February 10, 2012

Back From the Pile: Interesting Links, December 10, 2010

This week I started getting to know a whole bunch of wireless geeks in preparation for Wireless Field Day in March. I also wrote about Light Peak, my search for an AirPrint-compatible printer, and some more on the iPad. On the enterprise IT side, I covered Application Performance Monitoring (with a special offer from SolarWinds) and Dell’s potential acquisition of Compellent.

Eleven Tech Trends To Watch In 2011

2011 will look pretty much like 2010 apart from the differences...

Prognostication is a perilous business, but pundits are drawn to the topic in the month of December. The fact that most predictions fall on their faces demonstrates the intoxicating mix of hope, dreams, and irrationality that mark both geniuses and fools. I am neither, so I like to make predictions after the fact! But this year I’ve been asked to look to the future, so I’ll stick with the safe road and pick current trends rather than guessing what I hope will come.

Flexible IT and the Path to the Services Future

IT is crossing a chasm, and we may not be prepared for the new direction we are taking

I’m an IT revolutionary. I talk all the time about the quaint backwards “state of the art” in enterprise IT, what with its (many) decades old protocols, paradigms, and practices. What we call modern is really just a charade of faked-out old-fashioned open systems infrastructure: Pretend servers talking to fake disks over frankenstein networking technology.

Back From The Pile: May 30, 2009

It was a week of HAM in the enterprise storage industry and angry arguments in the CloudCamp camp. But things looked up at the end with a productive discussion about backups. Google sent us a wave, but nobody was happy when GM threatened to collapse. Enterprise Storage HDS’ HAM-Fisted Announcement did not impress, with many wondering [...]

Lessons From the Cloud Computing Conference and Expo Prague 2009

What is the cloud? What will become of it? I spent May 17 and 18 in Prague at the Sys-Con Cloud Computing Conference and Expo exploring these questions with some of the smartest cloud-focused folks in Europe. The consensus: The IT world is changing and remote managed services are a big part of it. Another discovery: [...]

Preparing For Cloud and Virtualization Expo in Prague

The final approvals are in, and I’m pleased to announce that I will have speaking sessions at both of Sys-Con’s European Expos in Prague in two weeks’ time! I am very excited to be visiting “Praha matka měst” for the first time, but now have to work to get my sessions ready. There is still [...]

My Cloud Slam Topic: Enterprise Storage (Predictable?)

I am pleased to be part of Cloud Slam ’09, the cloud computing virtual conference! My presentation on Monday evening focuses on the emergence of cloud storage in the enterprise space: Why it’s important, what it is, and how to act on it. I start by talking about the drivers, including the unexpectedly high cost [...]

Sun Launches Their Own Cloud, But For Which Market?

Sun is getting into the cloud services business, but which market is their target?

While the bulk of Sun-related news this week relates to reported talks of a buyout by IBM, the company took a break from negotiations to introduce their own cloud computing and storage infrastructure, challenging Amazon, Google, Rackspace, and perhaps VMware, Microsoft, and Nirvanix.

Ten-Year Trend: Mobility

IT infrastructure is following consumer technology out of the glass house and into the wide world

What is the megatrend of this decade? I suggest that we are witnessing a wholesale shift from information tied to place/device to information mobility. Cloud computing, server virtualization, and even flash memory are all contributors to this massive trend, along with the user-side trends of the post-PDA mobile phone, 3G data, social web services, and connected home.

EMC Atmos Versus VMware VDC-OS: Will The Real Cloud Strategy Please Stand Up?

As I guessed on Friday, EMC has officially announced their Maui Atmos software layer today, calling it the “industry’s first COS (cloud-optimized storage) offering”, “a new era for IT”, and “a new category of storage.” So the new era for IT is a cloud with globally-distributed object stores with policy management? Great! But I thought [...]