Cloud Computing Arena

10 cloud startups to watch in 2012

2012-01-02T21:56:00.000-08:00

The past few years have been nothing if not a boon for entrepreneurs looking to cash in on venture capitalists’ lust for all things cloud. All the activity has been great, and we’ve seen some exciting new companies emerge and prosper — companies such as Heroku, RightScale and New Relic — but it also means there’s precious little room on the playing field for newcomers. Startups that want to get noticed, get funded, and ultimately have a winning exit must either find their own unique niche or stake out ground on a different field altogether.

Here are 10 cloud computing startups that launched in 2011 and that have a chance to make it big in 2012.

1. AppFog

AppFog is one of a handful of Platform-as-a-Service startups to launch in 2011, but AppFog is unique because it leverages the open-source Cloud Foundry code as its core. The switch to a Cloud Foundry foundation over the summer resulted in a name change from PHP Fog, as the company was immediately able to support numerous new programming languages. Going forward, AppFog can ride Cloud Foundry’s development wave, while focusing its own efforts on building the best user experience.

2. Bromium

Little is known about Bromium other than that is plans to use virtualization technology as a tool for securing the myriad endpoints (e.g., desktops, mobile phones and tablets) that connect to enterprise networks. While securing cloud servers, as other startups such as CloudPassage attempt to do, is important, the advent of consumerization means endpoints need security. Among Bromium’s founders is Simon Crosby, who co-founded XenSource and served as virtualization CTO at Citrix Systems.

3. Cloudability

Cloudability provides a simple service with a lot of value: it monitors customers’ spending on cloud computing resources. It might uncover something as commonplace as cloud-server sprawl because so many employees are spinning up instances, or it might find something nefarious such as hackers using a company’s instances serve boatloads of network traffic. As use of cloud services proliferates, companies will need an easy tool to help them keep track of what they’re spending and where.

4. CloudSigma

The Infrastructure-as-a-Service space is a tough racket to enter because it means competing with the likes of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, but CloudSigma has a plan. The company is all about giving customers high performance and lots of control. CloudSigma sits in the impressive SuperNAP data center and offers 10 GbE interconnects as well as solid-state drives, and developers can buy and manage resources with the granular control normally found in co-location.

5. Kaggle

Kaggle, a crowdsourcing platform for solving big data challenges, is about the hottest thing going in big data right now. The idea behind the service is simple: although not everyone has data scientists in-house, there are plenty of them floating around the world perfectly happy to put their skills to work on a problem for cash prizes and a little bit of credit. It takes a lot of computing power to host hundreds of teams on any given competition, as well as the data sets, which is why Kaggle utilizes Amazon Web Services.

6. Nebula

Nebula isn’t the only company pushing a commercial version of the open-source OpenStack cloud computing software — it isn’t even the only one founded by a former NASA employee — but it does have a unique approach and an impeccable pedigree. Nebula ties OpenStack to an optimized hardware platform designed to make building public clouds a plug-and-play experience. Among its founders are former NASA CTO Chris Kemp, and investors include Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram.

7. Parse

Parse is trying to become a PaaS specialist for mobile apps, a laudable ambition given how many people now rely on their mobile devices just about everything. It will be difficult to distinguish itself from competitors such as Stackmob, as well as from web-app PaaS offerings such as Heroku and AppFog, but Parse seems to have the right ideas in mind. It has a backend focused on the needs of mobile apps, and a frontend designed for mobile developers that might not have extensive programming chops.

8. ScaleXtreme

What ScaleXtreme lacks in sexiness it makes up for in functionality. Everyone needs server-management software, but not everyone needs the big, expensive software offered from traditional software vendors, or even wants to manage software at all. ScaleXtreme gives users a cloud-based service to manage both physical and cloud-based servers, and, it says, has also garnered a lot of interest from cloud providers thinking it might be a good value-added service to their users who want more control.

9. SolidFire

SolidFire wants nothing less than to revolutionize cloud computing by making it palatable to large enterprises wanting to run mission-critical applications. The company targets cloud providers with SSD-based storage systems that make it possible to store virtual machine images in the cloud and still deliver high performance. Cloud providers utilizing SolidFire gear could find themselves hosting far more relational databases and other applications that presently remain in house.

10. Zillabyte

Zillabyte, still operating in private beta mode, wants to provide users with both data sets and the algorithms needed to process them. Data sets aren’t uncommon on the web, but they usually don’t come with algorithms and a processing backend. The service will initially focus on web data and text-based algorithms, but there’s plenty of room for growth into new types of data and algorithms as the service matures. Zillabyte was co-founded by two former Google software engineers and a former Intel engineer.

Reference: http://gigaom.com

Move to cloud computing is worth growing pains - FederalTimes.com

2011-12-11T20:56:00.000-08:00

Move to cloud computing is worth growing pains - FederalTimes.com

Beware Cloud Computing Advice from IT Research Firms

2011-12-10T23:02:00.001-08:00

CIO — 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.

I became aware of Plummer's recommendation, which caused quite a stir in the blog world when he first announced it, via Twitter earlier this week.

Naturally, much of the furor over Plummmer's pronouncement was a reaction to the quick summary: Gartner prefers public cloud. Wow. That's a big deal, right? Gartner is probably telling all of its clients that they should trim their private cloud plans and instead focus on public cloud service providers. And, in response, all of its clients are scrapping their private cloud initiatives and planning a big move to public providers, right?

Actually, that's quite unlikely, for some very sensible reasons.

First, people misunderstand the nature of analyst firms. They assume that these firms are corporate in nature and monolithic in their positions. In fact, a better way to look at analyst firms is that they are much like professional firms (e.g., law firms, consulting partnerships, etc.). Such firms are comprised of relatively independent individuals, each with his or her own opinion.

For example, one can present the same issue to two attorneys within the same law firm and get two different recommendations about what to do (I speak here from personal experience). Likewise two analysts from the same firm will hold different opinions about the right approach to a specific technology issue.

Consequently, even if one or more (or most) analysts at a firm hold one opinion, there are probably others who hold a different opinion. At the very least, when presented with a specific issue, analysts will likely proffer different recommendations, based on their interpretation of the issue. Of course, it's important to keep in mind that every situation is specific and different. If blanket advice were sufficient, there would be no need for analyst firms. Let me be clear, I'm discussing this phenomenon in general—not picking on Gartner specifically. As I said last week, I am not one to gainsay Gartner.

