Links List 01.08.10

January 8th, 2010 by Valerie Barber

Happy 75^th Elvis!

Happy New Year!

Man, it is cold!

On the heels of a year that saw numerous, high-profile outages from major providers, it’s not surprising that analysts predict that SLAs will be coming to the cloud in 2010. That’s just one of the tech predictions for this year. Other cloud-related predictions include in-cloud encryption to address cloud security concerns, as well as the rise of private/dedicated clouds due to fears of multi-tenancy. In general, a modest recovery in IT and telecommunications industry is predicted, fueled by surging demand in emerging markets, the growing impact of the cloud services model and the explosion of mobile devices and applications.

I’ve seen 2010 hailed as the “year of the cloud”, but it appears there is still a long way to go in getting IT professionals on the same page when it comes to defining and understanding what the cloud actually is. In a survey of 200 IT professionals, 40% said they were confused by the term and its many definitions. A third thought it was mostly hype and 24% “weren’t sure”. This confusion could stall enterprise adoption of cloud computing technologies, especially since just 10% said their finance directors could accurately define the term and 59% thought their chief executive could not. Over a year ago at The 451 Group Client Conference we covered the debate about defining the cloud. IT workers foggy about cloud computing.

Here’s a good take on how the government will address security concerns as it expands its use of cloud computing in 2010. Instead of trying to “protect everything”, there will be a shift to prioritizing security controls based on whether the data presents low, moderate or high levels of risk, allowing more government agencies to move less-sensitive data that generally is made available to the public into cloud computing environments. This strategy will pave the way toward migrating more sensitive data to the cloud as new security models and solutions emerge.

I like the high-tech hype machine list that gives a hype status and commentary:

• Cloud computing: climbing
• Green computing: overhyped but still valuable
• Telepresence: overhyped and growing (but coming to your home?)
• Unified communications: overhyped but facing reality

What are IT’s most important priorities?

• 33% – increase use of server virtualization
• 28% – information security initiatives
• 27% – improve data backup and recovery
• 27% – upgrade network infrastructure

Finally, here’s some irony – the parent company of foreclosure.com has filed for bankruptcy. At least it happened last year!

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