Articles about Cloud

Anyone who has worked in the technology industry for a long time will develop a healthy cynicism towards industry buzzwords. They may also come to realize that the majority of technology "paradigms" are adaptations of concepts that have been done before. Digital disruption is not the automatic result of the arrival of new types of tech. Disruption, transformation, innovation -- call it what you will -- comes about as a result of human ingenuity, good fortune, and hard work -- in addition to technology.

Take Pokémon Go as an example. Plenty of analysis has been done on why it was so successful. Nothing about it was particularly radical; the smartphone, mapping, GPS, AR and, of course, the Pokémon themselves are not new. However the combination of these things tapped into a desire for nostalgia, collectables, and the need to complete and compete. Originally developed as an April Fool’s joke, it was, by all accounts, a highly successful mistake.

Continue reading →

A new report from cloud security company Netskope reveals that while enterprise cloud adoption continues to rise, unsanctioned use of services remains a problem.

The results show that half of all users of officially sanctioned cloud storage services like Box and Dropbox also have a personal instance of the same service. This can make detection of unauthorized copying of data more difficult.

Continue reading →

A new survey reveals that 65 percent of senior IT and security executives think that the biggest security risks for business come from public clouds.

The study from IT solutions company BMC in conjunction with Forbes Insights also shows that 69 percent of respondents say digital transformation is forcing fundamental changes to existing cybersecurity strategies.

Continue reading →

During Consumer Electronics Show 2017 yesterday, in licensing partnership with MQA, music streamer Tidal announced the new audio-fidelity tier "Masters", which is available for free to existing HiFi subscribers. Early album selection is extremely limited as is access option: macOS or Windows application. Both will expand in time.

But wow! I tested skeptically, wiring up my studio cans—Audio-Technica ATH-R70x—to 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Touch Bar to hear the difference. Hehe, if any. I deliberately started with Fleetwood Mac's "Go Your Own Way" from album "Rumors", which released 40 years ago on February 4th. Tidal claims that Masters recordings deliver "an audio experience exactly as the artist intended". The band spent nearly a year painstakingly recording and engineering the disc, making any, or all, the songs great test cases. 

Continue reading →

Cloud storage-friendly screenshot tool CloudShot has just hit version 5.7.

An improved OAuth implementation means you can now directly upload your screenshots to Google Drive, OneDrive, Dropbox, Imgur or your own FTP server, as well as saving it to local or network drives.

Continue reading →

The year 2016 is when the United States sold its soul to Donald Trump and I signed over mine to Apple. How's that for introduction to the five favs series, joining colleagues Alan Buckingham, Brian Fagioli, and Wayne Williams? Yup. I'm an Apple whore as 2017 opens onto its second day. The fruit-logo company won back my business as I gave up the Google lifestyle. Three main reasons: 1) I believed CEO Tim Cook's privacy promises, all while my concerns about Big G information collection increased. 2) I found the visual acuity of Apple fonts and user interfaces to be far superior to Google's, which helped compensate for diminishing reading vision (later recovered through eye surgery). 3) Google's platforms proved inadequate for easily recording, producing, and publishing the Frak That! podcast (a fun side project).

My contribution to the series is a bit disingenuous, though. I wouldn't call these "My favorite tech items of 2016". They are what I bought, or was released, last year that I use most often, regardless of their benefits and flaws. Each will get belated review sometime during the next few months. Consider this story each's preview. Okay, let's get to them.

Continue reading →

The reign of the cloud has begun. Employing a strong cloud strategy has escalated from being a luxury to a must have for the enterprise. Meanwhile, as companies around the world struggle with their digital transformation efforts, Bimodal IT has become the new norm, for good or bad. I anticipate we’ll see companies look to take their cloud strategies to the next level in an effort to bridge the divide between the two modes of IT in 2017.

They’ll do that through the use of hybrid approaches including the expansion of private cloud usage and new solutions that facilitate legacy application modernization. Here’s how I see those predictions playing out this year.

Continue reading →

Yahoo, one of the earliest and brightest dot-coms, is a Hellhole at the close of 2016. It stinks of decay and neglect. The 1 billion active user accounts ravaged by hackers is a metaphor for the trendy neighborhood turned into gang-ridden slum. Verizon was, or maybe still is, buying Yahoo. Walk away, I say, unless Yahoo is willing to pay for the privilege of becoming part of the expanding VZN communications and media empire.

