Peter's Griddle on Club Cloud Computing.com

Using the cloud for backing up WordPress

2012-02-09T08:48:00.001+01:00

When I teach my cloud computing course for business professionals, I always aim to explain the big issues through the use of small examples. Here I want to illustrate using cloud computing for deployment and backup. The small example is my new website, of which the main features will be blogging and membership. So I have decided to use WordPress, assuming we can get proper membership site

When Cloud Computing is too expensive

2012-02-03T10:22:00.000+01:00

Cloud computing may look cheap, but it isn't the cheapest option for everyone. Forbes published an article with lots of hard market data on actual cloud and non cloud alternatives, written by Gene Marks, who advises clients on their IT purchases. He helped 30 small businesses evaluate cloud computing solutions. All of these turned down cloud computing on the basis of cost. So how come cloud

Stopping Senseless Sprawl of Private Clouds

2012-02-01T08:21:00.000+01:00

Even in a cloud world, reducing server count is a lofty goal in itself. After all, you would be paying for all those servers anyway. And sticking all your servers in a private cloud makes them more flexible, but not necessarily more efficient or cheaper. So today I bring you an interview with a guy who has a full time job in keeping those server counts down. Ron Kaminski is a capacity planner

ProCert Approval for Cloud Essentials Courseware

2012-01-30T09:16:00.002+01:00

Another important step for our courseware: official blessing for Cloud Essentials. You should subscribe to these Ron Hogue video's. They are brief, informative and fun. If you want to know more about the training, visit www.cloudessentials.net

Cloud architecture: there are no brokers

2012-01-23T00:00:00.000+01:00

Cloud architecture: What is the difference between a cloud broker and a cloud provider? Recently, I have done a deep dive into the NIST cloud definitions, as we are revising the cloud computing course www.cloudessentials.net. The NIST definitions identify a number of actors in the cloud ecosystem (see NIST SP500-292 Cloud Computing Reference Architecture). Two of these are the cloud broker and

Run your business from the cloud

2012-01-20T11:37:00.000+01:00

My business friend Henri Koppen and I wrote a little book on how to get started as a user of cloud computing services. You will find the book here. We list the stuff any typical company does with IT, like mail, documents, customer relations, website, projects, and digital sales. For each of these we list one or more cloud based tools we use ourselves. You will also find a chapter on pitfalls

Cloud Architecture, some examples

2012-01-12T10:19:00.002+01:00

Cloud architecture is similar to classic IT architecture, but there are important differences. Classic IT systems are built up from software components installed on in-house servers. Cloud computing solutions and applications, in contrast, are built up from services and service providers. Even if you only want to use SaaS (Software as a Service) solutions, it is unlikely that there is a

10.000 jobs requiring cloud computing skills, not just tech jobs!

2012-01-10T08:58:00.000+01:00

"WANTED Analytics", a talent research firm, recently released findings indicating that the number of job postings for people with cloud computing skills is now over 10.000, in the US alone. This represents a staggering 61% year over year growth. Here is the press release. Clearly cloud computing is on the rise, and apparently it is one of the few areas of job growth. As cloud computing also

The inevitability of the cloud computing future

2012-01-06T09:58:00.001+01:00

So what is 2012 going to bring to IT? For about a decade I have predicted the growth of what we now call cloud computing. After some false starts, hiccups, unrealistic expectations, disillusionments and concerns about safety and what have you not, it is finally coming. In 2011 cloud computing was on the evening news and in all the papers. Of course, I can repeat my prediction of the coming

Copenhagen TTT, New cloud and virtualization trainers

2011-12-23T14:49:00.000+01:00

Wrapping up in Copenhagen, where I did another Train the Trainer session for the Cloud Essentials and Virtualisation Essentials courses. Another fine round of candidates!

What is the difference between a private cloud and a bunch of virtual machines?

2011-12-20T13:22:00.000+01:00

At the recent CMG’11 annual conference of the Computer Measurement Group (see www.cmg.org) I caught up with Michael Salsburg, who talked about private cloud computing. Michael Salsburg is the Chief Architect for Cloud Solutions at Unisys, you will find his LinkedIn profile here. Being the chief cloud architect puts him in a perfect position to understand customer needs around cloud

Will the financial crisis bring down IT systems?

2011-12-12T08:52:00.001+01:00

The financial crisis that is running around Europe and spreading to the rest of the world will also be a very big test for IT systems. Review the lessons learned from the Argentina banking crisis, 10 years ago. Listen to Fernando Martinez as he sees a very striking and unnerving similarity between Argentina then, and Europe now. When the Argentina government took drastic measures, IT

Cloud Computing for beginners

2011-12-02T12:16:00.001+01:00

If you are new to cloud computing, and want to know what it takes to migrate your skills to the cloud, here are a few tips. Cloud computing is about moving your servers out of your datacenter (or out of your closet if you are with a small company) and move it to a cloud service provider. Your software will then run ‘in the cloud’. As a matter of fact, I think that you can a medium sized

Whose side are you on?

