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Posts Tagged ‘Cloud Computing’

Cloud Computing- An Innovation in the Computing Industry

Friday, November 23rd, 2012

The shift from traditional software models to the Internet has steadily gained momentum, particularly in the last decade. Today, almost every task can be performed on internet, thereby, eliminating the need of handling and managing complicated hardware and software. This emerged role of Internet is what cloud computing is all about.

To define, cloud computing is, basically, the use of the Internet for the tasks one performs on a computer. More and more applications that were once the province of desktop computers are being converted into web applications these days. For instance, office suites like Google Docs are gradually becoming more functional and can easily eliminate the need of having Microsoft Office in the near future.

Cloud computing has various essential features, which include,

  • Easy Access: Cloud computing allows the user to access computing capabilities as and when they are needed and without any interaction from the cloud-service provider.
  • Quick Scalability: Upgrades and changes to the services are done instantaneously and easily enabling the cloud computing service to be resilient.
  • Cost: The costing of cloud computing depends on its usage by the user. The user is billed based on the amount of resources they use. This helps the user to track their usage and ultimately help to reduce cost.

Seeing its development, cloud computing is acclaimed as one of the big business innovation. It is considered a very important development in the business world. The various reasons include:

  • Time: With cloud computing you simply need access to a computer, which has Internet connection to view the information you need. This saves a lot of time as compared to the time needed to get new programs to operate at functional levels.
  • Productivity: These days many companies have started using social networking sites, such as, Facebook and Twitter to increase their productivity levels. Also, blogs are used to communicate with customers about improvements that need to be made within companies.
  • Security: With cloud computing you get more security in terms of storing your data safely. Whether it is a hurricane or an earthquake you can get back to work quickly as long as you have an Internet connection.

To conclude, cloud computing is changing the face of the entire computing industry with passing of every single day and many companies have already started embracing the cloud computing revolution.

 

 

India Will Be Highly Benefitted with Cloud Computing Creating 2 million jobs by 2015 – says Microsoft

Friday, April 20th, 2012

A study conducted by research firm IDC for Microsoft said, “The cloud technology is also projected to generate 14 million new jobs worldwide in the same time.” It has been due to the rising number of companies adopting cloud computing that there are anticipations about creation of more than 2 million jobs in India by the year 2015.

 

Cloud Computing, being internet based, alleviates sharing of technological resources, both digital and software information. This emerging field operates on a pay-per-use model, assisting technology companies to minimize cost.

 

According to the study conducted by IDC, “A common misperception is that cloud computing is a job eliminator, but in truth, it will be a job creator, a major one.”

 

Job growth is expected to occur across continents and throughout multiple-sized organizations, since emerging markets, small businesses as well as cities are as accessible to cloud benefits as developed nations or large enterprises.

 

It has been estimated that in 2011, IT cloud services assisted businesses across the globe to generate revenues over USD 600 billion and 1.5 million new jobs. In the small and medium businesses, more than 50% of the 14 million jobs would be created. Moreover, over 2 million jobs each will be generated in the “communications and media” and manufacturing sectors, pursued by banking at more than 1.4 million. India is uniquely placed to gain advantage of this opportunity, if we say that cloud computing posed a convincing opportunity for governments and businesses around the world.

 

The study also indicated that countries having invested in major cloud infrastructure will experience higher job growth. The factors ascertaining the number of jobs that might be generated in a specific country consist of projected level of spending on IT, degree of workforce size, automation, and so on.

 

Revenues from cloud innovation are forecasted to reach USD 1.1 trillion per year by 2015. Integrated with cloud efficiencies, this will repel significant job growth and organizational reinvestment.

 

Microsoft has been offering services across a wide span of all three service layers encompassing the cloud, infrastructure, platform and software services.

 

About ISHIR

ISHIR helps companies navigate through the cloud hype. ISHIR is a Cloud Computing solutions provider based in Dallas Texas and with regional offices in Portland Oregon, New Delhi India and London UK. ISHIR has been assisting companies from small business to large enterprises plan or initiate to make decisions to move or not to move to the cloud since 2008. ISHIR services include planning, cloud readiness assessment workshops, cloud monitoring, Microsoft Office 365 deployments and migration or, supplementing IT infrastructure using Microsoft Azure cloud solutions. ISHIR also assists clients to set up Private Cloud solutions at its own Data Center in Portland Oregon or any other third party provider based on the unique needs and requirements of the business and its objectives. To learn more about ISHIR cloud computing practice, please visit our website (http://www.ishir.com/cloud-computing-services.htm)

The Role of the Windows Azure VM Role

Sunday, May 15th, 2011

Moving applications to the cloud is all about creating the right image. Server image, that is. The Windows Azure VM role lets you run a virtual hard disk image, store that image in the cloud and load and run it on demand.

