You are here: Home / Archives for cloud computing

How To Use the Cloud

5:28 am by 1 Comment

A recent study claimed that cloud computing will create more jobs than the early Internet boom did. The industry is slated to create big business opportunities, as well as hundreds of thousands of jobs. In fact it is such a big deal, venture capitalists are expected invest upwards of $30 billion into the industry over the next five years or so.

Cloud Education is a Top Priority

Fortunately, you won’t have to wait five years to see the effects the industry has on the job market. Currently, there are far more of these employment opportunities than qualified candidates to fill those positions. Jobs are being advertised ad nauseam across the Internet and even Rackspace, a huge name in the cloud computing industry, is looking for new talent. These jobs are expected grow dramatically over the next few years. According to a report by technology analyst firm IDC, available cloud-computing jobs are expected to reach 14 million globally by
2014. While this is a good problem to have, it is a problem nonetheless. The industry needs a large stable of qualified IT
managers, systems administrators and network engineers to meet the rapidly growing needs of this technology.

Cloud Computing 101: Introducing CloudU

Part of the problem is that while there is plenty of discussion about how awesome it is, there is not much discussion about why it’s awesome, and how it works. Rackspace has built an intensive online resource, providing educational tools to train the general public, and potential Rackers (read: employees) in cloud computing
concepts. The resource is called CloudU, and answers two big questions right off the bat within the first couple of lessons:

1) What is cloud computing? & 2) How do I understand the cloud computing stack (Iaas, PaaS, SaaS)?

• What is Cloud Computing?

In previous years, enterprise-level computing was expensive. It was expensive on two levels: On one level, storing and managing massive datasets required massive processing power, which is definitely pricey to maintain. On another level, running in-house server technology and data centers required using lots of electrical power. It provides high-powered processing, while keeping electricity consumption low, and at a fraction of what it would cost to run a dedicated server or data center for a large-scale company. This is all accomplished in cloud-based data centers where processing and hardware resources are shared among multiple servers simultaneously. This gives the service providers the ability to provide scalable, customized computing resources on a subscription or as-needed basis to their customers.


• Understanding the Cloud Stack

The cloud stack is broken into three distinct components:

Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).

• IaaS – Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers, sometimes called Hardware-as-a-Service (HaaS), is just that, a provider of server hardware for companies. Companies can rent server space, hardware and operating systems, and have them installed on-site or at a third-party location. Rackspace is among the largest providers of IaaS solutions.

• PaaS – PaaS is often referred to as middle-ware. This is because PaaS solutions provide an easy path of all a company’s application deployment needs. This includes server space, operating systems, and a host of deployment methods that cut the app development time in half.

• SaaS – SaaS is the most common type of service, primarily because it is the easiest to access and use. Essentially, SaaS providers offer powerful software solutions over the web. This includes everything from storage to word processing to digital video editing. SaaS includes any type of software that you can use online.

Everyday, technology is becoming more of an omniscient presence blanketing the planet. As these types of networks continue to augment traditional server delivery and mobile technology expands to necessitate more cloud infrastructure, we can expect jobs in the field to continue blossoming long into the future, potentially growing to make cloud computing and information technology one of the foremost industries in the future.

This guest post is by Thomas Stone a contributing author at technected.com

Filed Under: Guest Blogging, technology Tagged With: , ,

Top Tech Innovations of 2011: Looking Back & Looking Forward

7:08 am by Leave a Comment

2011 was a big year in innovation. From artificial intelligence and the cloud to payment systems and wireless power, the tech world has been advancing more quickly than ever before, setting the stage for revolutionizing consumers’ lives in the process. Here’s a breakdown of five of the most impressive innovations of 2011.

Watson

Developed by IBM and named after its first president, Watson is an artificial intelligence that was built to answer questions posed in normal human speech. That means no special commands need to be memorized for it to respond to you, it can just figure out what you mean. Due to its impressive hardware and software it was even able to hold its own against humans on the game show Jeopardy!, ending both of its matches ahead of its human competitors.

Digital Wallets–On Your Phone

Search giant Google rolled out Google Wallet in 2011, though it was only available on its Nexus S 4G phones. Using a special Near Field Communication (NFC) chip in the phone, you will eventually be able to link up your credit card and checking accounts to your Google Wallet and pay for items in store by waving your phone over a special receiver. One of the best parts? Google Wallet will eventually be able to store your receipts and coupons so you’ll never have to worry about losing your BOGO coupon for the daily special at Chuck’s Chili Chalice.


Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a big thing that’s on the horizon and it made big strides in 2011, changing everything from the way we save our documents to the way we handle medical billing software. The cloud makes it easier for medical professionals to access patient information from their home, office or hospital without being tied to any specific server. It also makes it easier for patients to access and pay bills by providing a simple, unified interface.

Wireless Power

True wireless power systems have been in development for many years and the Power Mat has even been out for a few itself (though it’s not truly wireless since it still requires physical contact with an object carrying an electric current), but HaloIPT has developed a system for wirelessly charging electric vehicles. It hasn’t made any serious ripples in the world yet, but it could drive more widespread adoption of electric vehicles, especially since one of the most often cited reasons people give for not purchasing one is the fear that they will forget to charge it when they get home. With HaloIPT’s system, owners would merely have to position their car over a transmitting pad installed in their garage or driveway. No plugs involved!

Voice Activation

Tim Cook, Apple’s newest CEO, had his first major unveiling at 1 Infinite Loop in Cupertino with the iPhone 4S. Though it didn’t look like much of an overhaul, it packed in a lot of amazing new hardware and one app that has set the pace for future voice activated software: Siri. Built from the core of an AI program developed by DARPA and MIT, Siri not only responds to voice commands, but also learns about its user, adjusting to their speaking style and recognizing the context of their words. Siri is surely just the beginning of AI personal assistants, but it’s also a monumentally helpful app of its own.

As these new technologies continue to mature what can we expect? The importance of mobile is likely to continue to skyrocket. We’ll continue to move away from the centrality of the desktop/laptop and more towards the tablet and smart-phone. Searching will change as the adoption of voice-activated searches like Siri increase and even the way that we buy things might change as the adoption of apps like Google Wallet and Square continue to increase. One thing is for sure: from the standpoint of a techie, 2012 is going to be an exciting year!

Filed Under: Guest Blogging, tech review, technology Tagged With: , , , ,

5 Ways The Cloud-Computing Shift Will Help Small Businesses

2:02 pm by 2 Comments
This Guest Post 5 Ways The Cloud-Computing Shift Will Help Small Businesses was submitted by: Thomas Stone. If you would like to Submit a Guest Post please see Submit Guest Post.

Doing business in the 21st century is rarely confined to one small area. Demand comes from all corners of the globe, and with such a diffuse region of business, it’s especially important for small businesses to secure networking solutions to meet the challenge. Luckily, the availability of high-speed Internet and corporate IP connections is giving small business the opportunity to compete with larger corporations.

Cloud computing services usually consist of high-performance computing resources and high-capacity online file storage devices. These services are much cheaper than building an IT department from scratch, and include all the benefits thereof. Below are the top five reasons cloud computing will aid small businesses.

1.  Cloud computing is a cost-effective network solution

The price of server equipment is certainly not cheap, but the cost of maintenance can run a small business into unnecessary debt. To that end, the cloud is something of a great equalizer. Instead of the best network solutions being available to the corporations with the capital to purchase them, small businesses have a chance to benefit from normally expensive equipment and services for a comparatively low price. Software and other computing costs are driven down by dint of a sharing infrastructure; rather than buying ten software licenses for ten computers, one copy exists in the cloud and individual users can access and utilize it. Programs like Microsoft Office are necessary for business but can cost up to $1000 to install on a dozen workplace machines.

Savings on software costs is one benefit of the cloud network, but small businesses that have a decentralized employee network stand to gain the most from cloud solutions because the online data storage creates a centralized space for collaboration, no matter where in the world employees might be.

2.  Cloud computing reduces energy costs.

The cloud infrastructure is set up so that each client organization (of which there may be hundreds on a single server) splits the cost of the energy needed to run the server. Clients only pay for what they use, so rather than take on the financial burden of simply powering a standalone server, everyone splits the cost. As such, cloud computing enables a more efficient use of energy, especially if the tasks performed on the server are infrequent and low intensity. This consolidation of resources and virtualization of information (i.e. having a copy of an application in the cloud rather than on each individual machine) inevitably leads to considerable energy savings in both the short and long-term.

3.  Cloud computing is green. 

The management of energy consumption is attracting increasing amounts of attention as we attempt to move toward a more environmentally conscious society. The above-mentioned consolidation of resources leads to energy efficiencies and a reduction in carbon emissions. Whereas cloud solutions can help an enterprise business reduce emissions by 30%, small businesses can reduce carbon by more than 90% by using a shard cloud service (source). This is particularly important in a climate where governments are offering tax-incentives for greener business practices.

