When you wake up in the morning and flip on a light switch, you don't think about whether the local power company has enough electricity available to power the light. Likewise, when you switch on the coffee pot or turn on your stove to make breakfast, you don't wonder about the available capacity of your local power grid. Similarly, cloud computing is rapidly making the delivery of business services second nature to business users. They are able to access the services they need, when they need them, because the dynamic nature of the cloud offers unprecedented, highly elastic computing capacity. Is your business able to fully exploit this flexibility? Cloud computing certainly brings with it new challenges for IT infrastructure management, particularly for capacity management. To get the most value from the cloud, you must continually balance capacity utilization, co... (more)

The Security of Popular Cloud Storage Sites

For enterprises moving more business and customer data to the cloud, investigating and selecting an online storage solution can be a challenging task. A primary concern is the level of data security offered by the sites being considered. While the theme holds true across all of the major providers (Box, DropBox, SkyDrive), for the purpose of illustration I'll focus on DropBox since it is arguably the most popular site boasting over 100 million users. Here is where some of the concerns begin; DropBox experienced a major security breach in July 2012, specifically involving user passwords. In response to the attack, DropBox attempted to improve password security by implementing two-factor authentication. But just last month though, a pair of researchers released a paper claiming they had reverse-engineered the DropBox application, providing details for how hackers c... (more)

Top 50 Bloggers on Cloud Computing

Ever since I first published here my tentative list of Top Players in the Cloud Computing Ecosystem - now expanded to a list of 250 and growing daily thanks to community feedback via my Twitter account (@jg21) and a very kind mention by ReadWriteWeb - there have been suggestions that another prism through which to view cloud computing might be that of people rather than companies. Now Michael Sheehan has encouraged me to Just Do It, so let me get started...as per the previous Top Cloud Players list, this list will a work-in-progress and is totally porous, so don't hesitate to ping or tweet me if there are folks I have missed. In particular if you are a journalist whose "beat" is Cloud Computing, please let's be hearing from you, and we can maybe widen this list from Cloud Bloggers to Cloud Commentators. For now though let's get started. In alphabetical order - to av... (more)

[Update 2] WikiLeaks & Web 3.0 - A Commentary

[Further updated to include advance word of Jay Rosen/Dave Winer "Rebooting the Media" podcast - #75 coming Monday Dec 6] [Updated to include PayPal announcement of the closure of WikiLeaks' PayPal account.] Is Web 3.0 maybe going to be less the utopia we've been envisaging and more like the real, physical world, with all the real-world limitations that follow along with it...? The latest WikiLeaks ("Cablegate") affair, coming as it does at the very end of the first decade of the 21st Century, comes at an appropriate moment. An undoubted political and diplomatic hornet's nest, the swirling discussions surrounding the organization's drip-drip release of (so far) 612 of the quarter of a million or so diplomatic cables in its possession are all grist to the mill of an "awakening" that in my view is likely going to mark the difference between the Web of 2000-1010 and that... (more)

Managing Enterprise Data Complexity Using Web Services: Part 2

Enterprises are increasingly feeling the need for shorter lead time for decision making, the need to extract and present KPI (Key Performance Indicators) to management, and the need for enhanced response capability. These business needs are not in sync with the technological challenges such as the presence of heterogeneous technologies and disparate enterprise systems (e.g., ERP, SCM, CRM, etc.). This situation gets complicated with the increasing number of mergers and acquisitions resulting in the various business units within an enterprise having their own data warehouses. Adding to this is the increasing number of users inside and outside the enterprise who need real-time access to information. In such a scenario, an EDD (Enterprise Digital Dashboard) would improve the lead time and quality of decision making by extracting and generating KPIs from enterprise sof... (more)

