, we will be able to reduce the costs, I’m sure that all the IT departments should have to start questioning themselves – Cloud it or not to cloud it?

It’s obvious that its not clear that Cloud computing is the IT department’s salvation, but, I think that this paradigm will help the IT experts move forward and get better results from their efforts.

For more numbers and opinions you can read some thoughts  about it:

(this is an old text and it’s already result of our 2008 review)

http://blogs.zdnet.com/BTL/?p=8199

-By 2012, 80 percent of Fortune 1000 enterprises will pay for some cloud
computing service and 30 percent of them will pay for cloud computing
infrastructure.

-Through 2010, more than 80 percent of enterprise use of cloud computing
will be devoted to very large data queries, short-term massively
parallel workloads, or IT use by startups with little to no IT
infrastructure.