Second, as a complement to the fact that opinion at analyst firms differs, clients tend to take their recommendations selectively. Companies tend to have their goals and they seek support and affirmation for them, searching until they find third-party advice that can be cited as impartial evidence for pursuing the direction that they have already decided upon. This is crudely referred to as "shopping for an opinion."

Continue Reading at CIO.com

Gartner: Private clouds are a last resort

2011-12-10T08:03:00.001-08:00

Enterprises should consider public cloud services first and turn to private clouds only if the public cloud fails to meet their needs.

That was the advice delivered by analyst Daryl Plummer during Gartner's IT Symposium Tuesday. Plummer says that there are many potential benefits to deploying cloud services, including agility, reduced cost, reduced complexity, increased focus, increased innovation, and being able to leverage the knowledge and skills of people outside the company.

The trick for IT professionals is to perform a thorough analysis that identifies which benefits the company hopes to achieve by moving to the cloud. Of course, there are also reasons to not take the cloud route. Those include the inability to get the service-level agreements that you want, regulatory and compliance issues, concerns about disaster recovery and the realization that the cloud might not end up saving you money.

Plummer said an accurate cost analysis is particularly tricky, since you're weighing capital expenses versus recurring costs. He added that customers often underestimate their cloud usage costs, and most companies moving to the cloud will require the services of a cloud broker, which adds to the total tab.

While the cloud hype has reached a fever pitch, Plummer points out that there are a number of potential risks. Those include security, transparency, assurance, lock-in and integration issues. If you do decide to start moving applications to the cloud, start at the edges and work your way into the core, says Plummer. The most common apps to start with are email, social, test and development, productivity apps, and Web servers.

One other point to keep in mind is that individual business units have probably already moved to software as a service (SaaS), so Plummer recommends that IT execs make a concerted effort to get ahead of these rogue SaaS users.

If you break cloud revenues down by the three main categories, SaaS revenues come in first at $12 billion worldwide in 2011, followed by infrastructure as a service (IaaS) at $4.2 billion and platform as a service (PaaS) at $1.4 billion. But Gartner predicts that over the next five years IaaS will grow by 48 percent, while PaaS will only grow 13 percent and SaaS will grow 16.3 percent.

Source: Infoworld

Domestic cloud computing estimated to grow at 53%: Study

2011-12-06T21:32:00.001-08:00

As per a report published on Moneycontrol.com website:

The domestic cloud computing industry is estimated to grow at a CAGR of 53% to be a Rs 2,434 crore market by 2014, a study conducted by CyberMedia Research India said.

"The public cloud computing market in India is estimated to touch Rs 2,434 crore in 2014 after growing at a CAGR of 53% between 2010-2014," a company statement said.

"Cloud computing is witnessing widespread interest from the vendor-service provider-channel community on the one hand and business leaders and CIOs on the other," CyberMedia Research India Software and IT Services Research Lead Analyst Kamal Vohra said.

This is fuelled by the strong belief that cloud computing will allow a large number of SMB enterprises to adopt the same enterprise class software and technology solutions, it added.

As per the study, penetration in cloud computing is expected to grow by 6.8% in 2012 from 4% in 2010.

On the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) industry, the study said the market was expected to grow by 50% to touch Rs 465 crore by this year-end.

The Infrastructure-as-a-service Industry (IaaS) was also expected to pickup pace after 2012. The overall CAGR for the India IaaS market during 2010-2014 was expected to be at 49%, the statement added.

Reference:

http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/features/domestic-cloud-computing-estimated-to-grow-at-53-study_555469.html

Microsoft Updates Office 365 | Cloud Computing Journal

2011-12-05T23:08:00.000-08:00

Microsoft Updates Office 365
— Microsoft has released its first major update of its cloud-based Office 365, the online combination of Office, SharePoint, Exchange and Lync. It’s also expanding the service to 22 additional markets including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan.
Office Division president Kurt DelBene said in a statement that “Customers are adopting Office 365 eight times faster than our previous service, and the solution is on track to become one of our fastest-growing offers in Microsoft history. We are also seeing great traction with small businesses, with more than 90% of our early Office 365 customers coming from small businesses.”

Article URL:

http://cloudcomputing.sys-con.com/node/2086224

SAP buys SuccessFactors for $3.4 billion

2011-12-05T18:32:00.001-08:00

SAP has agreed to buy San Mateo's SuccessFactors Inc. for $3.4 billion in cash in a bid to catch up with rival Oracle in the cloud-computing market.

The move is the latest acquisition by co-CEOs Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe, who took charge of SAP when CEO Léo Apotheker was forced out in 2009.

McDermott and Snabe have pledged to make the largest maker of business-management software better at meeting demand for new technologies, such as cloud computing, real-time analytics and mobile applications.

The SuccessFactors deal shows SAP's previous go-it-alone approach to the cloud was lacking, said Thomas Otter, a vice president at Gartner Inc.

"My first reaction was: What took you so long?" Otter said. "This means a fundamental shift in terms of their cloud strategy, which has been rather slow to get off the ground. This is a tacit admission that their cloud strategy was a failure."

Stock takes a hit

SAP shares dropped 1.6 percent to 44 euros in Frankfurt Monday, valuing the company at 54 billion euros.

"In addition to the high price paid, which we think investors will see negatively, the other question will be whether the decision to acquire reflects a sign of SAP's strength or its weakness," UBS analyst Michael Briest said Monday. He cut his rating on SAP shares to "neutral" from "buy."

SAP, Oracle and companies such as Apple, Salesforce.com, IBM, Amazon.com, Dell and Microsoft are promoting cloud computing as a secure way to outsource data centers and reduce the need for pricey servers and other hardware.

SuccessFactors, which makes software used to manage employee performance, has more than 3,500 customers and 15 million subscribers in 168 countries. The company is predicted to have $502 million in revenue in 2013, according to analyst estimates compiled by Bloomberg.

SAP is paying 8 times SuccessFactors' forecast revenue for next year, compared with a median of 3 times revenue companies paid for 32 North American software targets over the past five years, Bloomberg data show.

'Crown jewel'

"You get what you pay for, and if you want the crown jewel in this industry, you have got to pay for it," McDermott said. "We are very comfortable with the relationship between the price and 2012 revenues. It's very much in the medium range. We don't consolidate old, tired companies that don't grow anymore."

