In his keynote at EMCworld 2012  in Las Vegas, Pat Gelsinger proposed a tongue-in-cheek equation for the “physics of information technology”.  He also used analogies drawn from the world of physics to talk about the transformations that are occurring in information technology — describing the transition from applications to data as a shift in the center of gravity, as well as discussing data in terms of concepts like structure, mass, velocity and half-life.

Pat’s analogy set me Continue Reading

LOCOG (London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games) have, not surprisingly, been the subject of increasing media coverage as the start of the London 2012 Olympics draws ever closer. Hidden amongst the news of security concerns, transport problems and allegations of over zealous protection of the Olympic brand was the headline “LOCOG CIO pans cloud!” Speaking at a BT press event this week Gerry Pennell, CIO for LOCOG, had apparently said that although the Olympic Games were likely to make greater use of cloud computing in the future, “it was certainly not Continue Reading

More and more business leaders are understanding the financial benefits that can be delivered by leveraging Cloud Computing. IT Consultants, Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s), Value Added Resellers (VAR’s) and Systems Integrators (SI’s) are beginning to comprehend the technical, service and operational aspects of Cloud Computing. Cloud based software companies are becoming synonymous with Cloud Computing and when discussing business application strategies share a common ground with legacy vendors.

When a business is setting it’s IT (or Cloud) Strategy it needs to understand the benefits and risks associated with the Private and Public Cloud models. Where should it look to provision business services from in terms of data security, reliability, Continue Reading

G-Cloud is live. After one of the shortest, leanest procurements in UK government history, we’re told that 1,700 services are available to government from nearly 300 suppliers. Although the process was short, for many suppliers this was hard work – often the first time they have dealt with government or the first time they have encountered terms such as “impact level 3″.  Crunching through the results must have been a challenge for the Cabinet Office team too – credit to them for getting there.

The question for many suppliers, though, will be “what now?”

Where are the customers?  Who do we talk to first?  How do we monetize the investment we have made in setting up this IL3 infrastructure at our cost?  Chris Chant has mentioned, several times, that Marks and Spencer don’t ask their potential customers “how many of you will buy a shirt?” Continue Reading

While doing my regular trawl of the computing media, research feeds and news articles this week I came across some seemingly contradictory headlines relating to how much impact Cloud Computing will have in the IT sector in 2012. The headlines included: -

G-Cloud adoption will be ‘mandatory’

Cloud has ‘no relevance’ say three-quarters of IT managers

Cloud computing is ‘picking up steam’

Cloud Computing is becoming a reality

An interesting, balanced, mix of headlines – a 50:50 split of positive and negative perspectives.

The first two headlines are the most interesting and highlight the organizational challenges associated with Cloud. The head of the UK governments G-Cloud initiative is taking an aggressive stance on Cloud adoption and is quoted as saying “We know some departments will have to be dragged kicking and screaming, and they probably will.” The second headline demonstrates that the reluctance to adopt Cloud isn’t constrained to the Public Sector. A survey conducted by risk consultancy Protiviti found only eight per cent of UK based companies are using cloud for one or two services, while just three per cent have adopted it more widely.  The apparent scepticism of the benefits of Cloud services isn’t just about data privacy (see my last post on data nationalisation) or security concerns, it is clear that some of the resistance is actually coming from within the IT organisation.

Now, it could be argued that resistance is perfectly understandable, some people see Cloud as akin to turkeys voting for Christmas, Continue Reading

In September the Dutch government announced that US Cloud based providers were being excluded from all Dutch government contracts amid concerns around the US Patriot Act.  In essence the Patriot Act requires a US based company or its subsidiaries, irrespective of where they are located in the world, to comply with US law. This can mean disclosure of European data in the US without the consent of the data owner as any data which is housed, stored or processed by a US based company, or its wholly owned subsidiaries, is vulnerable to interception and inspection by US authorities. This is contrary to current privacy laws in Europe and many other countries.

There are growing concerns about the US approach to data privacy and the potential impact on European data.  These concerns started some years ago with traditional outsourcing agreements and the concept of European data residing in third party data centres outside the EU. Model Contracts are already required for any data processing by non-EU companies or affiliates and some countries insist Continue Reading

So what is a Cloud Reference Architecture?

When you consume services from a Public Cloud Provider do you really care or want to understand what the underlying architecture looks like? Probably not.

However if you wanted to build your own Private or Community Cloud with Public Cloud Compatibility (Hybrid Cloud) then you would want to have a cloud reference architecture that you could use to align with strategy, to deliver quick wins, and ensure that each tactical decision was made with a full understanding of the knock-on implications. You would also want this architecture to support all of your base Operating System needs, UNIX, Linux, Microsoft, so creating a generic Cloud Reference Architecture that could be leveraged to deliver true business benefit. Continue Reading

Before I start this set of posts I feel the need to qualify my background. I spent my first 5 years in IT as a Mainframe operator before progressing to Open Systems, in particular IBM AIX (POWER) and HP HP-UX (PA-RISC) based systems. My first real foray into x86 (Intel) based processing came with the advent of Linux and in particular SuSE (now SLES).

I was often lambasted for being anti-Microsoft by colleagues, although they never seemed to realise that I had no real dislike of the Microsoft organisation, rather I could perform most of the ‘services’ each of the 30-40 W-Intel servers provided from a single UNIX, in my case AIX, server. I never understood the rationale of one ‘service’ one ‘server’ that seemed to be prevalent within the Microsoft W-Intel team.

So it isn’t as a W-Intel advocate that I write these posts, rather as a mature Mainframe/Open Systems Enterprise Architect who can recognise a business benefit when he sees it.

So what is the benefit I can see? Continue Reading

Cloud computing delivers a number of benefits to companies, the first being slashing the cost of running an IT infrastructure.

O2 explained that by moving to the cloud, services only need to be paid for when they are used, helping to reduce costs.

Head of ICT and business development at the organisation Nicola Mortimer said the second benefit of the cloud was to improve the flexibility of employees' working practices.

Staff are not tied to their desks and can carry out their duties from other locations, boosting their work-life balance.

On the third advantage, she explained: "From a market perspective, you've obviously got access to the complete market space that's online as opposed to being restricted to where your feet on the street can go."

Despite the positives of moving to the cloud, a recent survey by iReach for O2 found that 54 per cent of businesses are confused about what cloud computing means, while more than two-thirds are concerned about the technology's security.

Smaller firms have been using software as a service (SaaS), while some of their larger counterparts have moved towards platform and infrastructure as a service (PaaS/IaaS).

This is according to Seth Robinson, author of the second annual Trends in Cloud Computing report from CompTIA.

He was commenting on the recent survey which showed that 69 per cent of respondents use SaaS, while just under a third has deployed PaaS/IaaS.

Meanwhile, an extra 36 per cent said they plan to use PaaS/IaaS, leading Mr Robinson to state: "So that data – together with the data on public, private or hybrid clouds – really leads us to believe end users have been experimenting with cloud and there's been an early adoption phase here."

The simplicity and affordability of SaaS means it is an ideal way to start the transition towards the cloud.

It has also been asserted by EuroCloud that ready-made cloud applications – or SaaS – are becoming increasingly popular with small businesses because they are cost effective and help them to address emerging computing issues.