From the Blogosphere @ Yacht Vacations & Charters

From the Blogosphere

By Bill McColl

A new third generation of tools for Big Data is now emerging that offer the scalability, parallelism, performance and data flexibility of tools like Hadoop, but, unlike Hadoop, can also continuously process realtime data streams. Moreover, these new tools are as easy to use as a spread...

Mar. 14, 2010 11:45 AM EDT Reads: 470

Army Knowledge Leaders Study Cloud Computing

By Kevin Jackson

This week it was my pleasure to explore cloud computing with Army Knowledge Leaders (AKL)! AKL is an intensive 2-year experience of training and work rotations designed to develop leadership, business and technology competencies to support the Army Chief Information Officer (CIO) miss...

Mar. 14, 2010 09:00 AM EDT Reads: 458

Stealth Cloud Computing Startup To Launch at Cloud Expo

By Jeremy Geelan

Cloud Computing Journal caught up with the CEO of a major new player in the fast-emerging Cloud ecosystem - a CEO who has taken an interesting and unusual decision. While signing up as the Platinum Plus Sponsor of the 5th International Cloud Expo, he and his company have decided to rem...

Mar. 14, 2010 08:45 AM EDT Reads: 4,435 Replies: 3

The Essential Cloud Considerations

By Archie Hendryx

Thinking about jumping on the cloud? True, I’ve had no qualms in showing my skepticism towards the marketing of ‘cloud computing’ and it being the mere repackaging of solutions which have existed for years, but the fact is it still addresses a concept and reality that exists and one wh...

Mar. 13, 2010 06:00 PM EST Reads: 359

Best Practices of Successful Cloud Users

By Hovhannes Avoyan

Is your website available to end users 99.8% or more of the time? If not, then count yourself in the “laggard” category, according to standards set by The Aberdeen Group, in its 2008 report “The Performance of Web Applications: Customers are Won or Lost in One Second.” In that study, l...

Mar. 13, 2010 03:15 PM EST Reads: 353

Cloud Computing for Small Business

By Brad Windecker

Orchestra explains how we use Cloud Computing and how it can benefit many small businesses. Cloud computing allows us to lower our IT costs, keep out IT resources scalable, and provides greater security and stability than we can ourselves. Find out more about how cloud computing can be...

Mar. 13, 2010 11:45 AM EST Reads: 568

The Value of Cloud Computing to Enterprises

By Dana Gardner

A panel of industry analysts, practitioners, and HP experts outlined the value proposition of moving to the cloud, the danger of inaction, and how companies can get started on their cloud journey.

Mar. 12, 2010 08:45 PM EST Reads: 378

Smart Virtualization Management Solutions

By Dustin Amrhein

Many of you are no strangers to virtualization. In fact, lots of you have been doing it in some form or fashion since the mainframe days. Virtualization is probably as hot now as it ever has been, thanks in part to the cloud fervor, but also due to the fact that it is making its way up...

Mar. 12, 2010 07:30 PM EST Reads: 380

Got a Question About Infrastructure?

By Lori MacVittie

Interoperability between networks has fueled the growth of applications that has in turn spurred the growth of networks and internetworking. This cycle has led to increasing strain on networks, applications, and people who manage them. The 'virtualization' of networks, servers, storage...

Mar. 12, 2010 02:16 PM EST Reads: 313

Your Roadmap To The Clouds – Part Two

By Ray DePena

In part I of this series, we began our journey towards next generation enterprise transformation. In part II, we will discuss some of the initiatives to abstract the enterprise, and create a virtual enterprise presence in the cloud. Last time, we spoke of undertaking initiatives, but...

Mar. 12, 2010 06:30 AM EST Reads: 474

A World-Class Website for a Revolutionary Service

By Hovhannes Avoyan

Monitis, a provider of affordable, easy-to-use, 100% Cloud-based, network and systems monitoring solutions, today announced that it has launched a totally new and completely revamped website. This addition caps a 12 month period in which Monitis has doubled its user base, won the 451 ...

Mar. 11, 2010 09:20 PM EST Reads: 360

Connecting the Enterprise to the Cloud Marketplace

By Francois Lascelles

With Google launching its new cloud-based enterprise apps marketplace these days, many people are paying closer attention to a maturing overall cloud offering. One of its components which caught my attention today is ironically something that you are meant to install enterprise-side: t...

Mar. 11, 2010 02:28 PM EST Reads: 282

Nine Steps To an Enterprise Cloud Service Utility

By Tony Bishop

Virtualization is the topic du jour in IT today. The technology is cool, the attributes are slick and now the stock market even is tracking it. The adoption problem that is facing virtualization strategies stems from a bottom up IT driven approach versus a top down business aligned app...