SAP may take a break from large deals after the close of SuccessFactors, while it concentrates on expanding in cloud computing, mobile business software, data analysis and in-memory computing, McDermott added.

"For now, I think we have the assets we need to win," he said.

McDermott and SuccessFactors CEO Lars Dalgaard first met on Sept. 27 at SuccessFactors' office in San Mateo. One asset SAP gains is Dalgaard himself.

Dalgaard, 44, will have the job of overseeing SAP's broad software-as-a-service efforts, including its Business ByDesign Web programs for midsize companies. Peter Lorenz, an SAP executive vice president in charge of the group of products, will report to him, McDermott said.

"Lars will oversee the entire SAP cloud," McDermott said. "This is our catalyst."

Owning SuccessFactors, which helps companies decide which employees to retain and how much to pay them, can help SAP sell "human capital management" software to the highest echelons of its customers' management, McDermott said.

SuccessFactors may also add programs for handling logistics and supply-chain operations, Dalgaard said.

"The talent management market will probably be worth about $3.5 billion this year," Otter said. "SAP has essentially spent what the whole market will be worth this year in one swoop. It is a lot to pay for a niche in their portfolio, but human resources technology is a hot space."

The global market for cloud services may surge to $148.8 billion in 2014 from $68.3 billion in 2010, Gartner estimates.

IDC Predicts 2012 Will Be the Year of Mobile and Cloud Platform Wars

2011-12-01T18:19:00.001-08:00

01 Dec 2011

FRAMINGHAM, Mass., December 1, 2011 – One year ago, International Data Corporation (IDC) predicted that the IT industry's next dominant platform, built on mobile computing, cloud services, social networking, and big data analytics technologies, would begin its transition into the mainstream. Today, spending on these technologies is growing at about 18% per year and is expected to account for at least 80% of IT spending growth between now and 2020. With future market revenues at stake, IDC predicts that 2012 will be marked by some of the first high-stakes battles as companies seek to position themselves for leadership in these critical and fast-growing technology areas.

"The industry's shift to the 3rd Platform will accelerate in 2012, forcing the industry's leaders to make bold investments and fateful decisions," said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. "Companies like Microsoft, HP, SAP, RIM, and others – including Apple – will face 'crossroads moments' in 2012. By the end of the year, we should have a good idea which vendors will – and won't – be among the industry's leaders at the end of the decade."

Overall, IDC predicts that worldwide IT spending will grow 6.9% year over year to $1.8 trillion in 2012. As much as 20% of this total spending will be driven by the technologies that are reshaping the IT industry – smartphones, media tablets, mobile networks, social networking, and big data analytics. Meanwhile, emerging markets (defined as all markets except North America, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand) will drive more than half of all IT spending growth worldwide in 2012, led by the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) and a handful of other fast-growing markets like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Saudi Arabia. The growing importance of these markets is reflected in IDC's prediction that China will surpass Japan as the world's second largest IT market sometime in the course of the year.

2012 will also be the Year of Mobile Ascendency as mobile devices (smartphones and media tablets) surpass PCs in both shipments and spending and mobile apps, with 85 billion downloads, generate more revenue than the mainframe market. The mobility market will see heated competition in 2012 as Microsoft joins the crucial battle for dominance in the mobile operating system (OS) market and the Kindle Fire challenges the iPad in the media tablet market. Similarly, a host of new mobile devices with "good enough" capabilities (think "smartphone lite") will challenge the current device leaders on price and functionality in key emerging markets like China, India, Indonesia, and Brazil.

Competition will also characterize the world of cloud services in 2012 as the strategic focus shifts from building infrastructure to the creation of application platforms and ecosystems. Here the battle for enterprise platform dominance is just getting underway with established players like IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle facing serious challenges from Amazon, Google, Salesforce.com, and VMware. As evidence of this challenge, IDC expects Amazon Web Services to exceed $1 billion in cloud services business in 2012 with Google's Enterprise business to follow within 18 months. IDC also expects a merger and acquisition (M&A) feeding frenzy as these companies seek to gain a competitive edge. Look for Microsoft to buy a content/media cloud, like Netflix, to provide a marketplace for its apps and content. Other prime targets for acquisition include Cloud Application/SaaS companies, like Workday, NetSuite, and Taleo.

Social networking technologies – especially where they are being accelerated by mobile technologies – will be recognized as a mandatory component in every major enterprise IT vendors' strategy. As a result, IDC expects a number of major IT vendors to make "statement" acquisitions in social business while others continue to expand their community platforms. Companies like LinkedIn, Spigit, BrightIdea, Attensity, and Lithium are logical acquisition targets for Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle. Meanwhile, Facebook will attempt to leverage its consumer dominance into a broader role serving as the business-to-consumer platform of choice.

Finally, Big Data will earn its place as the next "must have" competency in 2012 as the volume of digital content grows to 2.7 zettabytes (ZB), up 48% from 2011. Over 90% of this information will be unstructured (e.g., images, videos, MP3 files, and files based on social media and Web-enabled workloads) – full of rich information, but challenging to understand and analyze. As businesses seek to squeeze high-value insights from this data, IDC expects to see offerings that more closely integrate data and analytics technologies, such as in-memory databases and BI tools, move into the mainstream. And, like the cloud services market, 2012 is likely to be a busy year for Big Data-driven mergers and acquisitions as large IT vendors seek to acquire additional functionality.

In addition to key developments in mobile, cloud, social business, and big data, IDC predicts that 2012 will be a notable year in a number of other areas:
Mobile data network spending will exceed fixed data network spending for the first time
80% of new commercial enterprise apps will be deployed on cloud platforms
15% of new mobile apps will be based on HTML5 by year's end
Vendors from emerging markets, such as Huawei and China Telecom, will make an aggressive push into developed markets, including the U.S.
The number of intelligent, communicating devices on the network will outnumber "traditional computing" devices by almost 2 to 1 within next 24 months, changing the way we think – and interact – with each other and devices on the network

"Even though the IT industry will follow along the same transformational path as it did in 2011, the events, the choices, and the stakes will be very different in 2012," added Gens. "The urgency to act – and to make the right decisions – will dramatically increase. By the end of 2012, we should be able to see much more clearly which players have successfully positioned themselves in the 'lead pack' of the marathon-like race for industry leadership in the decade ahead."

