Your tech career depends on preparing for the cloud

Why is everyone defining clouds as 'other' companies property and or space? Instead of arguing public cloud vs private cloud consider compliance. Any company that holds customer data/private data can't use public clouds. Companies with any funding behind their technology departments will create and maintain their own cloud space via san and or replicating nas devices.
This is an easy DR/BCP operation that costs very little to engineer and implement when compared to other forms of BCP and offsite DR.

The Cloud IS the future of DR/BCP.

I'm not interested in someone elses cloud. That is what it is today is it not? There is Google's cloud or Microsoft's cloud etc. Someone let me know when i can control my own cloud. when i can get myself a nice shiny cloud server that will house my digital data and allow me to use it when and where i please. Without someone else's paws in the mix. Let me know when i can control my storage space not a conglomerate someplace out in the ether.

Don't get me wrong i love the idea of multiple people being able to access their data remotely form any computer on the net, I love the idea of posting up videos that can then be streamed to multiple boxes at once. I just want to control my information that is out there, not put my faith in someone else and roll the dice.

This would be a great server add-on, but i am not interested in the cloud until i have the ability to be the master of my cloud not someone else.

1) Don't ever talk smack about netflix. It's freak'n awesome!!!
2) If it will force upgrades to the Infrastructure to make it work seemlessly it would be a good thing, but since there's so many people still running XP, people that have dial up, or are stuck in shltty places that only have crappy 3mbs dsl. It would take decades to do that and I can't see anyone taking the risk of investment untill the government get's involved and decides to subsidize comapies for upgrading the networks to support high speed internet -oh wait they already did that LOL. Business will like the idea and it is going to happen, but for home users the cloud is not looming so soon. Maybe (I HOPE) that ugly azz toolbar/office ribbon in windows 8 will be access to/from the 'cloud' because if it's just more ugly ways of doing the same things and you can't hide it (completly) then windows 8 will flop like vista. And when I buy a 15gig game online and it literally takes 6 hours to download how would I play that in the cloud? Or will it be the illusion of a cloud where you have to be connected to the cloud for it to work like games for windows live. Gee be nice if they could backup my save games for me since I have to run it to play it and they make it near impossible to back them up yourself. Sorry bout my rant, but not my opinion.

Cloud has moved up the most significantly since the 2009 survey, followed to a lesser extend by Mobility Solutions.

-------------------------------------2009--2011
Business intelligence/analytics--83%83%
Mobility solutions----------------- 68%74%
Virtualization-----------------------75%68%
Cloud computing Link------------ -33%60%
Business process management---64%60%
Risk management/compliance---71%58%
Self-service portals----------------66%57%
Collaboration/social networking-54%55%

Microsoft Wins San Francisco Cloud Email Deal

CIO Jon Walter said the city will move 23,000 users on seven separate systems to Microsoft Exchange Online and consider the cloud for future migrations.

By Elizabeth Montalbano InformationWeek

May 18, 2011 03:58 PM


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Slideshow: Top 20 Government Cloud Service Providers

The city of San Francisco plans to consolidate seven separate email systems to Microsoft's hosted cloud-based email service over the next year.

The city is currently migrating 23,000 employees across 60 departments and agencies to Microsoft Exchange Online, SF CIO Jon Walton said in a news conference Wednesdy. Exchange Online is a cloud-based enterprise messaging platform that offers email, calendaring and collaboration features.

San Francisco will pay $1.2 million a year--or $6.50 per month, per user--for hosted email and archiving on the service, which will be hosted in Microsoft's data centers, Walton said. He said the cost savings of the deal is one of the ways the IT department is achieving a 20% cost reduction required by the city, which is experiencing budget cuts.

more here