I typically make many changes at the start of the new year, and as 2017 begins, I take my advice offered to Verizon: Abandon Yahoo. First to go is its photo-sharing site, for many of the reasons stated seven months ago. My Flickr Pro account expires in September, and I will cancel a few weeks earlier to prevent auto-renewal. In the meantime, I consider my Flickr officially closed, and I will no longer use it. All photos will remain until the service makes them unavailable—and pursuant to the terms,

Continue reading →

According to IDC, by 2018 at least half of IT spending will be cloud based, reaching 60 percent of all IT Infrastructures, and 60 to 70 percent of all software, services, and technology spending by 2020.

As cloud has become a standard way of doing business, organizations globally are using it as a tool for innovation and business transformation. Those who successfully use the cloud to achieve growth will have a mature, strategic view of how best to implement and integrate it across their organizations. All approaches to cloud have advantages. From the straightforward simplicity of public cloud services, versus the increased security and control of a private cloud, there is a cloud environment to meet every organization’s needs.

Continue reading →

Multi-cloud has been discussed within the cloud computing industry for a while, but there is still confusion and disagreement about what it is. What most can agree on is that multi-cloud is about mixing and matching the best-in-class technologies and services from different cloud providers to create the best possible solution for a business.

This flexibility is what will define the industry in the coming years, allowing organizations to leverage the relative advantages, price-points and geographic locations of the solutions to their best advantage. However, the transition to a multi-cloud solution can be fraught with risks if improperly managed. As a result, enterprises looking to gain advantage through this technology are seeking expert help in the form of third-party managed service providers.

Continue reading →

From the day I received the Oct. 14, 2016 letter about billing changes, AT&T U-verse and Internet cancellation was inevitable. I had auto-pay set up to a credit card, but the service provider wanted access to my bank account, which I didn't want to give. "Beginning in December, your credit card will be charged eight days after your Bill Cycle date", the correspondence reads. The change meant AT&T would take payment on the 8th of the month rather than the 21st. Since the company bills a month in advance, the new date would work out to about six-weeks in fees paid ahead for future service. On principle, being an independent-minded "don't tell me what to do" Mainer, I considered other options.

Ironically, the launch of another AT&T service, DirecTV Now, on October 30th, made the decision to cancel super easy. After several starts and stops, the Wilcox household has finally cut the cord for good. DirecTV Now is the nudge, but other streaming services make a big difference, too. Much has changed since the last cord-cutting effort, in November 2015, which we abandoned after about 7 weeks. The quality and quantity of original programming from Amazon, Hulu, and Netflix is greater and hugely enticing 12 months later.

Continue reading →

This is the time of year when industry experts like to come up with predictions for the coming 12 months. Last week we looked at some of their security forecasts, today it's the turn of the cloud to get the crystal ball gazing treatment.

So, what do experts think are going to be the cloud trends of 2017?

Continue reading →

Say what you want about Google, but the company is clearly a major proponent of open source ideology. Some people criticize the search giant for making billions on the back of open source (such as with Android), but Google is a code contributor too. You know what? If a company can have success using open source code, that is a good thing -- as long as it is properly licensed, of course.

Today, Google announces that it has joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation as a gold member. This is yet another example of the search giant's open source focus. Google joins some other respected companies at this membership level, such as Verizon, GE Digital, and Huawei to name a few. For whatever reason, the search giant stopped short of committing as the highest-level platinum member, however.

Continue reading →

A new survey of over 250 senior IT executives reveals that 89 percent of IT leaders are planning on implementing more cloud based disaster recovery in the next year.

The study by disaster recovery and business continuity specialist Quorum also reveals that 80 percent of IT leaders say it takes more than an hour for them to recover from a server failure, with more than 25 percent saying they need more than two hours.

Continue reading →

A new survey reveals that big data deployments are on the rise and increasingly are in the cloud. More than half of respondents say they deploy big data in the cloud today and 72 percent plan on doing so in the future.

The study from self-service analytics platform AtScale shows close to 70 percent have been using big data for more than a year (compared to 59 percent last year) and 95 percent of respondents have achieved positive value or are anticipating that they will.

Continue reading →