IDC's predictions for 2012 are presented in full detail in the report, IDC Predictions 2012: Competing for 2020 (Doc #231720). In addition, Frank Gens will lead a group discussion of this year's predictions in an IDC Web conference scheduled for December 1 at 12:00 pm U.S. Eastern time. For more information, or to register for this free event, please go to: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=IDC_P24932.

About IDC

International Data Corporation (IDC) is the premier global provider of market intelligence, advisory services, and events for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology markets. IDC helps IT professionals, business executives, and the investment community to make fact-based decisions on technology purchases and business strategy. More than 1,000 IDC analysts provide global, regional, and local expertise on technology and industry opportunities and trends in over 110 countries. For more than 47 years, IDC has provided strategic insights to help our clients achieve their key business objectives. IDC is a subsidiary of IDG, the world's leading technology media, research, and events company. You can learn more about IDC by visiting www.idc.com.

Source: http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS23177411

Six Types of Cloud Computing

2011-11-30T23:23:00.001-08:00

Article Summary:

Six Types of Cloud Computing — Everyone is talking about cloud computing today, but not everyone means the same thing when they do. While there is this general idea behind the cloud – that applications or other business functions exist somewhere away from the business itself – there are many iterations that companies look to in order to actually use the technology. Cloud computing offers a variety of ways for businesses to increase their IT capacity or functionality without having to add infrastructure, personnel, and software.

Top 10 cloud computing providers of 2011

2011-11-29T22:18:00.000-08:00

Top 10 cloud computing providers of 2011

Cloud Computing for SMEs

2011-11-28T20:59:00.001-08:00

It May seems surprising but the scope of cloud computing is much greater for SME industries as compared to large industries since small companies are much concerned regarding their expenditure in IT services and management as compared to large scale industries. No, it does not mean that large industries are not worried of their IT resources, but small companies are very much limited to their budget for IT spending as compare to large companies. In such a scenario, cloud computing will serve as a boon for such industries, of course security will remain a major concern.

According to a recent survey undertaken by freelancing site PeoplePerHour.com among 1,300 SMEs in the United Kingdom, it was found that as many as 74% do not use ‘Cloud’ computing. What gives greater cause for concern is that 43% of the respondents did not even know what the term “Cloud computing” means. Still majority of small companies still maintain their old age IT assets and investing heavy money to keep a pace with the growing technology and requirements. This unnecessary cost not only adversely affects their bottom line, but also hamstrings small businesses as they attempt to keep pace with an increasingly internet-based world.

The Future of SME Cloud Computing

Most industry experts predict that the global market for cloud technology will increase from its current $8 billion, to approximately $14 billion by 2014. The engine for this growth as it relates to small businesses is expected to be something referred to in cloud parlance as SaaS – Software as a Service. Solutions like Oracle, SAP and deployment environment will become more affordable and manageable with the usage of cloud computing. Best of all, cloud computing services like SaaS are available to business owners and their employees anywhere they can find an internet connection. Sales automation solutions providers such as salesforce has added tremendous value in the managing the sales across verticals. Services like DropBox provides realtime access of documents and other items while on the move and even can be shared efficiently worldwide.

Major Benefits that cloud computing brings for SMEs are:

· Major saving in terms of Capital Expenditure. Only internet connection and PC or laptop with general configuration is required

· The size of the IT infrastructure can be reduced or increased instantly as and when required. Quiet scalable...

· Pay only for the services being used. Need not to maintain additional IT infrastructure which is not required very often.

· Services can be accessed from remote location with the use of computing device and internet. No need to wait to reach office to update the data

· Ease of implementation and management: Without the need for implementation of hardware and various other components which can take several hours. You can be running your business in almost as much time as it takes to setup a Gmail account. Also managing the infrastructure will not be at all a matter of concern. Skill resources will be taking care of all the issues and management all the time thereby ensuring 99.99% uptime

· World-class infrastructure: Without much investment in IT, companies will be using the world class IT infrastructure with best response time as compared to local IT infrastructure.

· Green Computing: Protect the environment with energy efficient environment. Cloud Computing setups uses less energy than traditional data centres which is important to many in this day and age.

Cloud Computing: Reshaping IT Industry

2011-11-28T04:54:00.001-08:00

Companies in India will increase the adoption of cloud competing technology over the next five years. The total cloud market in India, currently at $400 million, will reach $4.5 billion by 2015. Of which private cloud adoption will dominate and account for $3.5 billion in revenues, growing at over 60 per cent, according to a study. The study, ‘private cloud landscape in India' was done by EMC Corporation, a provider of IT service and solutions, and Zinnov Management Consulting, a management consulting firm.

The study says that private cloud market will create one lakh jobs by 2015 against 10,000 now. Today, companies are under-skilled in addressing cloud computing implementations. It recommends companies to invest in competency building internally to take advantage of cloud computing technologies. The study estimates that the skilling and re-skilling market in India will grow fast as cloud computing becomes critical to IT strategies. Leading public and private educational institutions, along with IT enterprises are expected to play a key role in enhancing workforce skills to match the industry demand for cloud computing.

The growth in cloud computing market is attributed to the increased maturity of Indian enterprises towards cloud computing and the chief executive officer / chief information officer mandate for an enterprise-wide cloud strategy. It adds that with the overall environment of cloud adoption fast evolving in India, cloud computing will account for a significant share in the total IT spend of small, medium and large enterprises.

The total cloud spends as a percentage of total IT spend as such is expected to rise from 1.4 per cent in 2010 to 8.2 per cent in 2015.

The study notes that IT/ITeS, telecom, BFSI, manufacturing and government sectors will contribute nearly 78 per cent of the total cloud market, according to Pari Natarajan, Chief Executive Officer, Zinnov Management Consulting.

PRIVATE CLOUD

According to the study, there will be an increase in preference of private cloud over public cloud over the next five years. It also estimates that private cloud deployments can result in potential savings of up to 50 per cent on the IT investments on an average, when compared with a legacy IT model, with cost optimisation in areas such as telecom and networking, facilities and fabric, hardware, software, internal labour and external IT services.

Cloud computing will reshape the Indian IT market by creating new opportunities for IT vendors and driving changes in traditional IT offerings.

