Ellen Rubin

Last week, I was on a panel at the CompTIA Breakaway conference in DC, with Scott Crenshaw from RedHat and Ron Culler from Secure Designs. Scott made an interesting comment about the three types of applications out there: (1) new apps that are being architected from scratch for the cloud; (2) legacy apps that are being re-architected for the cloud; and (3) everything else. It was a useful framework for our discussion about cloud migration and security, but it also made me think a bit about the issue of legacy apps and why these remain so controversial for the cloud industry. If I had a dime for every panel discussion that led to a heated debate around whether or not to re-architect for the cloud… I think the heat around this issue reflects some underlying confusion about how to handle all those “annoying” legacy apps. It’s an area of particular interest to us here ... (more)

Cloud Wars Heat Up

By John Considine Last week I wrote about the Cloud.com acquisition and what it means for Citrix, Rackspace, OpenStack and the industry. Next, I’d like to dig into the VMware announcement about their cloud infrastructure suite. Citrix clearly wanted to announce their news just prior to VMware’s, and for a good reason – Citrix is hitting VMware in a weak spot of their cloud strategy.  It’s pretty clear that VMware is not getting the vCloud adoption they were anticipating from service providers and even enterprises. In Paul Maritz’s presentation, he me... (more)

Moving to the Cloud: Key Considerations for Cloud Storage

This post is part of a series examining the issues involved when moving applications between internal data centers and public clouds. The true challenges in storage and data management in the cloud result from the diverse and often unfamiliar processes and infrastructures offered by the cloud providers, including: new provisioning methods, storage properties, data population and transfer, and systems for data management (snapshots, clones, replication, backup). The cloud providers define the relationship between servers and storage and often impose constraints on everything from ... (more)

Top Five Questions Asked by CloudSwitch Customers

By Dave Armlin, Director of Customer Support New CloudSwitch customers and prospects are coming up to speed every week and there are a number of questions that show up frequently enough that I thought it would be helpful to cover them in a blog. When we work with customers, our goal is to make their experience getting started in the cloud fast and easy, and to make sure they feel comfortable with the ongoing simplicity and security of the CloudSwitch model. Here are their top five questions: 1. How do I move applications to the cloud? CloudSwitch literally makes moving an applicat... (more)

Why Cloud is at the Top of the CIO's Priorities

Cloud Computing Journal In the most difficult economic climate in decades, CIOs are reevaluating their strategies and looking for new ways to reduce data center costs and overhead while improving responsiveness to business requirements. Cloud computing has emerged as a much more agile and efficient approach than what companies have done in the past: adding more compute, storage and networking capacity or trying to get more out of what they already own. Cloud computing did not emerge from a vacuum, but has its origins in three technology "megatrends" that most CIOs are already fa... (more)