Entries categorized under “Cloud Computing”

We live in the information age where data is being produced at rates that almost boggle the mind. But living in the age of Big Data does not translate into this data being easily available and digestible. The new DCIG Interactive Buyer's Guide (IBG) fundamentally addresses this basic organizational need by delivering information about enterprise technologies in the form of Research as a Service. (read more)

Managed File Transfer (MFT) companies are kicking off 2012 by positioning their products in the enterprise File Synchronization and Share (FSS) market. Their positioning is based on an organic growth and adoption trend of consumer-FSS by small, medium and large enterprises and organizations. (read more)

Multiple interfaces, multiple products, and multiple systems to learn and become an "expert" in each one - such is the life of a backup administrator. Every administrator has at times longed for the day when he or she might be able to manage all of their backups and recovery operations, as well as virtual machine and replication snapshots, from a single, integrated interface. That day may be coming sooner than you think. (read more)

The differences between small, midsize and large organizations may be many but when it comes to backup, they all seem to share one thing in common: a desire to speed up and simplify their backups. The challenge is that for each of these organizations to accomplish this they need to take different paths to do so. This universal desire for better ways to do backup was the impetus behind many of enhancements found in today's announcements of Symantec Backup Exec 2012 and NetBackup 7.5. (read more)

2012 ushers in the Consumerization of IT (CoIT) within the enterprise as the most strategic opportunity in IT infrastructure. CoIT is generally defined as consuming applications and content within your work life the same way you do it in your personal life. For enterprises to deliver equivalent applications they need more than an Enterprise App Store, they require a storage cloud supporting customers, partners and employees. (read more)

In the product and investing world, $1 billion dollars is interesting. Interesting markets draw new and existing companies. Derrick Harris of Gigaom believes Amazon's latest filing indicates they will have exceeded $1 billion dollars in revenue for Amazon Web Services by year end. $1 billion dollars creates a lot of interest by existing and venture backed product companies. (read more)

"Nirvanix was about a year ahead of everyone else in terms of what it could offer for enterprise cloud storage services." Making this claim is Fred Rodi, the CEO of DRFortress, who over the last year had to look ahead to determine which storage provider could best position DRFortress and it customers for the future of cloud storage. So when it came time for DRFortress to make the choice, Nirvanix was the hands down winner. (read more)

The ubiquitous username and password authentication scheme has been with us since the early days of the Internet. Since then, the Internet has grown tremendously in terms of both size and complexity with the threats faced by network devices and applications growing right along with them even though the means used to authenticate users and devices have stayed pretty much the same. To address these shortcomings, BlackRidge Technology introduced a new transparent means of authentication that adds a more robust layer of security while maintaining usability. (read more)

Right now many organizations are debating about who to select as their preferred cloud storage provider. But for organizations like USC that already manage petabytes of unstructured data, the decision is not about which provider to choose. Rather it is about deciding on the right technology that can transform it into both a private cloud storage user and a public cloud storage provider. (read more)

VMware will hit a tipping point with 2011 with VMware customers expected to cross the 50% virtualization threshold by the end of the year. But as VMware adoption accelerates, a hurdle that every organization faces as it looks to implement VMware vSphere is identifying a back-end storage system that delivers the appropriate levels of availability and performance at the right price point. Last week the new Symantec FileStore N8300 v5.7 with its new deduplication feature gave organizations a glimpse into how that may be accomplished. (read more)

Last week the DCIG team attended the Fall 2011 Storage Networking World (SNW) show in Orlando, FL. While there were a lot of cool storage companies, only two meetings left any kind of impression on me: one with IBM and another with SNIA. (read more)

Anyone who still doubts that Nirvanix is poised to deliver the same type of solution for cloud storage that VMware already delivers for cloud computing got a serious wake-up call this past week. Announcements that both Cerner and IBM entered into strategic relationships with Nirvanix are more than just validations of Nirvanix's cloud storage technology. They signal that Nirvanix is poised to become how enterprises of all size will eventually implement cloud storage. (read more)

I realize VMworld 2011 ended over a week ago and everyone is by now probably looking ahead to the next big thing. But before we leave VMworld 2011 behind in the annals of history, I wanted to take one final look at how VMware went about promoting cloud ownership. Because rather than telling users they should own "VMware's cloud" or "NetApp's Cloud" or "EMC's Cloud" or even some cloud service provider's cloud, it touted "Own Your Cloud." (read more)