There is every chance that companies that are not adopting IT today and do not have major investments in data centres and server farms will directly move into the cloud model.

India leads in cloud storage adoption

2011-11-25T21:45:00.001-08:00

Hitachi Data Systems Corporation (HDS), a wholly owned subsidiary of Hitachi recently announced survey results indicating that India is leading in cloud storage and converged system adoption in Asia Pacific. The survey results also revealed that more than 50 percent of the large Asia Pacific enterprises that participated in the survey are not anticipating or planning for the advent of “Big Data.”

The survey results are published in an HDS-sponsored IDC white paper titled “The changing face of storage: A rethink of strategy that goes beyond the data”. The survey was conducted by IDC from August to September 2011 with 150 IT executives from large enterprises in Australia, New Zealand, China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia and Singapore. HDS commissioned the survey to better understand their storage management challenges, needs and strategies.

"There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of Big Data

- Kevin Eggleston, Senior Vice President and GM, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific

“HDS believes that data and information must be stored, governed and managed for insight and innovation in order to drive strategic and competitive value,” said Kevin Eggleston, senior vice president and general manager, Hitachi Data Systems Asia Pacific. “Embracing the latest technologies, like cloud services, not only enables enterprises to manage data growth but also to collect and connect data to create valuable information. Our three-tiered strategy of infrastructure cloud, content cloud and information cloud uses a dynamic infrastructure and enables fluid content to gain faster and more sophisticated insight and greater value from stored data.”

The Indian market is the most mature in terms of the adoption of cloud technologies and the highest usage levels of converged systems. 50 percent of respondents in India are using or planning to use cloud storage in the next 6 to 12 months. 30 percent of respondents in India are using converged systems and 35 percent are either evaluating or planning to use such systems.

The Indian market responses indicate that the move to more advanced datacenter architectures is well underway, and the growing pains are keenly felt. Data management issues due to explosive growth and new challenges uncovered through the virtualization of the server platform dominate concerns. However, fundamental issues such as managing email growth and backup also remained high.

Other key highlights include:

1. Having access to accurate data on a timely basis key to gain deeper business insight. About 70 percent of respondents in India stated that the demand of the business for deeper analysis outpaces the ability for their systems to ensure the data they had is relevant, timely and useful. Their data growth is outpacing their ability to effectively manage it.

2. Virtual server sprawl remains a key concern. 70 percent cited problems from virtual server sprawl, as they are unable to keep a close track of the virtual platform assets and their alignment to storage.

3. Justifying storage investments is a key challenge as budgets remain tight. 60 percent cited aligning IT costs to business budgets and growth as a main challenge to adopting their IT strategy amid current market conditions.

4. Insufficient backup window a key issue. Due to the nature of their business, 60 percent of Indian organizations do not have enough time to back up systems.

5. Managing email is getting more difficult and expensive. 60 percent of respondents in India cited concerns over the rising costs in managing email growth.

“Data needs to be shared, compared, analyzed and visualized more holistically. Only then can data become information used for insight, trending, and leveraged proactively in anticipation of things to come,” said Eggleston. “There is a great potential for the information cloud because it will analyze content independently of applications or media and enable analytics of ‘Big Data’ to better align itself to human behavior for deeper, more relevant insight, driving innovation, advancing research, enabling better collaboration, and building more sustainable societies.”

Source: Information Week

15 Cloud Computing Companies to Watch...

2011-11-24T02:08:00.001-08:00

Cloud computing is spreading like wildfire. The number of enterprises moving their IT operations to the cloud is tremendously growing. Established vendors like Salesforce, Amazon and Google, including other startup firms that provide tools and services for cloud computing continues to increase and clamors for attention.

In this emerging industry, here are the lists of 15 promising cloud computing vendors based on cloud security and storage to apps and infrastructure offerings that should be on your radar screen.

Zimory

Zimory, a Berlin-based company, offers a technology suite for enterprises to transition virtual data centers into cloud-based infrastructure. The company aims to provide high-quality cloud solution while maximizing efficiency as it taps into underused resources. Zimory’s open-technology can scale up to thousands of machines and connect with multiple clouds. The firms Carrier Grade Cloud Computing portfolio is billed to be a comprehensive solution for deploying and managing secure and scalable public, private and hybrid clouds.

Abiquo

Abiquo is one of the most promising upstarts in the cloud computing arena. It boasts of a comprehensive hypervisor support portfolio including leading vendors such as Microsoft, Citrix, VMware and Zend. The firm offers a permission-based hierarchy that enables enterprises to forge public, private or hybrid clouds spanning data centers on- and off-premises. It provides a support system to remove vendor lock-in problem through a drag-and-drag conversion for virtual machines from one hypervisor to another.

Standing Cloud

Standing Cloud provides enterprises with a simple proposition: “We do the sys admin so you don’t have to. Sure, you could handle Web application management. But why?” The firm provides management services on a variety of big-league cloud operators.

Standing Cloud enables users to “deploy myriad open source software solutions to IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), but goes a step farther in letting you choose from multiple clouds,” according to Forrester analyst James Staten.

Appirio

Appirio engages itself with both the technological and consulting challenges of enterprise adoption of cloud computing. Since 2006, the firm has helped implement cloud deployments for 200 enterprise clients with some of the leading vendors, including Google, Salesforce and Amazon. Earlier this month, it has acquired VMG, a consulting firm specializing in learning programs and cloud training.

Spanning Cloud Apps

Spanning Cloud Apps, a company specializing in backup services for Google Apps on its LinkedIn page, was founded to become the Norton Computing of the cloud computing era. The firm offers its signature Spanning Backup product for a free trial and acceptable annual subscription
.

Bluelock

Bluelock is considered as a leading VMware vCloud hosting provider that offers both technology and services in the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) space. The firm’s services are tied to VMware’s virtualization technology. It delivers a tailored solution for establishing a virtual data center hosted on a public or hybrid cloud.

Skytap

Skytap, self-service cloud automation, announces the release of a new technology that claims to establish a secure hybrid cloud that connects to an on-site data center with its cloud in 10 minutes. The firm anticipates winning with a dead-simple hybrid cloud deployment solution that provides the security of the traditional data center with the scale of the cloud.

