The Cloud Is the New Normal, says Amazon Web Services Exec

New Normal = The Cloud

'The cloud is the new normal,' Amazon Web Services executive says | Computerworld: "... Increasingly, however, AWS is finding that organizations are moving entire data centers, as well as their entire IT operations, to the cloud, Jassy said. An organization may have a lease coming up on a data center or need to do an expensive hardware refresh, and the pending costs or long-term commitment to infrastructure "that is kind of frozen in time," may cause it to more heavily consider the cloud, Jassy said. This is a trend that is accelerating at a very fast rate," he said. AWS' win of a government contract to run the services of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in 2013 caused a lot of other organizations to take notice, Jassy said. "A lot of customers would say if it's secure enough for the CIA, it is probably secure for us too," Jassy said...."

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Microsoft Cloud Apps, Enterprise Apps

PCWorld
Microsoft Cloud Apps vs. Best of Breed
Enterprise Apps Today
Microsoft offers cloud-based apps for business intelligence, CRM and ERP. You'll want to evaluate the "best-of-breed" approach to going with a single vendor like Microsoft for everything. When you think of Microsoft, you naturally think of operating systems ...

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Ken Goldberg: Robots in the Cloud

The Robot in the Cloud: A Conversation With Ken Goldberg
Ken Goldberg has been thinking hard about robots for almost three decades.
His work ranges from over 170 peer-reviewed papers on things like robot algorithms and social information filtering to art projects about the interaction of people and machines. A professor at the University of California, Berkeley, he is establishing a research center to develop medical robots to assist in surgery. That is just the latest development in what he thinks will be one of the great technology breakthroughs of our age: the fusing of robotics and cloud computing. He talks about it in this edited and condensed conversation.
Q. What is cloud robotics?
A. Cloud robotics is a new way of thinking about robots. For a long time, we thought that robots were off by themselves, with their own processing power. When we connect them to the cloud, the learning from one robot can be processed remotely and mixed with information from other robots.
.... The term “cloud robotics” was coined in 2010 by James Kuffner, who was at Carnegie Mellon and then went to Google. I had been doing robot control over the Internet since the mid-90s, with a garden people could connect to, then plant seeds or water their plants. The cloud is different from my Internet “telegarden,” though. The cloud can have all the computation and memory stored remotely. That means all of the endpoints can be lightweight, and there is a huge collective benefit. These robots can address billions of behaviors and learn how to do important things quickly....(read more at link above)

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Cloud-based Workday Streamlines Mobile Apps, Unveils Big Data Plans

InformationWeek
Workday Streamlines Mobile Apps, Unveils Big Data Plans
InformationWeek
Workday, the fast-growing, cloud-based HR and financial ERP applications vendor announced a fresh take on mobile apps and a coming wave of big data-powered analytic applications. Unveiled at the company's annual Workday Rising event in ...

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Google Cloud, Container Engine, Kubernetes

Google Builds New ‘Freeways’ to Its Data Centers for Cloud Push - Digits - WSJ: ".... Google built one of the world’s most powerful networks of data centers, but fell behind Amazon and Microsoft in the business of renting this remote computing horsepower to other companies. Google executives said they’re now an option for companies considering running projects in the cloud, something they couldn’t have said 18 months ago. Executives said they are less interested in projects that shift existing applications from a company’s own data center to the cloud, and more interested in persuading companies to create new applications in the cloud. “Are we winning in yesterday’s workloads? Probably not. But that will be how the minority of workloads are managed in the cloud in the future,” said Brian Stevens, vice president of cloud platforms at Google. Google is hoping to leapfrog Amazon by pushing its own approach to cloud computing, known as containers. The technology is considered faster and more efficient than more standard cloud computing technology known as virtual machines, experts say. In June, Google released an open-source version of the technology, called Kubernetes, to encourage adoption.... the company unveiled Container Engine, a service that Google said will automate much of the work involved in running applications using this technology."


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Cloud Computing, Coming of Age

Coming of Age in Cloud Computing - NYTimes.com: "... Microsoft, which operates one of the biggest so-called “public clouds,” or large and flexible computing systems available for remote rental, announced several changes to its data storage and processing services that will make them more powerful. Microsoft also announced a partnership with Dell to sell a kind of “cloud in a box,” or hardware and software that created a mini-version of Microsoft’s cloud, called Azure, inside a company. The idea is that a company could work with its own version of Azure, then easily move up to the giant version Microsoft has to handle big workloads. Hewlett-Packard may be after something similar with its effort to create a private-public cloud business based on the HP cloud, which uses a kind of open source software. What all of this means is that cloud computing, which makes it easier to tie more things to computers and more easily manage software, is starting to appear in even more forms and types...." (read more at link above)

Other Cloud NEWS:

InformationWeek
Cloud Computing: IT's Driving Again
InformationWeek
For example, in 2013 it reported cloud storage was growing at a rate 2.5 ... Organizations adopting cloud services expect to spend "54% of their IT ...


Defense One
Clarifying DISA's Cloud Computing Role
Signal Magazine
“I don't think DISA is going to be moving away from our participation in the cloudbrokerage, cloud services,” said Alfred Rivera, the agency's acting ...

Cloud computing in 2020: Looking into that crystal ball
CloudTech
Recently, @thedodgeretort of Enterprise CIO Forum held a Twitter chat about what cloud computing in 2020 will look like. I decided to write up a quick ...


ITProPortal
Demystifying cloud computing jargon: A guide to understanding the future of IT infrastructure
ITProPortal
How many of you really understand the cloud? If you were tasked with explaining "thecloud" to a child could you manage it? A recent discussion with ...

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IBM Sending Cognos and SPSS to the Cloud

Wall Street Journal
IBM sends Cognos and SPSS to the cloud
Computerworld
Two of IBM's most popular analysis products, the Cognos Business Intelligence and the SPSS predictive analytics package, are headed for the cloud, the latest in an ongoing push by IBM to port its vast software portfolio to the cloud. Accessing such a software ...

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Microsoft, Data Centers, Cloud Computing

CLOUD NEWS:

Computerworld
Microsoft leans on data-center strength to get cloud edge
Computerworld
Scott Guthrie, executive vice president, Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise group, shows how Microsoft differentiates Azure at a press conference earlier this month. Credit: James Niccolai/IDG News Service ...


The Globe and Mail
Memo to Microsoft skeptics: Don't look back, look forward
The Globe and Mail
Few companies, if any, have gone from startup to the Dow Jones in as little time as Microsoft Corp., yet the software giant doesn't get a lot of respect. That's part of what makes it an interesting investment. I think Microsoft is on the cusp of a period of ...

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Can IBM Compete In Cloud Computing

Doubtful--

IBM's Big Stumble - Businessweek: "... Rometty’s nearly impossible task of reinventing IBM for the era of cloud computing while handcuffed by the “Roadmap.” IBM is 103 years old and has survived upheavals in the technology industry before—selling mainframes, then personal computers, then getting into the consulting game. Rometty will tell anyone who listens that the changes demanded of IBM today are as great as they’ve ever been. One question is whether IBM has the technical chops to compete with Amazon and others: After losing a lucrative CIA cloud project to the upstart, IBM had to acquire a small competitor, SoftLayer, to competently provide the services its customers are now demanding. The arrival of cheap cloud computing means that corporations don’t need IBM’s big, expensive mainframes. And even if IBM does catch up, the cloud might be such a thin-margined industry that it can’t sustain the profit margins IBM had been telling investors to expect. Until today...."

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