You understand benefits of cloud computing, the efficiencies to be gained, the ability to scale your infrastructure based on immediate need and make more strategic use of IT staff. But what’s the best way to move your applications to cloud? The last thing you really want to do is start recoding applications and make changes to their deployment process.

Enter the Windows Azure Virtual Machine (VM) Role, which allows you to run a customized instance of Windows Server 2008 R2 in Windows Azure, making it easier to move applications to the cloud. The quick explanation is that a VM role runs an image, a virtual hard disk (VHD) of a Windows Server 2008 R2 virtual machine. This VHD is created using an on-premise Windows Server machine, and then uploaded to Windows Azure. You can configure and maintain the operating system and use Windows Services, scheduled tasks, etc. in the VM role. Once it’s stored in the cloud, the VHD can be loaded on demand into a VM role and executed. There’s no need to re-code to use Windows Azure, your existing applications can start to work for you in the cloud immediately.

IT Professionals can use Hyper-V or the Automated Installation Kit for Windows Server to build and upload their Windows Server 2008 R2 applications to the Windows Azure VM role. For packaging an application so that it runs in Windows Azure in the VM role, the Windows Azure SDK also includes command line tools. For more detail, see the Overview of the Windows Azure VM Role.

Our focus in this edition of TechNet ON is two-fold: to understand why you’d want to use the VM role and how to create VMs for Windows Azure.

In his TechNet Magazine article Taking Your Virtual Machines to the Cloud [[need URL]], Joshua Hoffman explains that the VM role lets you build virtual machines for Windows Azure to leverage the scalable infrastructure and cost savings that come with cloud computing.

Is the VM role a platform-as-a-service (PaaS), since it runs on Windows Azure, or is this Microsoft’s Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) play, as some speculated when the VM role was first announced. As explained in Windows Azure VM Role: Looking at it a different way, the VM role is a PaaS application that runs on Windows Azure, subject to the service model and all the other benefits and constraints, just like the Web and Worker Roles. The fact that it spins up a VM to house the application doesn’t change the fact that it is still a Windows Azure application.

Next you should understand why you would want to use the VM role to configure the operating system for a virtual machine, and how to create a hosted service for Windows Azure. A VM role is the same as the other Windows Azure roles in needing the service definition and service configuration files to be hosted as a service in Windows Azure. To begin, get a quick Overview of Creating a Hosted Service for Windows Azure.

Getting Started

In Your Virtual Machines to the Cloud [[need URL]], Hoffman walks through the steps of building your VMs for Windows Azure. Here are some key things to understand:

An image of the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system is needed for a VM role in Windows Azure. To see what is involved in creating that VHD image, read Getting Started with Developing a Server Image for a VM Role. To create instances of a VM role, you must deploy a service model package to Windows Azure. Check out the TechNet Library article How to Create and Deploy the VM Role Service Model for details on deploying a service model package to Windows Azure, including how to how to create the base VHD for a VM role in Windows Azure, upload a VHD to Windows Azure and define the service model files.

Since Windows Azure Integration Components are required in a VM role that is hosted as a service in Windows Azure, you’ll also need to learn how to install the Windows Azure Integration Components. The Windows Azure Integration Components install the service runtime APIs to the image, so that the VM role instance may gather dynamic information from the Windows Azure environment.

When you are ready to deploy your VM role(s), check out Avkash Chauhan’s Expert Tips on VM Role Deployment with Windows Azure SDK 1.4

Last but not least, get some hands-on time with the Windows Azure VM role.

Microsoft BPOS: Trusting Software-plus-services

Friday, November 13th, 2009

Software-plus-services brings together the best of cloud-based, hosted services and the software that resides on a variety of devices to provide flexible and effective solutions for doing business. With software-plus-services as your IT strategy, you can focus your internal IT efforts on the systems and applications that are most critical to your agency and that leverage your IT expertise. Other systems can be hosted by Microsoft or by a third party which handles deployment, maintenance, and software upgrades and helps ensure that your availability requirements are met.

Skepticism is healthy, and, especially in a challenging economy, it can mean the difference between success and failure. These days, there isn’t much leeway for a misstep. So when a new paradigm like cloud computing or a new platform like Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) comes along, it’s smart to ask questions—and there are plenty to ask.

