Amazon and the Unknown Unknowns

Amazon's Unknown Unknowns - NYTimes.com: " . . . On Dec. 29, Amazon Web Services published a detailed explanation of what went wrong Christmas Eve, when Netflix and many other customers (Amazon won’t say how many) had service disruptions. The company also described what it was doing to ensure the problem would not happen again. . . . In the future, developers will need specific permission to change the data load balancing equipment. What isn’t clear is whether A.W.S. can examine all of its own management practices to see if there are other such decision-making flaws. Mr. Selipsky, understandably, could not say whether everything else was solid, though he did note that Amazon had eight years of experience running and managing big systems for others. To be sure, such breakdowns happen all the time with old-style corporate servers. While they don’t have the dramatic effect of an A.W.S. failure, they may collectively represent much more downtime. In a study commissioned by Amazon, IDC said downtime on A.W.S. was 72 percent less per year than on conventional corporate servers. While the financing of the study makes its conclusions somewhat questionable, its results are in line with similar studies about online e-mail systems compared with in-house products."

Up in the Cloud: Hype and High Expectations for Cloud Computing
Knowledge@Wharton
A recent global survey by Knowledge@Wharton and SAP's Performance Benchmarking team reveals that while the hype and excitement surrounding cloudcomputing is reaching a fever pitch, many businesses are still expressing concerns over cloud security and ...

Knowledge@Wharton

Ready for the rules of cloud computing databases in 2013? — Tech ...
Summary: How is the database market changing, and what are the new rules for cloud databases in 2013 and beyond? Find out when you join GigaOM ...
gigaom.com/.../ready-for-the-rules-of-cloud-computing-datab...

Picking the Right Cloud Storage Solution
Technorati
Finding the right cloud storage provider is now easier with small business and consumer review site NextAdvisor.com, who announced a cloud storage category offering consumers its top picks. It also allows visitors to compare cloud storageservices like ...

Cisco-Backs Hosting and Cloud Services Company Parallels
Private Equity Hub (press release)
Parallels, a hosting and cloud services company, has inked an undisclosed amount of financing from Cisco. As part of the investment, Parallels and Cisco agreed to expand joint development, marketing and industry initiatives, the companies said.

Oracle Lists Drivers of Cloud Computing
AllAfrica.com
Oracle, an integrated Information Technology (IT) solution provider in hardware and software systems has identified accessibility, simplicity and robustness as key drivers to cloud computing. Senior Vice-President for Eastern Central Europe, Middle ...

EU's strategy for cloud computing needs to expand
New Europe
On 16 January, the European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) announced that EU blueprint for cloud computing falls short. EESC reports that the Commission should widen its strategy and invest in the development of cloud computing software and ...

New Europe

Impact of Cloud Computing on the Datacenter Identified by Computacenter
Marketwire (press release)
A staggering 98.9% of organisations interviewed claimed to use at least one cloud service. The datacenter needs to continually adapt to cope with planned and unplanned demands from the business, an issue which has intensified with huge virtualisation ...

The Penny Pinchers of the Cloud Jessica Leber
MIT Technology Review
Cloudability is one of a crop of startups aimed at helping businesses understand the costs of cloud computing as the technology matures and much larger businesses get more comfortable with the idea of renting or leasing remote computing capacity to run ...

Ovum Says “Data Will Be The New Cloud Computing Oil” In 2013
Exchange News Direct
Cloud computing services, and the (social, mobile) applications that cloud platforms underpin, generate a lot of data, which in turn requires cloud services and applications to make sense of it. This trend connects with and fuels other industry trends ...

Cloud Computing Users Are Losing Data, Symantec Finds SYMC
Investor's Business Daily
The other issues identified by Symantec are faulty cloud backup — that's the one tied to the data loss statistic — inefficient use of the amount of cloud storage purchased, not toeing the line with corporate regulatory compliance requirements and ...

Cloud computing features heavily in 2013 CIO tech priorities
CloudTech
The importance of cloud computing in the overall tech sphere has again been emphasised in a Gartner report surveying over 2,000 CIOs on their technology priorities for 2013. Cloudy areas featured heavily in the top 10 priorities for CIOs, with cloud ...

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