CloudOptix

CloudOptix, backed up by MeghaWare product line, is a cloud virtualization software player that offers businesses and users a way to create a private cloud from different vendors. With the preconfigured MeghaWare Cloud Appliance’s portfolio of storage, and applications, it promised low-cost deployment in less than 15 minutes. To defang the problem of vendor lock-in, its CloudTop application, allows customers to choose among devices, apps and cloud providers.

RightScale

RightScale, a software-as-a-service (SaaS) vendor offers a fully automated management platform for cloud computing deployments. It aims to lower the entry barriers to cloud deployments with server templates through its “cloud-ready” mechanism for connecting servers with the customer’s cloud environment.

Recently, RightScale and Zend Technologies announces their new offering that pairs RightScale’s cloud management platform with Zend’s PHP architecture and Zend Server. This technology deploys and manages Php applications in the cloud.

CloudSwitch

CloudSwitch, known as an enterprise cloud gateway, provides software in line with the policies and tools rooted in the data center with a cloud environment. It offers security for businesses that requires maintenance of in-house and cloud-based IT assets. Earlier this month, CloudSwitch conjoined with Riverbed to boost performance and security in the cloud.

Kaavo

Kaavo considers itself to be “the first and only company to deliver a solution with a top-down application-focused approach to IT resource management across public, private and hybrid clouds.” The firm believes that its application-centric approach is necessary for effective cloud management. Its core product, IMOD, an application management assures speeding up of server systems online, configuring middleware, and other steps to hasten the transition to a cloud-based environment.

Prolexic Technologies

Prolexic Technologies is a provider of cloud-based security technology that mitigates DDoS attacks. The firm caters to SMN, enterprise and government clients. It features proprietary mitigation and control software that helps detect and fend off DDoS attacks through pairing with a global network of “scrubbing centers.”

At the end of March, the firm received $13.9 million fund from Kennet Partners, an organization that is rumored to be helping a major electronics manufacturer guard against a DDoS attack.

Nimbula

Nimbula, founded by a management team that helped develop Amazon EC2 coins itself as a “cloud operating system company.” Recently, the firm released its flagship product, Nimbula Director 1.0 that provides management for both cloud-based resources and on-premises data centers. This Director 1.0 is also available for free download for smaller deployments up to 40 cores, and an optional-fee based annual support for larger systems.

Nasuni

Nasuni, through its partnership with cloud-computing providers offers a “cloud gateway” that searches for the best aspect of the cloud and on-premises storage. This year, its Nasuni Filer product features a “snapshot retention,” that allows IT managers to set storage and retention policies on the cloud. With this feature, managers can determine the point then a snapshot can be deleted irrevocably

NephoScale

NephoScale is one of the more recent entrants in the IaaS market. The firm’s public cloud infrastructure platform offers pay-by-the-hour servers, object-based storage, and dedicated, on-demand servers. Its signature innovation, the CloudScript, enables users to control all elements of their cloud deployment using a single, one-to-many API call.

Recently, the firm offers a free, one-year trial of a 256 MB cloud server and as much as 1 GB of storage through its Cloud Computing and Storage Starter Package. According to NephoScale President Bruce Templeton, this offering will allow start-up companies to familiarize themselves with their services without spending too much.

Reference: http://cloudtimes.org/

Google Music vs. Amazon Cloud Player: How They Stack Up

2011-11-21T00:08:00.001-08:00

Source

Google Music users located in the United States can employ the Android Market to purchase songs and albums, and can also upload existing Apple iTunes playlists to their accounts. And Google is placing a strong emphasis on its music sharing features.

Google Music joins a number of big players already in the online music arena, including iTunes and Spotify. Another competitor: Amazon Cloud Player, which debuted this spring and with features similar to Google's offering.

Here's a quick look at how the two stack up in terms of price, accessibility, sharing and quality.

Google vs. Amazon: Price Comparison

Google Music lets Google account holders upload as many as 20,000 songs from their personal music collections (such as iTunes), and—for now—users can host an unlimited library of music purchased from the Android Marketplace.

Purchasing music from the Android Marketplace requires a Google Wallet account—Google Wallet is the company's online payment service—and individual songs cost between 99 cents and $1.29. Google Wallet is a virtual way to store your payment cards, offers and more on your phone and online.

The Amazon Cloud Drive, and associated Cloud Player, launched last spring, and the service gives Amazon account holders 5 GB of free storage, which can hold up to 1,000 songs. The Amazon Cloud Drive can also store photos and videos.

Storage upgrades start at $20 per year for an extra 15 GB—which also qualifies users for unlimited Cloud Drive song storage—and is capped at $1,000 a year for 1,000 GB of storage. Purchasing individual songs from Amazon.com generally costs between 99 cents and $1.29, which is also inline with Apple's iTunes music store.

Google vs. Amazon: Music Accessibility and System Requirements

The Google Music player can be accessed via your computer's Web browser or a mobile application on your Android device. Compatible browsers include Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 7 and above, Firefox and Safari. JavaScript must be enabled and your browser must be running the latest version of Adobe Flash. The Google Music Manager requires Mac OS 10.5 and above, Windows XP and above or Linux.

Google Music users can also access their libraries on Android devices via the Google Music application, though the app requires Android 2.2 or above with OpenGL2.0. And Apple devices running iOS 4.0 or higher can access the Google Music player by visiting music.google.com in a Web browser.

Amazon Cloud Player is a browser-based application that supports Mac and PC computers and iPad devices. It is not optimized to run on somemobile phones or tablets, including iPhones, BlackBerrys, and Windows Mobile devices.

In the Post-PC World, the Cloud Is the New PC

2011-11-19T02:42:00.001-08:00

By David Hillis (@davidhillis) Nov 15, 2011

When Steve Jobs proclaimed that the post-PC era had arrived, most people assumed it was the mobile phone that was the cause of this transition. Yet, alongside the mobile phone, the heir apparent in the post-PC world is the cloud. Mobile is expanding the cloud, and the relationship between mobile devices and cloud computing is changing everything, from how consumers manage their information to how developers build and manage applications on the Internet.

There are a few key mobile trends that are contributing to rapid growth in cloud computing.

Content Ubiquity

According to research by Pew, 35 percent of American adults today own a smartphone. That number will soon exceed 50 percent. Consumers want all of their content on all of their devices, from desktop PCs, to smartphones, to tablets and laptops. Information needs to live in the cloud so it can be easily accessed by any device.

