Every Friday we like to highlight some of our favorite posts on IT Operations, Cloud Computing, DevOps, Big Data and anything else that grabbed our attention over the week. Here are some great articles from the week of February 27th that are worth taking a look at. Enjoy and have a fantastic weekend!
How Red Hat killed its core product—and became a billion-dollar business by Jon Brodkin
A decade ago, Linux developer Red Hat faced a decision that would make or break the company: whether to stop producing the very product that gave Red Hat its name. The company was built on Red Hat Linux, but when Paul Cormier—now the head of Red Hat's technologies and products group—joined the company as vice president of engineering in 2001, he knew Red Hat's devotion to open source alone couldn't create a business model capable of standing up to the Microsofts and Oracles of the world. He pushed for drastic action.
Microsoft's Azure cloud down and out for 8 hours by Brid-Aine Parnell
Updated Microsoft's cloudy platform, Windows Azure, is experiencing a major outage: at the time of writing, its service management system had been down for about seven hours worldwide. A customer described the problem to The Register as an "admin nightmare" and said they couldn't understand how such an important system could go down.
Searching for the Mythical Single Pane of Glass by Floyd Strimling
IT specialization promised efficiency and increased performance. A couple years ago, it was common practice to keep the applications, server, storage and network teams separate from each other. In fact, IT managers purchased categorically distinct software packages because collaboration between these teams was not normal. Today that legacy still holds true, albeit with more silos and more complexity. It’s not uncommon to see separate silos for compute, virtualization, environmental and cloud teams in addition to the four traditional silos mentioned earlier.
Backupify launches instant backups of Salesforce.com data by Jason Hiner
In 2012, it’s fitting that the best way to back up a cloud app is with a cloud backup. That’s where Backupify has made its name — mostly doing cloud-managed backups of Google Apps — and now the company is expanding the service to the next big cloud app: Salesforce.com.
Cloud Computing and SaaS: Information Technology Evolving by Cenon
Information technology is very important in higher education. There are just many advantages of the IT that we cannot just ignore. For example, IT allows learners to actually explore the world in the safety of their classrooms. With IT facilities, the teacher can bring the world to the classroom and bring the classroom to the world. Information technology is very important in higher education. There are just many advantages of the IT that we cannot just ignore. For example, IT allows learners to actually explore the world in the safety of their classrooms. With IT facilities, the teacher can bring the world to the classroom and bring the classroom to the world.
Isolated Customer Data: A Better Fit for the Cloud? by Eric Farrar
For all that global business has embraced cloud computing - welcoming its low cost, low barrier to entry and reduced IT burden - not everything about this architectural sea change is working out perfectly. Limitations in security and customization are a growing source of discontent for many current and prospective cloud customers.
Cloud computing is forcing IT departments to evolve by Bernard Golden
I had the privilege of chairing the infrastructure track at last week's Cloud Connect conference. Three of the presentations were particularly interesting, offering a good perspective on just how dramatic an effect cloud computing is having on IT. Summed up, the capability and agility of cloud computing is forcing an extremely rapid evolution.
3 Tips for Using Cloud Services to Extend Your Data Center by Jim Buchanan
Cloud technology is emerging as a viable option for companies that want to cut costs, increase agility or augment their own IT resources without building out new infrastructure — or all of the above. But deciding which type of service is the best fit for your specific needs and ensuring the new cloud offerings play nice with your existing application mix is a challenge, to say the least.
Ericsson joins OpenStack, aiming at operators with cloud ambitions by Mikael Ricknäs
Ericsson has joined OpenStack as part of its plan to serve operators that want to become cloud computing providers, the company said on Tuesday. OpenStack is an open-source community that develops software for private and public clouds. The Swedish telecommunications vendor will contribute to help develop OpenStack to support carrier-grade services and applications.
Dell Planning Cloud Computing Certification for Partners by Matthew Weinberger
I had the chance to sit down with Dell Channel Chief Greg Davis at the Dell Enterprise Spring launch event Feb. 27, 2012, here in San Francisco for an update on the tech giant’s partner strategy. As you may guess, most of our conversation centered around Dell’s cloud strategy. And to help bring channel pros along for the cloud ride, Davis noted the coming weeks will see the launch of a cloud computing certification.
'Cloud' Data Center Closes Because Federal Agencies Prefer Earth by Caleb Garling
Harris Corporation — an outfit that provides computing infrastructure for government agencies — is selling its super-secure data center in Harrisonburg, Virginia and leaving the “cloud computing” business, saying that both its government and commercial customers prefer hosting “mission-critical information” on their own premises rather than in the proverbial cloud.
Has OpenStack finally won over IBM? by Barb Darrow
Updated: Since it launched two years ago, the open-source cloud computing platform OpenStack has won over an impressive array of tech backers, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard and Citrix. But not IBM.
Big data adoption issues – What’s the big deal? by Mark Thiele
So, if it’s safe to assume that big data is real, and that you should be investing, where do you start and what should you expect as you go through the adoption process? Big data today, is what the web was in 1993. We knew the web was something and that it might get big, but few of us really understood what “big” meant. Today, I believe we aren’t even scratching the surface of the big data opportunity.
Why Billion Dollar Red Hat and OpenStack Need to Dance by Floyd Strimling
On February 29, 2012, Red Hat’s fiscal year came to a close and they are expected to cross an important milestone; becoming the first billion dollar commercial open source software company. Whether or not you believe they are the first open source software company to cross this mythical threshold is inconsequential, the fact is Red Hat has done it. With all my sincerest respect and admiration, I tip my “red hat” to this historical accomplishment.
- RSA 2012: IT professionals worry critical infrastructure attack imminent by InfoSecurity
- Cloud Infographic: The Most Popular Big Data Sources by CloudTweaks
- What's a Splunk? Part of the Next Wave of Start-Ups Going Public by Pui-Wing Tam & Ben Worthen
