Cloud computing does not suit all companies or applications, but it should be a key part of any organisation’s outsourcing strategy, says Forrester Research.

Businesses are faced with a set of choices for providing services, and success means making the right choices, James Staten, principal analyst at Forrester, told Computer Weekly.

“This is not a black and white issue of in-house versus the cloud,” he will tell attendees of the co-located Forrester EMEA 2010 Security Forum and Infrastructure & Operations Forum in London on 11-12 March.

Right sourcing means choosing the most appropriate model to optimise operations for each company and each application according to regulatory and business demands, he said.

Cloud services may not necessarily be more cost or operationally efficient than providing the same service in-house or outsourcing to a traditional application hosting provider, said Staten. “Cloud-based services may in fact be more expensive if the business does not have good network access from all sites or operates under a complex set of regulations.”

more of the ComputerWeekly article from Warwick Ashford

IT professionals are finding it harder than ever to set up access controls for network resources and applications used by organization employees, and cloud computing is only adding to their woes, a survey of 728 IT practitioners finds.

Endpoint security gets complicated

The Ponemon Institute’s “2010 Access Governance Trends Survey,” which asked 728 IT practitioners about their procedures and outcomes in setting up access to information resources, found the situation worsening over the past two years. In comparison to a similar survey done by Ponemon two years ago, this year’s survey found 87% believed individuals had too much access to information systems, up 9% from 2008.

And in a new question asked this year about how use of cloud computing fits with access-control strategies, 73% of respondents said adoption of cloud-based applications is enabling business users to circumvent existing access policies.Cloud-based services “are often purchased directly by business units without consideration of access governance,” says the 2010 Access Governance Trends Survey, published Monday. The survey was sponsored by Aveksa.

more of the CIO.com article from Ellen Messmer

UK businesses are primarily concerned with SaaS and cloud computing with 31 per cent saying it is driving increased use of data centre capacity, according to a national survey commissioned by Telehouse of over 100 senior IT professionals. With Gartner forecasting that the cloud computing market could reach a global value of $150 billion by 2013, it is unsurprising that 83 per cent of respondents predict that their data centre requirement will also grow in the next three years. Looking further ahead, over 80 per cent of respondents thought that securing access to additional data centre capacity would be either ‘critical’ or ‘important’ in the next five years.

Only four per cent said governance is driving increased use of data centre capacity in their organisation, suggesting that some businesses may potentially be overlooking the data demands of governance. Currently, businesses are required to retain a vast amount of electronic data for possible government inspection. Key regulatory legislation affecting UK businesses include Basle II and MiFID in banking, HIPAA for the pharmaceutical industry or Sarbanes-Oxley for companies with a US footprint.

more of the Cloud Computing Journal aritcle

Recently, Cisco started saying that virtualization doesn’t actually save money due to increased management costs involved with running a virtual infrastructure. Sure, in the same glossy Cisco was selling its “unified computing” system and management tools, but it may have had a point. Sometimes it may seem like running a virtualized environment is more work.

It’s certainly different, which means there is a one-time learning curve. The ramp-up costs associated with learning management tools for a given virtualization environment are one-time costs, or sunk costs, that wouldn’t factor into the calculation of yearly IT management costs.

There are fundamental differences in the way virtualized servers are managed, however. If these differences, compared to running bare-metal servers, prove to add a substantial management overhead, there may be something to this notion. Let’s talk about four aspects of managing a virtual environment: deployment, managing changes, monitoring and tuning.

More of the Enterprise Networking Planet article from Charlie Schluting

Is outsource data center space a better alternative than infrastructure as a service? Many of Lifeline Data Centers newer clients are second generation outsource data center users. They are moving out of the cloud, or out of another data center and into Lifeline. Their reasons for moving fall into a few categories:

Infrastructure as a service was a good solution at startup, but became too expensive to use as the client grew and needed more resources.