To address the need for content ubiquity, solutions like Apple iCloud and the Amazon Cloud have been introduced to provide native cloud-based file storage for mobile devices. However, when it comes to file storage in the cloud the clear leader is Dropbox.

Dropbox is a phenomenon. A start-up that emerged from obscurity to become the de facto service people use to store and manage their files in the cloud, Dropbox has 45 million users today and is on pace to triple that number in 2012. Dropbox already pushes more than 300 million files to the cloud every day.

The interesting question is how expectations from consumers to access content from the cloud will impact how we manage business information across organizations. The ripple effect from the mobile file cloud will result in employee expectations for cloud-based content management in the enterprise as well.

It is also changing the role of the PC. Historically personal information has lived on the personal computer. Now the cloud is becoming the place where people store their information.

Split Mode Computing

In the post-PC world, the cloud is doing more than just storing files, it is also providing the backend processing for our applications.

While smartphones are becoming increasingly powerful and high-speed 4G networks like LTE Advanced are on the way, mobile devices still struggle to handle the processing required by many types of web-based applications. Split-mode computing addresses the power gap between mobile devices and applications by pushing processing into the cloud.

A great example of split mode computing is Amazon Silk, the first cloud-accelerated web browser, introduced in the new Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.

The Amazon Silk browser is groundbreaking in how it uses the Amazon EC2 cloud to accelerate web browsing. A typical web page on the Internet can require over 80 separate files delivered from many different domains. Traditional web browsers need to make multiple round trips to fetch all of these files and render the web page, each round trip adding time between when the page is requested and when it loads. Rather than processing all of these requests on the device, the Silk browser intelligently shifts the processing to the cloud where, with persistent connections to the Internet and nearly unlimited processing power, web pages and applications load much faster. Silk also predicts the content you will view next, so it is ready when you are.

The Silk browser is innovative, but I believe the impact of the split-mode computing paradigm the Silk browser demonstrates is farther reaching. Because of the challenges of mobile processing and the opportunity to accelerate computing in the cloud, software developers will look for new ways to split computing between devices and cloud-based systems like Amazon EC2 and Microsoft Azure. Pushing processing to the cloud is not a new thing, but with mobile and the rise of big data applications, processing in the cloud has new relevance: it is no longer just for PCs. In the post-PC world, the cloud will provide much of the processing that runs applications

Mobile Acceleration

Faster mobile doesn’t just mean shifting processing to the cloud, it means getting content closer to devices or, in industry terms, “edge caching.” This is what content delivery networks (CDNs) are built to do.

A CDN is basically a private Internet. The CDN has its own network and points of presence that span the world. While most of our web content needs to float around the twisted byways of the public Internet before reaching us, content on a CDN zips down a private autobahn until it gets to the last mile.

Despite the fact that CDNs are faster, I have not seen CDNs adopted by many content publishers beyond managing rich media and video. Mobile is changing this as well.

All of the major CDN providers, from Akamai to Limelight, are investing in mobile acceleration. CDNs now feature mobile device detection and forwarding, as well as content adaption, to optimize content for different devices and form factors.

As mobile web performance becomes a critical issue, the bottom line is that web managers will look to CDNs to deliver mobile content, shifting web delivery from servers to cloud-based networks.

Conclusion

Mobile changes the game in computing. The cloud is the new playing field. Consumers will primarily use the cloud to store and manage files and media. Software developers will build new applications and services in the cloud. Publishers will move from physical servers to cloud-based networks to deliver content.

This is no small change. It’s a tsunami. For the past 30 years, software, including web-based software, has largely been designed to run on desktop PCs. Those days are gone. The cloud is the new PC. Mobile may be the innovation that is tipping the cloud, but the post-PC era is officially the cloud era. Like any revolution, this new era ushers in change beyond what anyone anticipated or willed. Many of the changes are exciting. Some are daunting, challenging the tenants of the open Internet and personal privacy.

Steve Jobs may have envisioned the post-PC era, but now we need to live in it. It would be great to hear your ideas on how mobile is driving the cloud, and what the cloud era will look like for businesses and consumers alike.

Editor's Note: You may also be interested in reading:

· The Cloud: No Panacea for Enterprise Content Management…Yet

· In the Cloud, the Roll of IT Changes

· Shining the Spotlight on Mobile Risks and Opportunities

About the Author

David Hillis is VP of Business Development for Ingeniux Corporation, makers of Ingeniux Web CMS and Cartella Community software. Follow David on Twitter @davidhillis.

Resource

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/information-management/in-the-postpc-world-the-cloud-is-the-new-pc-013494.php

Japan and Singapore IT firms join hands in Cloud computing!

2011-11-18T08:30:00.000-08:00

Japan and Singapore IT firms join hands in Cloud computing!

PwC and Cloudcor announce the winners of the inaugural UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards

2011-11-18T03:34:00.001-08:00

Four winning companies emerge as industry leaders in first-of-its-kind cloud computing awards

Burlingame, CA, November 16, 2010 – Yesterday, at the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference, PwC US and Cloudcor, Inc. announced the four winners of the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards, recognizing leadership in the field. UP 2010 is a premiere cloud computing event that brings together business leaders, IT professionals and investors in a unique forum designed to showcase innovative cloud computing technologies and companies. PwC was a Platinum Sponsor for the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Conference and the Cloud Computing Awards. The opening day of the conference featured a keynote speech from PwC’s US cloud computing leader, Mike Pearl.

Out of more than 150 submissions and 25 finalists, four companies were selected as the winners of the UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards:

Fastest Growing Cloud Provider Award

Audience Choice Award - Marketo

Judge's Choice Award - ServiceMesh, Inc.

Efficiency in Technology Award

Audience Choice Award - Amazon Web Services

Judge's Choice Award - Amazon Web Services

Most Promising UP-START Cloud Provider Award

Audience Choice Award - CloudSwitch, Inc.

Judge's Choice Award – StorSimple

Overall Most Innovative Cloud Provider Award

Audience Choice Award - Pareto Networks and Salesforce.com (tie)

Judge's Choice Award - BeyondCore

“PwC is dedicated to the support and encouragement of new technologies, particularly in the field of cloud computing,” said Mike Pearl, PwC principal and US cloud computing leader. “The UP 2010 Cloud Computing Awards provide participants with an opportunity to demonstrate their capabilities and earn recognition from their peers in the marketplace. We are honored to help facilitate that process.”

