SMB Opportunities, and Risks, are Emerging from the Cloud

Crowds were a bit thinner on Thursday, the final day of this year’s 9th Cloud Expo trade show, but attendance was surprisingly high at my presentation on the topic of cloud computing for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs).

I was a bit worried when almost no one was there at the 9:00 a.m. starting time. But within 10 minutes the room was packed with at least 50 interested and engaged people who kept me busy through the rest of the hour with a steady stream of questions and comments.

Product Consolidation a Hot Topic at This Week’s Cloud Expo

Wednesday was another eventful day here in Silicon Valley at the 9th Cloud Expo trade show, which seems to be attracting a surprisingly large crowd of vendors and potential customers from across the cloud computing industry.

Much of the news media’s attention thus far has focused on how the titans of the industry – such as Microsoft, Google, Oracle and Amazon – are positioning themselves to do business in the cloud. But just as interesting to me are the conversations taking place on the sidelines of the event between small and medium-size users of the cloud.

Speakers Emphasize Security as Cloud Expo Gets Into Full Swing

Silicon Valley is playing host to one of the hottest sectors in information technology this week as the 9th Cloud Expo trade show gets underway at the Santa Clara Convention Center. With a very enthusiastic group of attendees ready to celebrate all things related to cloud computing, one of the early themes to emerge here this week are large enterprises migrating to the cloud as security improves.

Bring In the Clouds - Doug Adams, Vice President of Sales and Marketing

Maybe it was people leaving early to head over to see the Yankees in this evening’s American League baseball playoff game, but attendance seemed a bit lighter here at the second day of the fall Interop show in New York City than on the first few days. 

Still, the overall excitement and activity levels were noticeably higher at this year’s show than in recent years. More people were looking to partner, and talking about business opportunities. And as my colleague Denoid Tucker noted yesterday, nearly everyone was talking about cloud computing.

Cloud Computing Takes Center Stage at Interop

The fall Interop show is underway in New York City this week and, not surprisingly, much of this year’s buzz and activity relates to cloud computing. Even some of the other hot discussion topics, such as disaster recovery, seem to revolve around how those services might be delivered more effectively via the cloud.

Our New Northern Virginia Data Center!

Great news! We'll be expanding our data center presence on the East Coast.  Our parent RagingWire formally announced today that we will have a new 140,000 sq. ft. facility in Northern Virginia.  It is expected that the new facility will be online in March.

Artificial Intelligence and Cloud Security

Recently, the technology world turned its eyes to the Watson Supercomputer as it takes on two of the biggest Jeopardy champions ever.  If you don’t understand why this is such a big deal, take a moment to think about what Jeopardy questions look like…they include play-on-words, jokes, etc.  Things that computers are not good at understanding.

A Parachute Called Redundancy

Redundancy in most other contexts means expendable, extra, and oftentimes unnecessary.  However, as recent cloud outages have proven, redundancy is an extremely crucial feature for cloud computing.

The Power of Words

Very very cool video in a post by Glazer-Kennedy Insider's Circle.  Check it out, only 1:48 long and worth every second.

Security in The Cloud at Web 2.0

We’re coming off the Web 2.0 event in San Francisco where there were many opportunities to talk cloud.  Very often the discussions quickly came around to security in the cloud, in particular about concerns about the lack of security.  These concerns are valid, as the promises of the cloud – scalability, efficiency, speed, etc – are enabled by shared resources and this means that there are inherent vulnerabilities.  So what to do?