Virtualization

There's a great deal of uncertainty how data security and privacy laws and regulations apply in a cloud computing environment. That's not good news for policymakers or users.

Where you come down on that question depends a great deal on how you think most IT organizations will consume cloud services. How will IT organizations achieve an infrastructure that scales easily, can be reconfigured in minutes rather than weeks, and has a transparent cost based on usage?

Salesforce.com's plan to integrate Twitter into its Service Cloud customer service platform could benefit competitors.

The typical cost discussion regarding internal data center versus cloud provider costs is over-simplified and fails to assign a true cost structure to the internal data center side. This isn't really surprising: Most IT organizations really don't have a clear understanding of their true costs in the first place.

The bottom line on this week's announcements from Amazon and Microsoft for AWS and Azure, respectively: Significant improvements to their offerings that reduce common objections to the use of cloud platforms.

CIO.com's Bernard Golden says a new UC Berkeley report has some sage advice for IT groups regarding cloud computing, but that it also underestimates some challenges.

This plan presents the extremely intriguing possibility that IBM might offer IBM-powered systems as EC2-based "cloudburst" capability, enabling companies with IBM-based systems located within their data centers to dynamically expand applications into EC2.

If IBM is setting up a senior organization to push cloud computing, you're going to have to have a cloud strategy. Pooh-poohing it when IBM's CEO is talking it up with your CEO isn't a good idea.

Is cloud computing a sustaining or disruptive innovation? Both. But it's utltimately likely to be disruptive, despite the efforts of many IT organizations to corral it as a sustaining innovation. If that's you, your job's in peril.

Open Virtualization Format could solve key problems with virtualization deployments. It's got key vendors behind it. And it's likely to be even more important as the use of cloud computing increases. Here's why.