We’ve listened to BPOS customers as well as those who are just curious about the new offering. Across them all, a handful of common themes emerge from all of the questions. We looked at what Microsoft’s suite is in our prior BPOS article. This time around, we thought it would be a good idea to turn from what to why. Why is the new paradigm any better than the old? Why does the suite make sense? Why should companies trust in the new platform? Let’s dig up some answers.

Why Trust Software-plus-services?

Data is any company’s lifeblood. Email contains confidential correspondence with customers. Presentations hold competitive plans and forecasting. If these data should get lost or stolen or sold off to interested parties, the results for the company could be dire, possibly lethal. So it’s no wonder that many companies are loathe to let their data offsite. Today, many government agencies, with staff trained in the old school of security, strictly forbid it.

The cloud computing, or software-plus-services (SPS), model obviously defies the old paradigm. It’s not just that the company’s data is off-site—the data could be anywhere. A large vendor like Microsoft employs numerous data centers and makes sure that any company’s data is stored in multiple centers for redundancy. A customer will never know where his data is or how many instances of it exist outside of his walls. This ambiguity is no doubt part of why we kept hearing people ask whether Microsoft Online Services could be trusted with their data.

Microsoft keeps much of that information hidden away for security’s sake. The less nuts and bolts information about such matters is made public, the safer Microsoft’s systems will be.

What is Cloud Computing in Plain English

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Sign up for a RISK FREE trial of Microsoft Online Services (no credit card required/no committment necessary) – Trial includes 20 user trial account of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Live Office Meeting and Office Communications Online

How do SharePoint Online and Office SharePoint Server Feature Compare?

Tuesday, August 25th, 2009

Depending on your unique business requirements, making a decision of whether you should host SharePoint on-premise or in the Clouds can be tough. We found the Microsoft SharePoint® Online Standard Service Description document, detailed and helpful.   Jump to Page 23 Appendix B for a feature comparison between Office SharePoint Server and SharePoint Online Standard and SharePoint Online Dedicated.  Below is summary of Appendix B from the August 19, 2009 version of the document.

This helps break out of features by:

  • Collaboration Feature Comparison
  • Portal Feature Comparison
  • Content Management Feature Comparison
  • Search Feature Comparison
  • BI Feature Comparison
  • Business Process and Forms Feature Comparison

Interested in trying out SharePoint Online?  Click here to sign up for a 30 day risk free trial (no credit card required/no obligation to buy the service)

Benefits of Microsoft Cloud Computing offering Microsoft Online Services – Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS)

Tuesday, July 28th, 2009

As more and more companies looking to save on hardware costs, licensing costs, resource costs, energy costs as well as maintain a high-level of server up time at lowest cost possible, now might be the right time to look at Microsoft hosted solutions.

This White Paper from Microsoft on their latest offering around the Cloud, in competition with Google and SalesForce.com goes into detail on the benefits of Microsoft Online Services to your business.

Here’s a synopsis of the White Paper. The link to the site to download the White Paper has been provided at the end of this post.

Microsoft® Online Services provide businesses with subscription-based Microsoft-hosted online services that offer access to rich communication, collaboration, and productivity applications from anywhere. This hosted solution helps organizations reduce the costs of managing and maintaining business systems, which frees information technology resources and enables staff to focus on initiatives that can deliver competitive advantage to the business.

The benefits of Microsoft Online Services include:

    - Better control of IT technology investments
    - Better cash flow management
    - Simplified software subscription license management
    - A Microsoft commitment to deliver secure, available, and private online software services
    - Increased productivity
    - Access to the latest business productivity software services from Microsoft

Download White Paper

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Challenges Building Software-as-a-Service Application

Sunday, February 8th, 2009

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is among the fastest growing segments of information technology industry. Although much of the attention focuses on the low entry cost for users and subscription revenue stream for providers, the viability of SaaS really stems from the fact users simply prefer SaaS applications. Operating the application themselves, allows SaaS providers to focus on the user experience rather than on the IT team who installs and maintains the application. Salesforce.com and Webex have proven SaaS is a viable business model and inspired a wave of change in the software industry. However, typical ISVs face a significant challenge in adopting the SaaS model when architecting multi-tenant applications. 

Download White Paper

 

Sign up for a RISK FREE trial of Microsoft Online Services (no credit card required/no committment necessary) – Trial includes 20 user trial account of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, Live Office Meeting and Office Communications Online