Who’s Who in Cloud May 17, 2013

May 17th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Private Cloud, Who's Who in Cloud Series
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Did you make this week's Who's Who?

It’s another Friday, and for that we are grateful. This week’s cloud publishings including an emphasis on the ongoing battle for feature dominance between the largest cloud service providers, how and why cloud is continuing to change the way business operates, and some of the key uses and challenges around big data usage.

If we missed anything let us know on Twitter @CloudGathering.

David Linthicum walks us through a success migration to the private cloud.

Brandon Butler explores Google’s latest foray into database services for the enterprise.

Patrick Burke discusses why cloud is booming… with a few surprise insights.
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Learn From the NY Knicks: Why Disaster Recovery Is So Important

May 16th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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Carmelo Anthony

Should your business put all its eggs in one basket like the Knicks?

After a record setting season, the Knicks look as though they’re heading out of the playoffs earlier than the pre-post-season performance would have indicated.

As we sat watching Tuesday night’s dismal performance, our mind naturally wandered to the cloud (duh) and to the lesson that the Knicks’ playing represented to businesses working in the cloud.

As an analogy, the Knicks (or insert your favorite, flagging basketball, baseball, football, etc., team) work well to help us understand how disaster recovery plays directly into how a company performs. Right now the Knicks are disastrous; teetering unnecessarily on the edge of defeat, so what can we learn from their missteps?

Let’s say the Knicks are a business deploying a cloud strategy at AWS. If the foundation of that cloud strategy wasn’t solid and that business found itself at the brink of a complete collapse, it’s safe to say that their DR plan was similarly lacking.
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Cloud, Mobile Bringing New Value to Agile Development Methods, Even in Bite-Sized Chunks

May 15th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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dana gardner

Check out briefingsdirectblog.blogspot.com for more from Dana Gardner.

This blog was originally posted by Gathering Clouds friend Dana Gardner on his blog, Briefings Direct.  It is used with permission by the author. 

As IT aligns itself with business goals, Agile software development is increasingly enabling developers to better create applications that meet user needs quickly. And, now, the advent of increased mobile apps development is further accelerating the power of Agile methods.

Thought it’s been around for decades, Agile’s tenets of collaboration, incremental development, speed, and flexibility resonate with IT leaders who want developers to focus on working with users to develop the applications. This method stands in contrast to the more rigid and traditional process of collecting user requirements, taking months to create a complete application, and delivering the application to users with the hopes that it fits the bill and that requirements haven’t changed during the process.
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Where Cloud Automation Can Go Wrong

May 14th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Private Cloud
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What have been your challenges with automation?

From the most basic tasks in our day to the products we buy, automation factors in on a massive scale. Automation is a benefit, allowing a range of businesses and industries to achieve greater levels of productivity more quickly and at reduced cost.

In the cloud automation is no different, playing a huge role in how a business can better utilize time and resources to provision infrastructure to support the mission critical applications that generate revenue. However, automation has side effects too. While a process standardization, automation is not immune to design flaws and even human error.
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“Why Cloud” VS “What’s Next For Cloud”

May 13th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry
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cloud meme

We all talk about cloud differently, but is there a way we should be speaking about this tech?

Cloud computing is now a widely reported, if not accepted, IT movement that, depending on who you talk to, has changed or is changing the way businesses utilize infrastructure.

The question remains, however, that if 2012 was the year that cloud really came into itself as a fully fledged concept, how has 2013 shaped up? As we reach the near midpoint of the year, its hard not to reflect on whether the conversation around cloud computing has evolved to the point that we are no longer talking about the benefits of the service itself, but whether what the service enables a business to do is much different than what had previously been possible.

Looking at the headlines on GigaOm, Techcrunch, Venturebeat, and other outlets, the reporting seems to be focused more on what cloud companies are doing from an M&A standpoint than on the technology or its value to businesses generally. Sure, there are explorations of OpenStack, but those reports seem to be focused on whether anyone actually cares or uses the platform.
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Who’s Who in Cloud May 10, 2013

May 10th, 2013 Posted in Who's Who in Cloud Series
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Willy wants to know...

Finally Friday, and finally warm! This week’s cloud publishings covered a range of topics including Barb Darrow “borrowing” our weekly round-up concept, more feedback on cloud certification, PaaS blurring the lines between different types of clouds, and the enterprise crack down on shadow IT.

Barb Darrow has been stealing our idea for a weekly round-up… and does a great job. Love you Barb :)

David Linthicum takes on Cloud certification. See our post about this here.

Sean Ludwig reports on SAP’s latest effort to brand itself as a cloud company.

Rebecca Grant sheds light on Enigma making public data more accessible.
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Does BYOD, Cloud Help Or Hurt Business Continuity Plans?

May 9th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Compliance
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byodmeme

Well if Chuck can't stop BYOD, we don't know who can...

Business continuity is a big deal. Having your infrastructure up and running in the case of an outage, a disaster, or some other unforeseen event can make the difference between generating more revenue (based in large part on your consistency as a business) and losing untold dollars and credibility.

One of the hallmarks of the new, distributed and mobile workforce is BYOD, a movement that is increasingly enabled by innovative cloud technologies. BYOD has great virtues for an organization, especially in the instances where business continuity planning comes into play. If your workforce can still access their communication and collaboration tools, any disruption to business as usual can be mitigated.

However, BYOD and the cloud technology that support BYOD present challenges to ensuring a business contingency plan runs as smoothly as it should. One of the issues BYOD presents is how data flows in and out of the most secure parts of an organization. In the case of a lapse, be it an outage or a breach, data stored in an employee device can represent a significant compliance/security threat if not tightly monitored or controlled.
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The (Other) Most Important Reasons Cloud is Made for Healthcare

May 8th, 2013 Posted in Cloud Computing Industry, Cloud Perspectives, Compliance
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Doctor in the clouds

This doctor knows cloud is going to help his organization.

HIMSS 2013 was a big moment for cloud in healthcare. As a topic of discussion, it was certainly on the lips of many at the show, but increasingly the realities of cost and functionality are pushing direct-to-patient organizations to consider the cloud not only as part of how they run IT, but as the way IT will work moving forward.

Cost savings is only part of the conversation, as is scalability, and mobility. Healthcare organizations are certainly taking advantage of these benefits, though cloud computing has become, in a way, a more fundamental proposition to help solve some of the major issues these companies face.

Compliance is obviously the elephant in the room when it comes to healthcare and cloud. With rules governing e-PHI and HIPAA making IT decisions around data and usage increasingly fraught and difficult to navigate, expertise in those compliance processes are even more important.
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About Logicworks
Logicworks provides cloud computing and managed hosting to some of the world's most respected brands including Dow Jones, NBC, Lincoln Center, Orion Health,
and 1-800-Flowers.com. Logicworks specializes in Private, Public and Hybrid Cloud Solutions for SaaS, Media, eCommerce, Mobile, Healthcare, and Financial services companies. Logicworks also offers a full suite of Compliance Solutions and Managed Database Services.

Contact Logicworks at 866-FOR-LOGIC or visit www.logicworks.net.

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