Parasoft's SOA Quality Solution

Parasoft announced native support for multiple commercial registries with Parasoft’s SOA Quality Solution. This integration enables teams to automatically execute quality a workflow and correlate quality data in context of a SOA Governance initiative. Parasoft’s SOA Quality Solution allows teams to automatically extract the information needed to create tests for design and development policies, such as standards, compliance, security and best practices for Web services assets as they are defined in a registry. Teams can select a service asset and verify the associated policies, thereby ensuring interoperability and consistency. "The ability to ensure that service and SOA design policies are properly and consistently addressed across the service development lifecycle is critical," said Sandra Rogers, program director for SOA, Web Services, and Integration... (more)

The Top 150 Players in Cloud Computing

Cloud Expo Early Bird Savings A robust ecosystem of solutions providers is emerging around cloud computing. Here, SYS-CON's Cloud Computing Journal expands its list of most active players in the fast-emerging Cloud Ecosystem, from the 'mere' 100 we identified back in January of this year, to half as many again - testimony, if any further were needed, to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites cited. As ever we encourage software engineers, developers, IT operations managers, and new/growing companies in every case to "suck it and see" by downloading or otherwise sampling the offering in question for themselves. (Omissions to this Top 150 list sh... (more)

OpenSpan SOA Acceleration Software for Lotus

OpenSpan has announced OpenSpan Windows Container for Lotus. According to the company, the new product enables IBM Lotus Expeditor version 6.2 or greater and IBM Lotus Notes version 8.5 or greater to be extended to integrate and automate native Windows applications. Lotus Expeditor, the company said, helps enterprises improve employee productivity and business responsiveness by providing a composite desktop that integrates and aggregates multiple business applications. OpenSpan extends the value and accelerates the ROI of Lotus Notes and Expeditor solutions by enabling rapid integration of a broad range of Windows applications. With OpenSpan, enterprises can combine disparate applications into a single Lotus Composite Desktop solution, automate data transfer between applications and leverage the integrated security, deployment and management features of the Lotus f... (more)

SOA & Cloud Computing To Intersect This Week at SOA World

Federal IT organizations across the DoD and IC are facing costly data storage and data processing challenges stemming from the vast amount of information they collect and analyze as a part of their mission. To effectively organize and utilize these growing information stores, enterprise applications must be capable of performing large-scale, data-intensive processing. Federal enterprise infrastructures supporting such applications are often inadequate to address these challenges, and IT organizations incur lost time and greater costs trying to scale resources to meet storage and computing demand. That is why Booz Allen Hamilton (BAH), in partnership with the Government, led a research and development pilot to address these challenges by leveraging Service-Oriented Architecture approaches to facilitate on-demand resource provisioning to fold into current business proc... (more)

"SOA in the Cloud Expo" 2009 New York Photo Album

SYS-CON's SOA World Conference & Expo, colocated with AJAXWorld RIA Conference & Expo, held on June 22-23, 2009, in New York City, featured parallel content-rich tracks reflecting the worldwide adoption of the distributed computing paradigm, in which web services are deployed through specific service-oriented architectures. The two content-packed days emphasized value with a rich array of sessions, keynotes, General Sessions, breakout sessions, and industry panels led by exceptional speakers. Enjoy the photo album of the show. More Than 60 Companies Sponsored or Exhibited at Cloud Computing Expo New York April 2009 Cloud Computing Conference & Expo West and East (past two events) were sponsored by more than 60 leading global cloud computing technology providers, including: 3Tera, Active Endpoints, AppSense, AppZero, Aria Systems, CA, Inc., Certeon, Cloud.com, Compos... (more)

Cisco Names Strategy Chief

Cisco has named Ned Hooper its chief strategy office responsible for M&A; and investments, a move Cisco watchers interpret as anointing CEO John Chambers’ heir presumptive. Hooper’s already the company’s senior VP of corporate development and head of its consumer unit, jobs he will keep. Cisco’s moving out of its traditional playground and says Hooper will help shape its plans and incubate new technologies. Acquired through an acquisition 11 years ago, Hooper was once Cisco’s VP of business development and bought Linksys, Scientific Atlanta, Webex, IronPort and Pure Digital, upping corporate revenue by $5 billion since 2002. ... (more)