News

• Public cloud shakeup: VMware in, Dell out, and OpenStack in limbo?

  It's been a busy week in the cloud. Dell ditched plans to build its own cloud and instead will work with partners, while focusing on private clouds. In an opposite move, VMware revealed its plans for how it will compete in the public cloud market.

• Hybrid public-private Cloud usage more widespread than you think

  Many times in discussions about Cloud computing, the hybrid Cloud – meaning a service that combines both off-site public Cloud and on-premises private Cloud computing resources – is thought of as being some nirvana state that will be the dominant architecture at some point in the future.

• Dell dumps OpenStack and VMware for public cloud, focuses on private clouds

  Dell has dramatically shifted its cloud computing strategy, canceling plans it once had to launch a public cloud service based on the OpenStack open source platform, and discontinuing a VMware-based public cloud it already has on the market.

• Successful companies embrace shadow IT

  Businesses move quickly, and those that make missteps along the way or fail to adapt to the times rarely go unscathed. Consider the fate of the original 12 companies listed in the Dow. While General Electric is still an independent company, most of the others have been acquired by larger companies or have vanished altogether.

• The benefits of cloud-based BPM

  In 2011 Gartner's Jim Sinur predicted that business process management and the cloud would be the "real thunder." He stated that moving operations to the cloud would free up money and efforts for businesses, and those organizations would be remiss to ignore BPM.

• How VMware will try to shake up the Cloud market this week

  There have been rumors and speculation. There have been whispers and rumblings. But this week VMware is expected to release details about its plans to launch a public Ccloud offering, the central part of its new hybrid Cloud strategy.

• Newvem expands to monitor Azure and Amazon clouds

  Newvem, which sells a tool that allows users to track and optimize their use of cloud computing resources, has expanded its software's functionality to monitor not just Amazon Web Services, but now Microsoft Azure now as well.

• Former Amazon cloud engineer spills to Reddit audience

  Usually Amazon Web Services, which many consider to be the leader in the infrastructure as a service (IaaS) cloud computing market, is pretty hush-hush about the internal workings of its massive cloud.

• ServiceNow wants to be the cloud for IT

  Many enterprise IT shops may be reluctant to jump head first into cloud computing. After all, there are a variety of concerns that come with using the cloud, from security to integrations with existing systems, and perhaps most scary: What the cloud will mean for your IT job.

• SunGard brings cloud service to disaster recovery

  Can the old guard in business continuity and disaster-recovery services thrive in an era when the companies are looking at new ways to process business data? SunGard Data Systems, with decades of experience in availability services, is feeling the pinch as some business clientele move data to the cloud. But SunGard says it's pushing forward with innovations that are making it a public cloud provider as well with the kind of application availability it says will be hard to match elsewhere.

• Google rolls out by-the-minute cloud billing, introduces a new NoSQL database

  Google, attempting to build its reputation as an enterprise and developer-focused cloud computing provider, today said its cloud platform is open for anyone to signup for, and can be used with a new by-the-minute billing scheme.

• Dell 'refining' plans for OpenStack-powered public cloud

  Fresh off the acquisition of a company that specializes in helping customers manage resources across multiple public clouds, Dell said it is "refining" its own plans to build a public cloud based on OpenStack.

• Nick Carr's IT Doesn't Matter still matters

  Nick Carr's article "IT Doesn't Matter" was published in in Harvard Business Review in May 2003 and ignited an industry firestorm for its perceived dismissal of the strategic value of IT.

• Q&A: Nick Carr on 10th anniversary of 'IT Doesn't Matter'

  Nick Carr rocked the tech world with his controversial essay in the May 2003 issue of the Harvard Business Review, titled "IT Doesn't Matter." Carr claimed companies were overspending on IT and that the competitive advantage to be gained by tech investments was shrinking as technology became more commoditized and accessible to everyone. On the 10-year anniversary of the article's publication, Carr talked with Network World's Ann Bednarz about what he got right, what he got wrong, and how the piece remains relevant today.

• Big Data is a big but young market

  A recent survey by Forrester found that 7 per cent of IT executives and 9 per cent of business leaders feel they have gained a true return on investment from Big Data. That means there's a lot more business can be doing to glean insights from the massive amount of data that's potentially available to them.