Archive for the ‘Web Hosting’ Category

World Cloud Computing Leaders Announced in BSA Scorecard

Friday, March 8th, 2013

On March 7th, the software alliance group BSA released a scorecard on the world’s top twenty-four countries for cloud hosting. These countries were selected for being the biggest players in the world’s Information Technology market, making up about 80% of the entire market. The 24 countries were graded on their individual commitment to promoting cloud technologies within their own countries and globally.

Among the criteria that contribute to a nation’s overall “cloud climate,” according to the BSA, are: its attitude toward user privacy, free-trade, cybercrime, cybersecurity, and broadband network.

Chris Hopfensperger, who is the technology policy counsel at the BSA, critiqued the progress made since the release of last year’s global cloud-computing scorecard, calling it “patchy” but stating that the BSA remains hopeful that soon enough the good laws will eventually outnumber the bad ones that inhibit the expansion of reliable cloud hosting technologies.

Japan Wins Big in the Cloud Arena

For the 2nd year in a row, Japan has scored the #1 spot, being called the friendliest atmosphere for cloud development and enhancement in the world. The honor is attributed to the country’s dedication to user security and privacy, as well as its unyielding stance against cybercrime. Japan also has a growing rate of broadband acceptance that contributed to its high score.

Coming in at 2nd and 3rd were Australia and the US, respectively, after the US pushed Germany down to 4th from last year. The decision-makers at the BSA owed this ranking change to the fact that US-based cloud providers have made consistent developments in strengthening their cloud computing technologies. At this time, the ranking switch is not owed to new and better policies made by the government.

And the top 5 countries for cloud computing are…

  1. Japan
  2. Australia
  3. United States
  4. Germany
  5. Singapore

Germany’s drop to 4th is blamed on “potentially restrictive privacy laws, protectionist policies,” while Singapore leapt up five slots thanks in part to the release of a recent data privacy law that took effect since the previous scorecard was released in 2012.

The Not-So-Heavy Hitters

The 5 worst countries for cloud hosting providers are:

1. South Africa

2. Indonesia

3. Brazil

4. Thailand

5. Vietnam

The countries that tallied the lowest marks demonstrated a marked lack of anti-cybercrime policies, little to no participation or interest in global standardization of free cloud practices, nonexistent or insufficient free-trade legislation, and incomplete protocols for user and data security and privacy.

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What is all the Cloud Hosting Buzz?

Thursday, November 15th, 2012

‘Cloud’ is the new buzz word in the world of business. Many businesses are moving towards cloud hosting and cloud hosting has become extremely popular in the past few years. The main concept behind cloud hosting is that the resources required for the infrastructure are spread across many servers probably across the world and are rendered on a per need basis. Cloud hosting comes with the benefits of reducing the downtime in case of hardware failures.

In cloud hosting, because the resources can be allocated on a per need basis, scalability becomes a huge advantage over dedicated systems. Also, this also means that load can be managed easily as load can be split on to other servers. Cloud hosting comes with the stress-free management without having to worry about the underlying hardware hosting your environment. Businesses have been moving towards cloud hosting to get rid of the overhead involved in management and maintenance of the dedicated environments. A typical example of cloud hosting is IaaS (Infrastructure as a service) offered by Amazon. Companies and businesses can have their environments hosted on the Amazon servers which are located all over the world. Amazon has been doing IaaS for a few years.

Each server in the cloud helps in carrying out a particular function. In case, one of the servers fail, it is temporarily taken out of the resources pool and another server kicks in to take over the functions of the failed server. Same is true if a site where these servers are located. If the site goes down because of a disaster, another site takes over the functions. The site recovery feature of course depends on the hosting provider and the money paid for the services.   This will also happen in case of an overload condition. The quality of hardware and the quality of service provided (meaning features like disaster recovery, zero downtime) depends on the hosting provider. In case of enterprise level cloud hosting, the hosting providers are generally utilizing high end hardware with Vmware which is considered to be the Rolls Royce version of virtualization and deliver extremely reliable cloud hosting services.

Cloud hosting has come a long way and has completely surpasses dedicated server environment and why not you have multiple servers at your disposal whenever you need instead of a single server in a dedicated environment. In cloud hosting environment, because of the scalability and reliability, the businesses have the benefit of coping up with emergency situations as opposed to dedicated environments. The reduction in downtime and manageability are also some of the main reasons why businesses choose cloud hosting. With the cloud hosting services improving day by day, the cost of these services has come down in the last 4-5 years. Most businesses today want a hassle-free working environment where they can have peace of mind and focus on the business instead of dealing with the everyday dilemma of dedicated environments. The day is not far away when cloud hosting will be the choice of all businesses – big or small.

 

 

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Understanding How Reliable the Cloud Can Be

Friday, October 5th, 2012

The first question you need to answer is whether a cloud computing solution is right for your business. For many small and mid-sized businesses, or start-ups, managing computer systems and networks can distract from running other, more fundamental aspects of running a business. Between computers that crash, software that needs to be upgraded, and morphing security risks from Internet connectivity, it’s a full-time job. If you don’t have an IT department or you don’t have the resources to grow that department, it may make more sense to outsource some of your IT needs. That’s one reason why the concept of cloud computing is so appealing to a growing number of companies.

There are other business benefits to cloud computing, as well. Cloud computing providers can often offer businesses lower prices for access to more sophisticated technology because you share those IT resources with other companies, thereby reducing the overhead costs to the vendor of licensing software or buying servers. In addition, the pay-as-you-go nature of some cloud computing contracts enables businesses to pay for only what they use — if only five staff members need access to the financial software, they can pay for only those five people instead of buying a license for 100 users. Many contracts can also allow businesses to ramp up quickly to help facilitate quick growth.

In order to achieve these benefits, business leaders need to understand what types of cloud offerings would be most suitable, what the company’s needs are, and which vendors offer the best fit.

These are a few of the different types of cloud computing offerings:
•    Infrastructure-as-a-service: This used to be known as “utility computing,” wherein the vendor supplies the network and servers and your business uses that infrastructure and pays for what it uses in terms of capacity and storage.
•    Platform-as-a-service: The vendor provides and manages for you the operating system and the database and everything else you need to run certain platforms.
•    Software-as-a-service: This option involves the vendor running your software application for you, so that your business doesn’t have to buy a software license from Oracle or Microsoft or other providers.

Once you determine the type of cloud service is most suitable for your business, the next step you need to undertake is to determine your company’s needs. “You should start by doing a workload analysis,” says Ralph Presciutti, a partner in the technology practice at Tatum, an executive services firm. “How much computing power do you really need? You might have an infrastructure with 100 servers, but you have to ask yourself, ‘Am I really using that much power?’ The national average is that two to 12 percent of all computer resources are utilized.”

On the infrastructure side, you can hire consultants to help you determine your needs. In addition, some companies, such as VMware and Cirba have products that can help businesses determine server needs.

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