The cost of downtime is high and the clients have experienced data center downtime with their current outsource data center or cloud computing provider.

Data center certifications and data center compliance were difficult or impossible to evaluate/audit in a cloud-based environment.

Clients experienced performance issues that were difficult or impossible to isolate in a fully-hosted, cloud- based environment.

Clients do the math and determine that leasing/buying hardware and placing it in a facility with a sensible data center pricing model is a less expensive alternative.

Clients have had some costly downtime pain and want to take back control of their environments to guarantee that they have hardware, software and data center redundancy where it counts.

Clients realize that what they really need is a hybrid model that includes both outsource data center space and infrastructure as a service/software as a service.

Why are they choosing Lifeline Data Centers over other providers for their outsource computer room space?

Flexibility – clients can buy shared space or private cages, and can purchase extra space for growth without paying a penalty.

Uptime – Lifeline provides 99.995% uptime, the same levels as Uptime Institute certified tier IV data center facilities. And Lifeline’s hardened data centers are F5 tornado resistant.

Data center pricing model – Lifeline has a simple pricing model that separates floor space, per rack charges and power utilization. This appeals to clients who need incremental growth and easy forecasting of future costs.

Carrier neutral data center with no cross connect fees – Lifeline offers access to 15 carriers with no monthly cross-connect fees. Many clients find that the cross-connect fee savings can pay for their outsource data center space.

Data center power costs – Lifeline’s two Midwest colocation facilities deliver low power costs and pay-as you-use-it pricing.

Is outsource data center space a better alternative than infrastructure as a service? It depends, of course, on the nature of your business needs. For affordable colocation, call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591 to learn more about your best alternatives for outsource data center and cloud computing data center options to take advantage of the best of both worlds.

There are many good reasons to shift storage over to the cloud, but the question remains whether large numbers of enterprises are ready to take the plunge just yet.

After all, it’s not easy to give up a tried and true data preservation method — and just because someone says they can provide the same service for less money doesn’t mean you should run off into the forest without a clear idea of what the consequences are.

So in that vein, I’m hoping to highlight some of the actual operational benefits that cloud storage offers. The cloud may be cheaper, but is it better?

Jeff Echols, senior director of cloud storage at CommVault, lists a number of advantages above and beyond the cost factor in a recent Business Week blog. Among them, he cites improved employee productivity by off-loading routine storage operations to a third party, the end of tape archiving, improved disaster recovery, and the ability to access resources based on need rather than what’s available in-house. As long as your applications are secure enough to facilitate the movement, archiving and discovery of data on the cloud, you should find the cloud a much more flexible environment than traditional server infrastructure.

more of the IT Business Edge article from Arthur Cole

Anyone currently involved in cloud computing as a customer, software/hardware vendor, or service provider would be well-served to have a healthy dose of skepticism about them at all times.

We’re (still) in the heady, early days of cloud computing. You know, the lofty part that Gartner labels on its hype curve as the “peak of inflated expectations.” Publications are filled with stories about the promise of cloud computing. Cloud events are popping up right and left (like, say, Cloud Connect, Cloud Expo, worldwide Cloud Camps, SF Cloud Club, and until very recently, two things named Cloud Slam). Customer success stories are still tought to come by and charges of “cloudwashing” are being flung around as some of the less reputable marketers quickly try to latch onto something to get their products some attention.

So how do you judge the merits of anything in an environment like this? The way you always should: consider the potential of the idea, and then watch the results.

This played out close to home for me over the past few months. It has been in this buzz-filled environment that I have been helping CA work on a number of cloud-related acquisitions (in fact, for those keeping track, the recently announced 3Tera and Nimsoft acquisitions are now officially done deals). A number of analysts and industry commentators have been impressed with what we’ve been working on, which is the reaction you always hope for when you are investing the many hours putting these things together.

more of the Data Center Dialog post from Jay Fry

We’re hearing more stories and seeing more companies move their infrastructure out of a virtual environment and back into a physical environment using high-reliability outsourced data centers.