Mar. 11, 2010 11:00 AM EST Reads: 848

Introducing the Concept of the "Resource Cloud" at Cloud Expo 2010 in New York

By Jeremy Geelan

Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whom most people know as an English poet, also wrote some very nice prose about words. For example he was the one who summed up poetry itself as being about, above all, choosing "the best possible words in the best possible order."

Another fellow who...

Mar. 11, 2010 09:00 AM EST Reads: 1,273

Ubiquitous Computing - Merging Banks & Mobile Providers

By Reuven Cohen

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, the general idea of Ubiquitous Computing is a shift in computing where a small, inexpensive, robust network of processing devices, is distributed at all scales throughout everyday life and generally used in common-place objects and purposes...

Mar. 11, 2010 07:15 AM EST Reads: 445

Your Roadmap To The Clouds - Part I

By Ray DePena

Thank you for your patience while I gathered my thoughts on positioning the enterprise for cloud computing. In the article, “Silicon in the Cloud“, we discussed the influence of semiconductor innovation, particularly multi-core developments, on systems virtualization, and the resultin...

Mar. 11, 2010 07:00 AM EST Reads: 596

I CAN HAS DEFINISHUN of SoftADC and vADC?

By Lori MacVittie

In the networking side of the world, vendors often seek to differentiate their solutions not just based on features and functionality, but on form-factor, as well. Using a descriptor to impart an understanding of the deployment form-factor of a particular solution has always been quite...

Mar. 11, 2010 06:31 AM EST Reads: 298

Lessons Learned – Viral Marketing

By David Skok

A short study of this web site reveals that a hugely important factor for success in startup companies is finding ways to acquire customers at a low cost. In the Business Models section, we looked at the perfect business model: Viral customer acquisition with good monetization. However...

Mar. 10, 2010 07:00 PM EST Reads: 583

Cloud Expo Sponsor SOASTA Makes WSJ's Hottest VC-Backed Firms List

By Jeremy Geelan

SOASTA, a Bronze Sponsor of 5th International Cloud Expo cloud computing conference, upcoming next month in New York (April 19-21, 2010), has been named by the Wall Street Journal as one of the fifty "hottest" VC-backed firms in the US - the only Cloud player among the seventeen IT com...

Mar. 10, 2010 04:30 PM EST Reads: 597

Cast Iron Launches Integration Platform

By Dana Gardner

In a move to tackle a persistent cloud computing challenge, Cast Iron Systems just rolled out a new platform that aims to help companies large and small securely integrate public clouds, private clouds and on-premise applications. Dubbed OmniConnect, the cloud integration solution o...

Mar. 10, 2010 02:45 PM EST Reads: 401

SaaS Metrics – Measuring and Improving What Matters

By David Skok

This article looks at the high level goals of a SaaS business and drills down layer by layer to expose the key metrics that will help drive success. Metrics for metric’s sake are not very useful. Instead the goal is to provide a detailed look at what management must focus on to drive a...

Mar. 10, 2010 02:00 PM EST Reads: 638

David Skok Authors Startup and VC Blog on Ulitzer

By Fuat Kircaali

When I saw David Skok's name on recent Ulitzer authors page I was pleasantly surprised. David is one of the key figures in the technology space for the past two decades, including his venture capital activities. Throughout his long career, he successfully launched a number of companies...

Mar. 10, 2010 01:15 PM EST Reads: 503

Startup Killer: The Cost of Customer Acquisition

By David Skok

In the many thousands of articles advising entrepreneurs on what they have to focus on to build successful startups, much has been written about three key factors: team, product and market, with particular focus on the importance of product/market fit. Failure to get product/market fit...

Mar. 10, 2010 10:30 AM EST Reads: 520 Replies: 1

Six Things VCs Look For in An Investment

By David Skok

As a serial entrepreneur, I learned a lot of lessons from things that didn’t work. These lessons later on shaped my ideas on what would be needed to build a successful startup company. When I became a VC, I realized that these same lessons could be applied to helping evaluate the many ...

Mar. 10, 2010 10:00 AM EST Reads: 645

The Best VAR Management Program in the World?

By David Skok

How SolidWorks grew to $400m a year in revenues by helping their VARs become world class business leaders. SolidWorks was started back in 1993 with the vision of bringing solid modeling for mechanical design to the masses. Before SolidWorks entered the market, solid modeling was onl...

Mar. 10, 2010 09:45 AM EST Reads: 387

Designing Startup Metrics to Drive Successful Behavior

By David Skok

Great companies are almost always run by great management teams. And great management teams know that the only way to improve a process is to start by measuring it. Good metrics should also be actionable, and drive successful behavior. In this post I hope to help show how to figure out...

Mar. 10, 2010 08:45 AM EST Reads: 360

Cloud Computing in Developing Countries

By John Savageau

At the Digital Africa Summit 2010 in Kampala, Uganda, discussion is rightly focused on both telecommunications policy and economic development. Cloud computing is a topic heard among sidebar discussions, although it has yet to hit the mainstream of conference programming. We will br...

