April 16, 2009
McKinsey Slams the Cloud
Cloud computing can divert IT department's attention from technologies that actually deliver sizable benefits.  McKinsey & Company says that outsourcing your typical big corporate or government data center to a cloud service would cost double what it costs to keep the thing in-house....read more

Cloud Computing: A New Horizon
04/16/2009
The outlook is bleak for laptops, hard drives and desktops – clouds are on the horizon and could change the way we use computers forever. For some, the ‘cloud’ is just the latest technological craze, but for others it is the future of computing, and it has already generated a large body of research literature. What seems certain is that cloud computing has the potential to bring about irreversible changes in the way computers are used around the world...read more...

04/15/2009
What's Really Industry Changing About Cloud Computing?
What are some of the new directions in the massively parallel cloud computing space? I’ll mention four that I’m particularly interested in, that are exciting and challenging, and that I think will have a huge impact on the industry. If you have others in mind, then feel free to add your ideas....read more

Can IT manage the cloud? These CTOs can
04/15/2009
Brian Corrigan used to run datacenters for major casinos, so he knows not to gamble with mission-critical apps. Now, he works in the other gaming industry -- the one with joysticks and lots of shooting -- building communities for online gamers and collecting information about game usage for their publishers. As CTO at Agora Games, he needs to quickly ramp up and then cut his computing capabilities as new games come on the market, become all the rage, and eventually fade into so-so status. So it's little surprise that he's joined the growing ranks of companies buying computing, storage, and networking power as they need it from the cloud...read more...

Cloud Computing: A Transition Methodology
04/13/2009
Cloud computing refers to the practice of leveraging third-party computing resources, such as network grids and server farms, to extend IT capabilities and reduce the cost of ownership. This practice offers numerous potential benefits to organizations that want to centralize software and data storage management while eliminating the costly overhead of in-house hardware and software maintenance and the personnel required to build, support, and maintain enterprise computing solutions....read more...

Computing Heads for the Clouds - BusinessWeek
04/13/2009
Researchers seeking smarter ways to tackle the most complicated computing tasks think they’ve found the answer in a cloud—though not the kind that wafts across the sky as masses of condensed water droplets and frozen crystals. Instead, they’re turning to something called cloud computing, which aims to deliver supercomputing power over the Internet...read more...

Cloud Computing as a Competitive Advantage
04/13/2009
When talking of cloud computing and the value it means for an adopter, we often hear of the cost-cutting benefits. Given the current economic climate, this is a fairly convincing and accurate pitch for the cloud. However, this is far from the only benefit of the cloud. Cloud computing solutions are poised to disrupt the current IT landscape, and in doing so, values that enable competitive advantage will be realized. Two such benefits that come to mind are increased innovation opportunity and enhanced business agility...read more...

The Evils of Cloud Computing
04/07/2009
The pendulum is swinging back to timesharing, now called “cloud computing,” from personal computing. The norm is shifting, and using an “application” means giving other companies all your personal data to store and handle. This is a problem because the Fourth Amendment does not protect data in the hands of 3rd parties. Are we erasing a section from the Bill of Rights to obtain an attractive engineering solution?  Brad Templeton, Chairman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, presented on the topic at BIL 2009...read more...