Why are these companies making the switch? Long-term costs. Virtual environments often charge by the resource, i.e. disk, processors, number of servers, and SAN throughput. Companies using virtual infrastructure are finding that the cost of these resources over time becomes too high. If the company is a SaaS provider, the costs eat into profits. Companies using virtual infrastructure for internal IT see an ever-escalating monthly operating expense.

So these companies spend some time evaluating their infrastructure and come up with a suitable hardware/software architecture. It’s much easier these days to build in reliability and redundancy. The companies are using hypervisor software like VMware, multiple physical servers, redundant SANs, dual switches and dual firewalls. They end up with an architecture that can survive multiple failures with no interruptions in service. And often times the hardware/software architecture pays for itself in one year when compared to their virtual environment. Long-term costs go down, and the company ends up having more control over their infrastructure.

The new equipment needs a home. Companies are using affordable colocation rather than expensive IT managed services providers. What are they looking for?

• 99.995% uptime – 27 minutes of downtime per year or less, equal to that of an Uptime Institute certified tier IV data center
• Fair pricing – a simple, easy-to-understand data center pricing model helps with forecasting and incremental growth
• Hardened data center facilities – buildings that are F5 tornado resistant
• Carrier neutral data centers – many choices on telecommunications providers for bandwidth and transport
• No cross connect fees – no monthly add-on fees for connections directly to the carriers
• Data center certifications and compliance – SAS 70 Type II data centers, TIA 942 compliant data centers

What are the savings? Do the math. You may find out that you’re spending too much on your cloud computing data center’s virtual environment.

Do you need to drive the costs out of your application delivery model? Call Lifeline Data Centers at 317.423.2591.

Thanks to x86 server virtualization and its follow-on technologies, the state-of-the-art enterprise data center looks vastly different than it did even a year ago.

Network World — Thanks to x86 server virtualization and its follow-on technologies, the state-of-the-art enterprise data center looks vastly different than it did even a year ago.

And moving from old school to next-generation isn’t just about hardware and software – it’s a call for a new way of thinking about the data center, as well.

“Some people are so accustomed to one application, one server and a methodology that locks you in to one way of thinking that they’re having a hard time fully understanding the new data center,” says Bill Fife, director of technology for Wholesale Electric Supply Co., in Houston.

“But now with thin replication and replays and synchronization to disaster recovery sites, and virtual machines being able to move files from data store to data store and having multiple data stores on the server, and adding network adapters, you really have to sit back and think about how you want to run your operations and remember that you have options. You’re not tied down to any one path. You can go down one road today and change directions tomorrow,” Fife says.

Here are four of the major trends in today’s data center:

more of the CIO Magazine article, originally in Network World by Beth Schultz

It’s Tuesday afternoon, March 16 in Manila as I am finishing this story. I started it last night, when I was struck by the similarity of quotes from Larry Ellison and Richard Stallman about Cloud Computing.

Both have expressed doubts about the term: Larry because he thinks (or thought at one time) that Oracle was already doing many cloudish things, Richard because he sees a vast conspiracy in turning over personal computing assets and capabilities to corporations. Richard’s apparent viewpoint syncs up nicely with the succinct words of John Dvorak, who wrote that “the cloud stinks” recently, referring to the idea of Microsoft delivering future personal computing apps through a metered cloud (which they would control completely) rather than through hard copies or downloads.

My idea was to contrast Ellison’s and Stallman’s quotes, then write a bit about how it’s time to define precisely what we’re talking about when we’re talking about Cloud Computing. We don’t want Cloud Computing to become just another cliche along the lines of Web 2.0, which although articulated well by Tim O’Reilly a few years back, today is more of a handwave than a precise definition and has come to mean whatever someone (or some company) says what it means.

more of the Cloud Computing Journal article from Roger Strukhoff