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This Week in Cloud, January 3, 2013: RIM sells NewBay, Amazon’s Christmas Eve outage, Can a cloud provider pull the plug on your service? And more…

Watch CloudViews Unplugged!

Watch the latest episode of CloudViews Unplugged – Andi Mann and George Watt of CA Technologies take a look at the best cloud predictions for 2013.

Cloud News

  • Research In Motion (RIM) has sold NewBay, its cloud services company, to Synchronoss Technologies for $55.5 million, according to this Talkin’ Cloud article. The acquisition will expand the global presence of Synchronoss and add the major mobile operators in Europe to its customer list.

  • Amazon Web Services experienced an outage which left Netflix customers without service on Christmas Eve, according to this New York Times article. Amazon traced the outage to an issue with its load balancing service.

  • A recent IDC report predicts that 7 million jobs will be created by cloud computing over the next three years, according to this InformationWeek article. The report, which was sponsored by Microsoft, also claims that there are currently 1.7 million cloud-related job openings worldwide.

Feature Article

Capacity Management on the Journey to Cloud

By Jeremy Rossbach, CA Technologies

Jeremy Rossbach

Cloud initiatives are at the top of many our customers’ to-do lists nowadays. Whether they are looking to migrate applications to the cloud or just choose the appropriate cloud provider to host a business service during peak utilization periods, capacity management is at the heart of these difficult business decisions. A capacity management solution can provide answers to questions like "How will my workloads affect the performance of the cloud provider's hosted platforms I consume?" and "How can I be sure my application's performance will not suffer when migrating to the cloud?" Read the full article.

Cloud Views

  • Can your cloud provider pull the plug on your service? In this InfoWorld blog, Simon Phipps examines the terms of use from some of the leading cloud providers and reveals that cloud providers maintain the right to suspend your service.

  • What are your cloud computing resolutions for 2013? In this InfoWorld blog, David Linthicum shares his suggestions for 2013, including: I resolve not to cloud-wash, not to use cloud computing for everything, to always consider management, performance, and service governance, and not to question cloud security before I understand the technology.

  • Are you looking for a wide variety of cloud and IT predictions for 2013? On VMblog.com, David Marshall shares the 2013 predictions of numerous cloud companies, including Dell, HP, CA Technologies and Rackspace.

Trend Watch

  • What can CIOs do to drive innovation? In this Smart Enterprise blog, Denise Dubie recaps a recent Talking Innovation podcast with Jacob Lamm, executive VP of Strategy and Corporate Development at CA Technologies, where he discusses how the CIO’s role needs to change in order to embrace and drive innovation across the organization.

  • Are vendors rebranding their products to ride the hype of big data? In this Forbes blog, Edd Dumbill discusses the imprecision of the term ‘big data’ and how some vendors are capitalizing on the trend.

Upcoming Cloud Events

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More Stories By CloudCommons 2012

CloudCommons is an independent online community of IT professionals, analysts, technology providers, and industry experts. Members can ask questions, learn from experts, and find the latest cloud-related news. Cloud Commons offers a forum to contribute and discuss best practices and successes, as well as research vendor solutions. Sponsored by CA Technologies, Cloud Commons has been growing steadily since its launch in May of 2010.

Hosted on Cloud Commons is the Service Measurement Index (SMI). Led by Carnegie Mellon University, SMI encompasses a growing consortium of members. SMI compiles user-submitted ratings of cloud services and scores them relative to other services of the same type. Ratings include metrics such as: quality, agility, risk, cost, capability, and security.

ThisWeekInCloud is Cloud Commons weekly newsletter listing the industry events we felt worthwhile reading about. Read them here or subscribe to have it delivered to you inbox as email or as RSS Feed.

Cloud Expo Breaking News
The new open source cloud orchestration platform called OpenStack is the promise of flexible network virtualization, and network overlays are looking closer than ever. The vision of this platform is to enable the on-demand creation of many distinct networks on top of one underlying physical infrastructure in the cloud environment. The platform will support automated provisioning and management of large groups of virtual machines or compute resources, including extensive monitoring in the cloud.
Everyone is virtualizing, but are they realizing any of the promised savings? This overview of IBM's new virtualization optimization solutions will show you how integrated Cloud Solutions like SmartCloud Provisioning and SmartCloud Monitoring can deliver the savings virtualization promises. Organizations are using intelligent management and analytics to provide the insight needed to optimize their virtualized infrastructure and dramatically improve availability, reduce data storage footprint...
One of the most compelling promises of the cloud is that you can pull out a credit card and be working in minutes. No purchase orders to fill out, no equipment to wait for on the loading dock. Just instant access to the resources you need, when you need them. But accessibility comes at a price, and an unintentional consequence may be that you create yet another orphaned identity silo. Enterprise IT has spent years consolidating its mishmash of directories, only to discover that cloud now threate...
Cloud computing is transforming the way businesses think about and leverage technology. As a result, the general understanding of cloud computing has come a long way in a short time. However, there are still many misconceptions about what cloud computing is and what it can do for businesses that adopt this game-changing computing model. In his General Session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Gene Eun, Senior Director, Oracle Cloud at Oracle, will discuss and dispel some of the common myth...
OpenStack Cells is one of the most anticipated features in Grizzly, the seventh release of the open source software that offers more block storage options and scalability. It has been running in production at Rackspace for more than a year. In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Wayne Walls, OpenStack Developer Advocate at Rackspace Hosting, will discuss nova cells and how it is changing the way you design your cloud applications and infrastructure. He will explain how OpenStack ...
"Since Cloud Expo is running the week of June 10, we thought it'd be a great idea to schedule our Meetup this week. That way, if you have colleagues, friends, or family in town that week for the Expo, you can invite them to join you!" With those words, the OpenStack New York Meetup Group's organizer's launched a landing page this week where anyone interested can register for the June 12 evening event.
“Cloud has everything to do with what has happened with Big Data,” explained Jason Deck, Director of Strategic Alliances at Logicworks, in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “Big Data doesn’t exist in its easily accessible way without cloud. From reduced startup costs, to cheap storage, to fast processing, to adequate security, to the easy incorporation of third-party analytics tools, cloud made Big Data accessible to customers of all sizes, with all different bud...
“Open source has always provided a number of benefits, including easing adoption costs, propagating a better understanding of the technology, and allowing for faster evolution and commercialization of products and services based on it,” noted Terry Woloszyn, Founder & CEO, Leeward Security Ltd., in this exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. “This is clearly evident with the OpenStack and CloudStack,” Woloszyn continued, “and others that have been quickly commercialized as...
SYS-CON Events announced today that OpenStack will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. OpenStack software controls large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources throughout a datacenter, all managed by a dashboard that gives administrators control while empowering their users to provision resources through a web interface. OpenStack powers some of the most widely-used SaaS app...
SYS-CON Events announced today that BUMI (Backup My Info!), the premium provider of managed online backup and recovery solutions for small to mid-sized businesses, will exhibit at SYS-CON's 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York. Manhattan-based BUMI (Backup My Info!) is a premium managed service provider specializing in online data backup and recovery. Founded in 2002, the company's data backup and recovery serv...