Mar. 10, 2010 08:00 AM EST Reads: 437

Cloud Event Processing – Where For Art Thou oh CEP?

By Colin Clark

Typical of event processing applications that do things are those in Capital Markets like algorthmic trading, pricing and market making. These applications perform some business function, often critcal in nature in their own right. Save connectivity to data sources and destinations, th...

Mar. 10, 2010 07:00 AM EST Reads: 236

If I Had a Hammer . . .

By Lori MacVittie

Nicolas Carr envisioned compute resources being delivered in a means similar to electricity. Though providers and consumers alike use the terminology to describe cloud computing billing and metering models, the reality is that we’ve just moved from a monthly server hosting model to a m...

Mar. 10, 2010 06:43 AM EST Reads: 334

Cordys MashApps Now Available Through the Google Apps Marketplace

By RealWire News Distribution

Cordys, the leading supplier of software for business process innovation, today announced it has added Cordys Process Factory™ and MashApps® to the Google Apps Marketplace™, Google's recently launched online storefront for Google Apps™ products and services. C...

Mar. 10, 2010 04:23 AM EST Reads: 265

Northrop Grumman & Lockheed Martin Selected for CANES

By Kevin Jackson

Last week the US Navy awarded initial CANES contracts to Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin. Navy officials place the contract values at $775M for Northrop and $937M for Lockheed. As the ke...

Mar. 8, 2010 09:35 PM EST Reads: 571

CA on the Cloud Hunt Again

By Hovhannes Avoyan

CA, the IT management software maker, is becoming an aggressive player in the cloud computing arena. Observers are noting that the company’s third cloud-related acquisition, of a firm called 3Tera, which developed cloud computing technology AppLogic, will help CA make it easier for cu...

Mar. 8, 2010 02:45 PM EST Reads: 501

Welcome 2010 & Cloud Computing

By Jnan Dash

We just finished the first decade of this century/millennium. The early part of this decade saw great worry about the Year 2000 problem. Much gloom and doom was predicted, but things passed off smoothly. No apocalyptic upheaval. As we usher into the next decade, the biggest buzzword i...

Mar. 8, 2010 01:45 PM EST Reads: 640

HP Opens Cloud Lab in Singapore

By Hovhannes Avoyan

Hewlett-Packard on February 24th opened an advanced collaborative research lab in Singapore to support its growing cloud business – what it calls its Hewlett-Packard on February 24th opened an advanced collaborative research lab in Singapore to support its growing cloud business – what...

Mar. 8, 2010 01:00 PM EST Reads: 699

Microsoft Is "All In" for Cloud Computing

By Jeremy Geelan

Expo, of which Microsoft is a Gold sponsor and one of the biggest exhibitors (out of over 70 leading Cloud companies exhibiting), came out of the corner swinging. Specifically Microsoft's CEO, Steve Ballmer, gave a speech on Thursday to computer science students at the University of...

Mar. 8, 2010 08:45 AM EST Reads: 1,190

The Corollary to Hoff's Law

By Lori MacVittie

“Security” concerns continue to top every cloud computing related survey. This could be because, well, CIOs and organizations in general are concerned about security. It could be because the broader question of control over the infrastructure – including security – is never proffere...

Mar. 8, 2010 08:07 AM EST Reads: 347

Microsoft Sets its Eyes Firmly on First Cloud, Then Mobile

By Dilip Tinnelvelly

Microsoft has sold 90 million copies of Windows 7 to date and no doubt makes the most popular operating system in history. But the past few years the media buzz has been all about radical innovators like Google and Apple who have made exciting headways in terms of fresh new product lin...

Mar. 8, 2010 06:30 AM EST Reads: 728

Cloud Event Processing: CEP in the Cloud

By Colin Clark

First, we need a tool that will configure and provision any number of nodes in our cloud. There are several vendors that have products in this space and I’m not going to talk about them here (yet). Secondly, and more importantly, we need an architecture that is layered on top of the ...

Mar. 7, 2010 07:15 PM EST Reads: 615

Company Co-Founders Launch CloudSwitch Topic

By Yeshim Deniz

Company co-founders John Considine and Ellen Rubin launched "CloudSwitch on Ulitzer" topic on Friday. Ulitzer presents the world's most influential cloud computing bloggers. Ulitzer's revolutionary new media platform offers the most comprehensive selection of breaking news, articles...

Mar. 5, 2010 12:57 PM EST Reads: 740

Dealing with the Cloud's Latent Tendencies

By John Considine

We have been working hard to allow you to move all of the components of your application to the cloud. With this capability, you are not adding the latency between your data center and the cloud to the interactions between the servers in the cloud. A simple example is moving both the...

Mar. 5, 2010 08:30 AM EST Reads: 642