Award submissions were judged by a panel of twelve members representing experts in the field and recognized leaders in technology:

Kerry Bailey, SVP & Chief Marketing Officer, Verizon
Dave Bartoletti, Expert Analyst, Taneja Group
Vinod Baya, Center for Technology & Innovation Director, PwC
Peter Bell, General Partner, Highland Capital Partners
Sheryl Chamberlain, Senior Director-Technology Alliances, EMC Corp.
Robert Duffner, Director-Product Management for Windows Azure, Microsoft
Jay Fry, VP Marketing-Cloud Computing, CA Technologies
Avery Lyford, Partner, Blueprint Growth Partners
Nitin Narkhede, General Manager-Technology Strategy & Innovation, Wipro Technologies
Jay Noble, Director of Cloud Computing-Americas, CSC
Mark Smith, CEO & EVP Research, Ventana Research
Glenn Soloman, Partner, GGV Capital

The 25 finalist presentations and awards ceremony were streamed in high fidelity audio and video to virtual delegates, who participated with questions and feedback on-line and in real-time as part of the hybrid-format (virtual and physical) conference.

About the PwC network

PwC firms provide industry-focused assurance, tax and advisory services to enhance value for their clients. More than 161,000 people in 154 countries in firms across the PwC network share their thinking, experience and solutions to develop fresh perspectives and practical advice. See www.pwc.com for more information.

About UP 2010

UP 2010™ (15 - 19 November 2010), is the world's first truly "hybrid" cloud computing conference for business leaders, IT professionals and investors. UP 2010 is an affordable "hybrid" conference with both physical locations and full virtual deployment. Conference attendees will be able to attend in person, online or any combination of the two and will immensely benefit from thought provoking conference panels, collaborative workshops, and tutorials, which are selected to cover a range of the hottest topics in Cloud Computing.

About Cloudcor Inc.™

Cloudcor Inc. provides industry leaders and professionals insights into leading edge conferences, research, analysis and commentary, as well as providing a platform to network with leading experts in the cloud computing and IT industry. Cloudcor Inc. also offers project, implementation, and industry-focused services to support customers and business partners. Additionally, Cloudcor Inc. provides knowledge transfer to help deploy cloud computing solutions on your own, customized off-the-shelf solutions technology, delivery of a ready-to-use enterprise system, as well as a range of other services to meet your needs. Additional information about Cloudcor Inc. can be found via website at http://www.cloudcor.com.

References:

http://www.pwc.com/us/en/press-releases/2010/PwC-and-Cloudcor.jhtml

Cloud Computing - Rights and Wrongs

2011-11-18T02:58:00.001-08:00

Although cloud computing is the 'in' thing, it is better to know its merits and demerits before you take a flight into the cloud. Cloud computing is a big buzz word. In cloud computing, storage space, processing power, services, and software are abstracted from the users' own devices to third-party servers accessed through internet. It represents a paradigm shift in how we use information technology. Users can access their data from any location and on any device by paying cloud services provider. Built on SaaS (Software-as-Service) model, cloud computing has tremendous appeal, especially for small businesses and entrepreneurs. In the study, Future Security Challenges in Cloud Computing, published in International Journal of Multimedia Intelligence and Security, researchers enumerate merits and demerits of cloud computing. The merits include geographic independence, and redundancy in both software and hardware; cloud services can meet bursts of demand without any upgrades to the systems in your office. The demerits include security, system outages, and the technical aspects of dealing with cloud computing.

What is Right with Cloud Computing

Low Cost of Entry: With its reach and access, cloud computing is the best option for any startup. You can test your idea very quickly or scale a division of your company to the world at low cost.

Scalability: In case of businesses which show highs and lows, the firms are forced to meet every contingency. That leads to underutilization of infrastructure during lows. It makes sense then to outsource highs to a cloud computing service provider. The scalability doesn't require any hardware purchases.

Faster Decision Making: The success of every idea depends on available infrastructure. Cloud computing offers flexibility because you pay as you go. You need not make long-term commitments on infrastructure, and need not wait long periods to get the services. These advantages lead to faster and better decision making and intensify the focus on the core business.

No Capital Expenditures: The costs of cloud computing are operational rather than capital. Since the IT infrastructure needs are handled by a third-party, the costs shift from capital to operational.

What is Wrong with Cloud Computing

Security: With cloud computing, you have your data in a remote data facility without any control. Security is huge concern for firms which want to be in the cloud.

"Think of the cloud as concentrated data, assets, information, and the target profile increases dramatically in its attractiveness," says John P. Pironti, president of IP Architects. Moreover, users and service providers are not sure who is responsible for the security, each passing the buck to the other. According to end-user agreements, cloud service providers are not responsible for security as long as they make some efforts at it. It is always a huge risk to put an application that has competitive edge and advantage, and customer-sensitive information on a public cloud

Cloud Computing - An Introduction

2011-11-17T22:32:00.000-08:00

Let's say you're an executive at a large corporation. Your particular responsibilities include making sure that all of your employees have the right hardware and software they need to do their jobs. Buying computers for everyone isn't enough -- you also have to purchase software or software licenses to give employees the tools they require. Whenever you have a new hire, you have to buy more software or make sure your current software license allows another user. It's so stressful that you find it difficult to go to sleep on your huge pile of money every night.

Soon, there may be an alternative for executives like you. Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, you'd only have to load one application. That application would allow workers to log into a Web-based service which hosts all the programs the user would need for his or her job. Remote machines owned by another company would run everything from e-mail to word processing to complex data analysis programs. It's called cloud computing, and it could change the entire computer industry.

In a cloud computing system, there's a significant workload shift. Local computers no longer have to do all the heavy lifting when it comes to running applications. The network of computers that make up the cloud handles them instead. Hardware and software demands on the user's side decrease. The only thing the user's computer needs to be able to run is the cloud computing system's interface software, which can be as simple as a Web browser, and the cloud's network takes care of the rest.

There's a good chance you've already used some form of cloud computing. If you have an e-mail account with a Web-based e-mail service like Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail or Gmail, then you've had some experience with cloud computing. Instead of running an e-mail program on your computer, you log in to a Web e-mail account remotely. The software and storage for your account doesn't exist on your computer -- it's on the service's computer cloud.

References:

How Stuff Works - www.howstuffworks.com