Posts Tagged ‘cloud computing’

U.S. Government and Cloud Computing Wednesday, March 24th, 2010

The U.S. Chief Information Officer said the government wanted to put data such as health-care pricing information on the Web. Private companies like Microsoft, Google and Amazon are offering databases and programs through Web servers, helping users save on local storage.

By adopting the same strategy, US government can help save on U.S. storage needs and cut expenses. The government had spent over $500 billion in the past decade on data centers and other technology initiatives. This has led to duplication of stored data and applications, to huge increase in costs and to high consumption of energy.

The CIO of U.S. government is advocating cloud computing in government. Cloud refers to the Internet, and cloud computing involves moving data and applications from local user servers to Web servers managed by Web service providers. Google and Microsoft have introduced government-focused clouds to tap the potential market.

If the government embraces cloud computing it could signal that this option is a secure option, and more businesses could opt for the solution. Global spending on cloud computing is expected to top $44 billion in 2013, according to IDC.

Cloud computing can also help government employees to collaborate better and be more productive, and lead to dramatically reduced government costs.

Read about the initiatives at BusinessWeek.

Security of Cloud Technologies Wednesday, March 10th, 2010

Google and others are promoting cloud computing, under which applications and data are stored on the Internet cloud. For clients of cloud computing such as users of Google Apps, this provides the opportunity to focus on their core business instead of worrying over information technology incidentals such as installing and configuring software, upgrading it and attending to data security and backup issues.

Cloud computing service providers will attend to all the incidental issues. Users simply start using the application they want, which can be in as quick as a few minutes. Users can also access the applications and data from anywhere with an Internet connection.

However, users have not yet got all that comfortable with entrusting their data to the cloud service providers. A recent Data Management Healthcheck 2010 survey by BridgeHead Software reports that only 6.5% of the respondents reported having used the cloud to store their data.

The healthcare industry will have to cope with huge volumes of data as it adopts IT more aggressively. Cloud storage of the data can save huge amount of headache typically associated with managing such data volumes. The data must be stored safe from unauthorized access, backed up regularly to ensure that a copy is available in case the original is lost and quickly reconstructed in case a data loss incident occurs.

The major concern of survey respondents about cloud storage was regarding the security and availaibility of the data. The data generated by the industry is highly confidential and the companies are committed to protecting patient data.

Despite such concerns, experts anticipate that the cloud will increasingly be the preferred destination for data storage, backup and archiving. Read the story at: eHealthServer.

Emerging Trends in Information Technology Saturday, March 6th, 2010

Cloud Computing: With the increasing ease of accessing resources on the Internet, a new trend is emerging to use computing resources available on the Internet “cloud” instead of installing needed software on local machines. Even data storage can be moved to this cloud saving on expensive and difficult-to-manage local storage media. Dedicated service providers on the cloud can relieve computer users from the tedium and costs of tasks that are only incidental, such as software upgrade, data backup, disaster recovery and more.

Virtualization: Virtualization stands for a host of things in the computing world. The essence of virtualization is separating functionality from the underlying physical resource. For example, a computer user typically uses a physical computer to do various computing tasks. However, because the CPU of the computer does work extremely faster compared to the human user, it is possible for several users to use the CPU of a single machine without any apparent degradation in the computing service they receive. A virtualized system makes it possible for multiple users to use such underutilized physical computing resources.

Information Security: Instead of just virus attacks, businesss data is exposed to varied kinds of threats these days. Compliance requirements, preventing unauthorized access to data, theft of data during transmission over the Internet and denial of service attacks are examples of issues that have an impact on information security. Vulnerabilities can occur in hardware, software or during communication. Data losses can cripple businesses as business data is unique. In such a context, the approaches used to ensure confidentiality, integrity and availability of data are undergoing qualitative changes, including adoption of third-party online data storage, security verification of vendors, encryption of data and focused attention on business continuity issues.

Social Media: Social media such as networking sites and blogs are of interest not only to marketers who want to use these to communicate with prospective customers but even to job applicants who might find their applications rejected because of some inappropriate posts they made on their online profile. The media is new and few people know how to use it effectively and safely.

Communication: Communication is one area where practically everybody in modern societies have seen the results of progress. E-mails, live chats, VOIP, Video conferences, Webinars and social media mentioned above are all transforming the way we communicate. And technologies like text-to-voice and voice-to-text can help visual and hearing challenged persons to live more satisfying lives.

A visit to a reputed information technology exhibition is one way interested persons and organizations can get a better idea of the developments and the opportunities they offer for business.