Advanced Cloud

Learn about the valuable lessons IBM has learned as we have worked with customers over the past nine months on cloud computing initiatives. These insights are designed to help you understand some of the challenges and help you outline the criteria/service levels you should be asking your cloud service provider about. &nbsp1  1     [...]

3Leaf Systems – Describes itself as a provider of “next-generation server solutions to enable cloud computing.” Specifically, 3Leaf offers to help companies “achieve a terabyte of DRAM at dramatically low cost” based on low-cost commodity servers by providing virtualization of CPU and memory for an entire server farm. 3PAR- Recently announced its “Cloud-Agile” program, a [...]

The concept of cloud services development encompasses several different types of development. Let’s look at the different ways a company can use cloud computing to develop its own business applications. Software as a Service Software as a service, or SaaS, is probably the most common type of cloud service development. With SaaS, a single application [...]

What Is Cloud Storage? The servers used for cloud storage are typically hosted by third-party companies who operate large data centers. When you subscribe to a cloud storage service, you lease storage capacity from the cloud storage service. You then have access to the contracted amount of storage space, which you access via the Internet. [...]

A cloud is a pool of virtualized computer resources that can: Host a variety of different workloads, including batch-style back-end jobs and interactive, user-facing applications Allow workloads to be deployed and scaled out quickly through the rapid provisioning of virtual machines or physical machines Support redundant, self-recovering, highly scalable programming models that allow workloads to [...]

Why would you choose to develop new applications using the cloud services model? There are several good reasons to do—and a few reasons to be, perhaps,a bit more cautious. Advantages of Cloud Development One of the underlying advantages of cloud development is that of economy of scale. By taking advantage of the infrastructure provided by a [...]

Hear from the leading suppliers, integrators and end-users to give you the complete picture on Cloud Computing and SaaS Show Highlights: 3 day conference and exhibition on Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service Co-located with CloudCamp London – Free-to-Attend unconference – click here to register Co-located with the Green Enterprise World Forum – 1 day conference on [...]

Retailers today are working to do more with less. And for retailers seeking to get big results with minimal resources, cloud computing is beginning to look like a miracle.

In a recent Microsoft-commissioned survey of about 3,000 business decision-makers across the United States, nearly half of the respondents (48 percent) from the retail industry said that their companies have used cloud computing. One-third (32 percent) said that their companies were ready to move all applications to cloud computing.

So, what’s pulling retailers toward the cloud? It’s the ability of cloud computing to address three key challenges for retailers: focusing on core competencies, meeting unpredictable demands and improving customer service.

Sun Microsystems’s slogan is “The network is the computer,” and that’s as good as any to describe how cloud computing works. In essence, a network of computers functions as a single computer to serve data and applications to users over the Internet. The network exists in the “cloud” of IP addresses that we know as the Internet, offers massive computing power and storage capability, and enables widescale group collaboration. But that’s the simple explanation. Let’s take a look at how cloud computing works in more detail.

Do traditional IT metrics like ROI and TCO apply? How can the benefits of business agility be applied to the bottom line? The topic came up during a panel discussion at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week. “How do you measure productivity?” was the reply of one of the panelists. This has been [...]