
Is that Service Level Agreement in your cloud services agreement giving you more than what you bargained for?
It is pretty well-established that users can expect public cloud service vendors to provide some form of service credits in the event of system downtime. “Downtime” may be classified as time that critical infrastructure, network, and/or server hosts are unavailable. In the event the vendor fails to meet certain uptime guarantees, users may be entitled […]

The Inevitable Cloud Outage: 5 Key Essentials to Safe Guard Your Application
A while back, I was starting up an EC2 instance on the AWS cloud when it entered an endless restart loop. All the application deployment efforts we’d made (installation and service configuration) over two weeks just went down the drain. So we called support. The support rep redirected us to his team leader who simply […]
Cloud research: Cost matters most and confusion remains
Although cloud computing holds the promise of innovation and business transformation, buyers remain focused on cost and are confused over license models.

Hewlett Packard: a tale of many clouds
Hewlett Packard used its Discover event in Frankfurt last week to reassert the company’s cloud credentials. Public, private, hybrid; HP is painting pictures that encompass them all, whilst seeking to protect hardware revenues and reassure conservative executives at some of its largest and most profitable customers. But HP has been here before, making bold claims […]

What’s Cloud Management ?
This last year has been immensely interesting for me as I watched the shaky cloud market mature. The change in people’s state of mind was rapid. The discussion advanced quickly from “the cloud will not prosper” to “Can we trust its security?”, and on to the current mood – “the cloud is here to stay”. […]

The Cloud needs some standards (or a Code of Practice)
One of the big issues for a buyer today considering Cloud Computing is how do you choose a good Cloud provider from a bad one? Who do you trust? Maybe the Cloud Topic needs some standards? Well actually there are so many standards bodies and vendor groups that the picture is confused – something that […]

Give Your Teams Swiss Army Knives
There is a transition in every company from a “seat of the pants” kind of entrepreneurial company to a “process driven” mechanized one. Many people who are successful in the former fare less well in the latter. Frankly, I’m much more of the former kind of guy and I tire of the routine process & […]