Below is a very interesting article about a comprehensive investigation spearheaded by Verizon regarding cyber security, including cyber espionage and cyber criminal activity. Key callouts: Over 95% of cyberespionage attacks originated from China. Even split between size of organizations being targeted (small and large). In 4 out of 5 breaches, the attackers stole valid credentials to gain network access. The …
David Linthicum on Hybrid Clouds
David Linthicum is a well-regarded thought leader in the cloud computing arena. His post below from GigaOm Pro addresses his thoughts on the hybrid cloud topic. To learn what public, private, and hybrid cloud options are available from AIS, please just ask. Emphasis in red added by me. Brian Wood, VP Marketing ———- Are Hybrid Clouds Just a Fear of Commitment? …
The Right Stuff (to Be a Great CIO)
The post below summarizes what CIO magazine has found to be the essential ingredients of a great CIO. Summary piece by Caron Carlson in FierceCIO, original article by Rich Hein in CIO. Emphasis in red added by me. Brian Wood, VP Marketing ———- What winning CIOs are made of Essential traits of today’s successful CIO The role of the CIO …
Effort vs. Results: How CIOs Can (and Should) Be Thinking
Part of the value proposition of any data center and cloud service provider such as AIS comes from the “make vs. buy” discussion: Why build something yourself when you can get it more efficiently from someone else? The objective is the delivered outcome (results), not the process of how it’s made to happen (effort). Similarly, the post below discusses the …
Wireless vs. Data Centers: Which Consumes More Energy?
Here’s a bit of news / research that struck me as completely non-obvious and somewhat sobering: Wireless access networks (e.g., Wi-Fi, 3G, and 4G/LTE ) consume MUCH more energy than the cloud-based services to which they connect. It’s non-obvious (to me, anyway) because data centers have the reputation of being really big energy sinks. They are really big energy sinks, …
US Navy: Yesterday Grog, Tomorrow Cloud
Hear ye, hear ye, the following is an important dispatch from central command. Prepare to copy … the U.S. Navy’s new public cloud computing policy. Details below, with emphasis in red added by Seaman Recruit Wood. Please acknowledge. Repeat, please acknowledge. Break. ———– U.S. Navy Issues New Cloud Computing Policy The Department of the Navy Chief Information Officer (DON) recently …
Big Data = Big Savings in Healthcare
Tim McElligott of FierceBigData summarizes a recent report from McKinsey analyzing how the healthcare industry can reduce spending and improve patient outcomes by extracting information via big data. A few notable points: Fiscal concerns are driving the demand for big-data applications Health care expenses now represent 17.6 percent of the GDP Material improvement requires people to change their behavior Emphasis …
It’s NOT the Economy, Stupid
James Carville became a household name in the 1992 U.S. presidential campaign when he coined the phrase, “The economy, stupid” in reference to one of the three key campaign talking points. The post below, by Barb Darrow in GigaOm, debunks the common misperception that cloud adoption is all about price. Well, it turns out it’s not. Instead, it’s about agility …
The Evolution of Service-Level Agreements
“There are no guarantees in life — except death and taxes.” And data center SLAs (Service Level Agreements), of course. Analyst Al Sadowski of 451 Research wrote the piece below on the evolution of SLAs. Emphasis in red added by me. Brian Wood, VP Marketing —————- It’s Time for Service-Level Agreement 3.0 Ask any buyer, and they will tell you …
David Linthicum on Cloud Security
David Linthicum is a well-regarded thought leader in the cloud computing arena. His post below from GigaOm Pro address the “cloud security” issue straight-on — and clearly outlines the data and rationale for why public cloud services are often MORE SECURE than enterprise networks. Emphasis in red added by me. Brian Wood, VP Marketing ———- Security: Getting to the truth …
