Stories by Bernard Golden

Why CFOs and Cloud computing have a love-hate relationship

As I've noted a number of times, cloud computing promises both greater IT agility and reduced costs. No one disputes the agility issue. Compared to traditional resource deployment that can drag on for weeks or months, cloud computing offers the enormous improvement of a timetable measured in minutes.

Written by Bernard Golden14 March 12 03:43

How Cloud computing is forcing IT evolution

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.

Written by Bernard Golden02 March 12 03:15

How to break down the OpEx vs. CapEx Cloud computing debate

The debate about the economic benefits of cloud computing is intense, and is commonly boiled down to a talking point labelled OpEx vs. CapEx. Very often, like many talking points, the headline conflict is really a stalking horse that conceals the true source of conflict.

Written by Bernard Golden18 Feb. 12 05:34

SaaS, APTs and asymmetric risk take spotlight at Security Threats 2012

I had the opportunity to speak at a new security conference last week, Security Threats 2012. I presented on the topic of balancing business benefits with risks in the cloud (more on that later), but the event touched on a wide range of pertinent IT topics, provoking stimulating discussions of some of the most pressing challenges business leaders are facing.

Written by Bernard Golden03 Feb. 12 09:40

Cloud computing both more agile and less expensive

In Silicon Valley, the saying "it's a dessert topping and a floor wax" is often used to puncture the pretensions of a product that promises that it can address every need; it's applied to products claiming oxymoronic qualities.

Written by Bernard Golden27 Jan. 12 05:33

Cloud computing report card: Grading our predictions

A year ago I laid out my predictions for cloud computing in 2011. In the spirit of honesty and willingness to display my errors in public, I thought it would be useful to recap those predictions, grade them, comment on them and review an exciting, tumultuous year.

Written by Bernard Golden10 Jan. 12 09:07

Beware Cloud computing advice from IT research firms

I don't know how I missed this, but at the Gartner IT Symposium in October, Darryl Plummer (Chief of Gartner Cloud Research) apparently stated that enterprises should deploy applications in a public cloud provider as a default, and only deploy them in a private cloud if the public alternative is not appropriate.

Written by Bernard Golden10 Dec. 11 02:23

The great Cloud computing pricing debate

A continuing controversy in cloud computing is its putative cost benefits; specifically, whether public cloud computing can provide cost advantages over computing carried out within a company's own data center.

Written by Bernard Golden29 Nov. 11 08:38

Cloud Computing and the Truth About SLAs

I was looking through the program for an upcoming cloud computing conference and noted a number of sessions devoted to negotiating contracts and service level agreements (SLAs) with cloud providers. Reading the session descriptions, one cannot help but draw the conclusion that carefully crafting an SLA is fundamental to successfully using cloud computing.

Written by Bernard Golden09 Nov. 11 09:14

The IT jobs Cloud computing will create

I was interested in this week's ZDNet piece, Cloud computing's real creative destruction may be the IT workforce. The piece discusses a presentation at last week's Gartner Symposium that posited cloud computing will be a net destructor of IT jobs.

Written by Bernard Golden27 Oct. 11 02:30

The threat Cloud computing providers pose to corporate IT

People underestimate how much cloud providers present a challenge to IT as it's practiced today in most organisations. A couple of news stories brought home this point. They illustrate the existential threat that cloud computing and its practices present to corporate IT groups.

Written by Bernard Golden18 Oct. 11 08:01

Virtualization: Building blocks to achieve benefits

This week I was invited to attend a gathering at Collabworks, an organization focused on the virtual enterprise. Collabworks believes that the kinds of savings and efficiencies that virtualization has brought to IT can be brought to entire companies by reorganizing workplaces along the lines of what has happened in IT (virtualization to remove dependencies, focus on service outputs rather than processes, and use of specialized external resources rather than internal employees). As IT only accounts for around three percent of total corporate costs, if Collabworks' theory is right, there's clearly great opportunity for enterprises.

Written by Bernard Golden28 Sept. 11 06:46

How Cloud computing is changing data center design, cost

If you've read this blog for a while, it's no secret that I believe that one aspect of cloud computing is a dramatic drop in the cost of computing. While many discuss cloud computing's cost advantage in terms of better utilization via resource pooling and rapid elasticity, we believe that there is a more fundamental shift going on as data centers are redesigned to focus on scale, efficiency, and a shift to commodity components.

Written by Bernard Golden20 Sept. 11 05:10

Cloud computing: What you need to know about PaaS

Cloud computing discussions invariably begin with the "IPS" taxonomy: Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. This taxonomy has the virtue of being comprehensible and neatly partitioning assessment requirements:

Written by Bernard Golden09 Sept. 11 04:03
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