Over the past 15 or so months DCIG has released a multitude of Buyer's Guides on topics ranging from Midrange Arrays to Virtual Server Backup Software to Small Enterprise Storage Arrays to Midrange Array Snapshot Software. As DCIG has done so, it has learned a great deal about what it has done right and areas where it can improve. But the general feedback is that the Buyer's Guides provide users valuable insight into different technologies and help them understand the market landscape. So today DCIG is announcing the topics for its Buyer's Guides that it plans to release for the remainder of 2011 and the first half of 2012. (read more)

This past Thursday I became aware of David Linthicum's Cloud Computing blog over at InfoWorld for the first time as a result of an email that was promoting a blog entry he wrote earlier this week. In that particular blog entry he warns why a shortage of cloud architects will soon lead to "bad clouds." That's interesting because I did not realize that the industry had really settled on what defines a "good" or a "bad" cloud. (read more)

A few weeks ago I posted a blog entry suggesting that network perimeter security had begun to break down with the advent of the cloud and the use of ubiquitous mobile devices to access resources stored in the cloud. The need of these devices to have a secure yet transparent method to access cloud resources has surpassed the ability of current Internet protocols and solutions to provide them. (read more)

Recently an individual brought to my attention that I had created a perception that some people thought I was "anti-cloud" and that I believe the cloud is "bad" or "evil." I am not exactly sure how that perception got created or how that conclusion was reached. But whether or not that perception is accurate, he does raise two valid points. What is my opinion of "the cloud" and how do I think organizations should proceed with it? (read more)

VMware shared a pretty astounding statistic this past Tuesday when it rolled out vSphere 5. It stated that 50% of application workloads will be virtualized by the end of 2011 with that ratio continuing to grow at a rate of 10% per year for the next few years. That's pretty remarkable considering ten years ago when I proposed starting to virtualize my prior company's infrastructure that I was scoffed at by many of my peers. (read more)

Scale-out storage has become one of the most rapidly growing areas of storage as it enables organizations to easily and rapidly scale storage into the hundreds of terabytes (TBs) or even petabytes (PBs). But between expensive scale-out solutions intended for enterprises and economical, stand-alone NAS solutions that meet the needs of small businesses, small and midsize enterprises go begging for a storage solution that meets their specific needs and price points. It is this gap that the new Gridstore NASg solution fills. (read more)

Independence Day on July 4th in the United States is only a few days away but as it approaches storage companies are cautiously celebrating their independence. As they do they are either looking to survive or aggressively looking to be acquired to avoid becoming a footnote in the annals of history with Pillar Data Systems becoming the latest storage company to join the ranks of the acquired that now pledges its allegiance to a new master. (read more)

There seems to be this almost naïve assumption out there that once "the cloud" is built everything in the computing world will be better. While I certainly agree with that to a point - cloud computing and cloud storage technologies stand to solve some very thorny problems within IT - there is one question that companies seem to be turning a blind eye to: "Who owns the cloud?" (read more)

The advent of cloud computing and storage clouds has resulted in enterprises bending to the breaking point the concept of segregated "internal" and "external" networks. n security parlance the "external" network is viewed as a dangerous and untrustworthy place and treated with respect bordering on fear. On the other hand the "internal" network has for the most part been treated as a safe place by IT departments. This basic concept, little changed since the 1990s, is rapidly reaching obsolescence in today's hybrid cloud-centric world. (read more)

The results of Applied Research's 2011 Virtualization and Evolution to the Cloud Survey are in and they reveal that enterprises are approaching both of these technologies (virtualization and cloud) with a great deal of caution. The feedback from 3,700 enterprises of various sizes in 35 different countries suggests that many organizations still struggle with the capabilities, challenges, and benefits of virtual and hybrid cloud computing even as the boardroom holds the line on budgets and staffing levels. (read more)

Companies that go from "Good" to "Great" do not get there by accident. They have what can only be considered the best employees, management, technology and support with a cohesive vision that aligns these factors while matching current industry trends. But even with all of those factors working in a company's favor, sometimes they need that extra intangible that motivates everyone to go the extra mile in the pursuit of perfection: a rival. In the case of NetApp, it feels that pressure from EMC to the point where it permeates the thinking of the entire company. (read more)

The start of every decade new trends emerge that do more than influence opinions and behavior for a few months or years. Instead they are megatrends that fundamentally shape and mold an industry for the entire decade and influence innovation that will come in the decades to follow. Right now four such megatrends are emerging that are reshaping datacenters as a whole and are changing how hardware and software are being delivered to them. (read more)