2011-12-01T10:01:00.001+01:00

Matt Bianco was a pop band from the eighties. Their greatest hit was ‘Whose side are you on?’, which alludes to a world of intelligence, counterintelligence and spies. I am always reminded of this song when I think about the various types of cloud computing and the smoke and mirrors tactics of some of the players in the field. The main types of cloud computing that are currently

Sushi in the cloud

2011-11-23T11:16:00.001+01:00

A few blocks from my home there is a sushi restaurant. The other day, when I went there for some take-out food, I met a parent from the elementary school of my kids, with his daughter. I hardly recognized her, because it had been a couple of years. He still looks familiar, because I pass his office, an insurance brokerage, on the main street around the corner from my home. After we

Who is afraid of the cloud?

2011-11-21T09:39:00.001+01:00

Cloud computing disrupts. A new breed of IT service providers is established: cloud providers. Cloud providers, whether they provide software as a service, or infrastructure as a service, allow for much more rapid and flexible contracting of IT. IT departments are typically build on certain assumptions about how things work, i.e. how much knowledge and effort is required to order, configure and

Awesome Velocity

2011-11-11T10:32:00.001+01:00

As I am sipping on my café americano in the Starbucks near the Friedrichstrasse railway station in Berlin, waiting for my travel back home, I look back on 3 days of Velocity Europe. Velocity is where developers and managers of large websites meet. We are talking seriously large websites here. The word most appropriate to the Velocity conference is “awesome”. It is not only appropriate for the

Will Cloud Computing increase or decrease the number of IT people?

2011-11-04T09:57:00.000+01:00

An interesting discussion is going on. Will Cloud Computing increase or decrease the number of IT people? We don't know, the only thing we are pretty sure of is that the types of skills will be different. This article in PC world "The IT Jobs Cloud Computing Will Create" gives some fundamental reasoning, and also list a number of skills that will experience more demand. Examples include:

Impact cloud on IT organisation and ITIL - a first approach

2011-11-03T17:23:00.002+01:00

Yesterday I had the opportunity to present at the Dutch Tooling Event. The presentation was about how service management frameworks such as ITIL could be applied to cloud computing. We have just begun to scratch the surface on that. The presentation has some introductory material on cloud computing and then shows how cloud computing changes the conflicts that need to be resolved by IT service

Generation Cloud

2011-10-30T16:27:00.001+01:00

Interesting brief video about a UK study into types of cloud usage in relation to social media. The accompanying research document identifies 4 distinct types of users. This article has the main conclusions and the link to the study.

IT skills obsoleted by cloud computing

2011-10-27T12:31:00.000+02:00

Every ten years or so, a really big new thing upsets the entire IT industry. In the seventies it was the minicomputer, in the eighties it was the personal computer, in the nineties the Internet appeared, and over the past few years we have seen the rise of cloud computing. All these innovation have a theme in common. They are ‘disruptive’ innovations. Let us assume that you are quite

Kickstart your career in the cloud!

2011-10-21T13:16:00.003+02:00

When IT hardware and software move to the cloud, old skills for managing these will soon be out of date. Cloud computing is about moving computer server equipment and software off a company's premises and balance sheet to a cloud computing provider, such as Google or Microsoft. If your career revolves around in-company IT, this can pose a great threat. New skills will be needed. I have now

Course announcement: foundations of cloud computing

2011-10-13T10:02:00.001+02:00

Cloud computing is likely to be one of the biggest IT revolutions of these years. But what could be the role of cloud computing in your organization? ‘Cloud Computing Foundation’ is an interactive two day course that prepares IT managers for an optimal deployment of these new possibilities. You will learn about the important types of cloud computing and how their characteristics lead to

Cloud is the new mainframe

2011-09-21T10:28:00.000+02:00

Cloud computing, from a business and management perspective, has a great deal in common with mainframe computing. Mainframes are powerful, expensive and centralized pieces of computing equipment. This is in line with their role as infrastructure for mission-critical applications. For these types of applications, mainframes can be fairly efficient, even though they tend to need large teams of

Impact of Hurricane Irene on the Internet

2011-09-01T08:58:00.000+02:00

Hurricane Irene damaged a lot of infrastructure along its way. Apparently the Internet fared fairly well, according to this really interesting blog post. The post also contains a time-lapse video with the damage to Internet connected networks plotted superimposed on a satellite movie of Irene. To sum up the conclusion of the author: I spent 12 hours picking my way across the ruined roads and