4.  Cloud computing offers improved efficiencies.

No matter what size a business is, there must be someone in charge of the information technology. In-house networks may go down, and they often do. In those cases a business has to pay someone to be on call nearly every hour of the day to address all of these problems. This can be costly, inconvenient and ultimately unnecessary, especially for small businesses where the IT department is an employee who has another job to do in addition to overseeing the server.

IT services are handled by cloud providers at virtually no cost. The money and time saved can be applied to other areas of the business, freeing up employees to work on tasks more pertinent to the business rather than trying to learn what bug is keeping employees from logging into their e-mail. With cloud services, businesses can “outsource” their IT to the provider, trim extraneous responsibilities and stay focused.

5.  Cloud computing is secure.

When a server dies, that’s it. Either you have the data backed up or you don’t. Cloud servers benefit from having high security measures because a lack thereof is a glaring liability. A private server might be protected behind a firewall, but it’s all too easy for a hacker to exploit loopholes in systems if s/he really wants to. The security that comes with a cloud manager is worth far more than the price you pay for the service.

In addition to general back up security, the cloud also helps protect data stored locally from leaking out. Data in the cloud is accessible from any device, but since that data is not stored on the device itself, there is a decreased chance that sensitive information could fall into dangerous hands. If, for example, a company’s entire holdings portfolio was stored on a desktop in the boss’s office and subsequently swept away in a tornado, that information is gone; with the cloud, the computer may be gone, but the information remains safe on the server.

Cloud computing is a viable alternative to on-site file storage. The adoption rate among both small and large businesses is rapidly growing. In fact, all signs point to the cloud being the future of our online lives, whether business or personal, and given the benefits it’s hard to see why it wouldn’t be.

As Kevin Hart from pc world says:

“A power surge nearly destroyed our in-house e-mail server. Had we not recovered it, a great deal of historical knowledge and valuable information would have been lost forever, not to mention the lost productivity for days or weeks. Now we have a secure, redundant, cloud e-mail system we can access anywhere, anytime…”

Filed Under: Guest Blogging, small business, technology Tagged With: , , ,

Patent Wars: Google Vs. Apple

2:11 pm by 1 Comment
This Guest Post Patent Wars: Google Vs. Apple was submitted by: Thomas Stone. If you would like to Submit a Guest Post please see Submit Guest Post.

Silicon Valley is a war zone.

Over the past month, the drama in Palo Alto is unfolding like a military epic. Technology goliaths are firing lawsuits like canons at each other and the heavy artillery comes in the form of patents.

A patent used to be a way for inventors to license their ideas, and protect those ideas from infringement. If an idea was good enough, a company might buy that patent from the inventor, and develop a product based on it. In the end, the inventor sells an idea and the company gets a product to sell. Unfortunately, this is all a dream world compared to the rugged landscape of patent litigation we have today. Companies are now amassing huge troves of patents without any intention of using them for innovation, but to threaten and strong-arm other companies into paying.

Google made a move that shocked the tech world last week when it spent $12.5 billion (a significant portion of the company’s total profit last year) to acquire Motorola Mobility, or more specifically, Motorola’s patent portfolio. Motorola’s hardware manufacturing may or may not be worth the price depending on whom you ask, but the 17,000 patents owned by the company now become the property of Google.

Things have been tense since Apple surpassed Google as the most valuable brand in the world earlier this year. Google and Apple are not only competing in the mobile arena–there’s all out war being waged between them in the cloud computing arena as well, as both companies gear up to dominate cloud software, online file storage, and cloud hardware.


These days, patents are more important as protection against (and tools for) lawsuits than ownership of original ideas. Tech companies, especially those invested in mobile hardware and software markets, are looking for ways to stay above water as the list of smart phone losers gets longer. One strategy is to sue companies for patent infringement, demanding that an up-front fee is paid in addition to licensing fees for profiting from a product based on another company’s idea.

Google recently became the target of one such lawsuit. A campaign led against Android by a number of companies including Microsoft and Apple, sought to garner licensing fees from Google by purchasing a number of patents from Nortel and Novell. As a defensive measure, Google claims to have purchased Motorola partly to gain control over its thousands of patents, which would help protect the company and its subsidiaries (read: Android) from these suits. It also fills Google’s arsenal with a bevy of ideas with which they can turn around and sue any other company.

These companies are fighting patents with patents in an arms race against each other. Google maintains that they are simply defending themselves against the ravenous legal assaults of Apple and Google, assaults the company thinks are strangling innovation and purchasing patents for ideas in order to leverage them against other companies in the courtroom rather than utilize those ideas to create a new, compelling product.

Filed Under: google, Guest Blogging, technology, Technology Resources Tagged With: , , ,