Cloud predictions for enterprise IT in 2012

Ask around and you’ll hear it over and over again: Enterprise IT shops are worried about using the cloud. They’re concerned about the security, privacy and governance risks of moving their data and applications outside their four walls. Cloud vendor lock-in and job security are also major worries for these guys, though few IT pros will admit to the latter.  

Next year will be no different. But instead of keeping the cloud at arms’ length, which many enterprise IT shops have done this year, 2012 will be the year for taking the plunge. If you’ve been sitting on the fence, here are some thoughts on what to expect next year that might push you over the edge.

The following are my predictions based on current trends and where I see them leading us. Just some observations; I have no crystal ball.

Cloud hype ends, disillusion begins
After several years of megalomania, cloud vendors finally settle down and stop trying to prove cloud computing is real. Enterprise IT gets it: We’re looking at the next model for IT delivery and consumption. The adoption process becomes a long-term “roadmap” and a slow and safe transition touching every part of the business. It’s going to be a bumpy road.  Watch out for the vendors with professional services arms who are rubbing their hands together with glee, claiming to you show you the way forward. And channel guys: Your time is now!   

Checklist: Managing applications in the cloud

Moving applications to the cloud is not for the faint of heart. Issues can crop up that may force you to re-architect the application, compliance requirements can create roadblocks, and bandwidth problems can occur if your cloud provider does not support low-level networking services such as multicasting.

After you’ve assessed which applications can run in a public cloud, there are other factors to consider -- configuration, data migration and monitoring. What are some of the most common configuration tasks you need to keep in mind when migrating an app to the cloud? This checklist outlines key points:

Mashup (web application hybrid)

In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services. The term implies easy, fast integration, frequently using open APIs and data sources to produce enriched results that were not necessarily the original reason for producing the raw source data.

The main characteristics of the mashup are combination, visualization, and aggregation. It is important to make existing data more useful, moreover for personal and professional use.

To be able to permanently access the data of other services, mashups are generally client applications or hosted online. Since 2010, two major mashup vendors have added support for hosted deployment based on Cloud computing solutions; that are Internet-based computing, whereby shared resources, software, and information are provided to computers and other devices on demand, like the electricity grid.

In the past years, more and more Web applications have published APIs that enable software developers to easily integrate data and functions instead of building them by themselves. Mashups can be considered to have an active role in the evolution of social software and Web 2.0. Mashup composition tools are usually simple enough to be used by end-users. They generally do not require programming skills and rather support visual wiring of GUI widgets, services and components together. Therefore, these tools contribute to a new vision of theWeb, where users are able to contribute.

The term mashup is also used to describe a remix of digital data.

SOURCE: Wikipedia

Near field communication

Near field communication, or NFC, allows for simplified transactions, data exchange, and wireless connections between two devices in close proximity to each other, usually by no more than a few centimeters. It is expected to become a widely used system for making payments by smartphone in the United States. Many smartphones currently on the market already contain embedded NFC chips that can send encrypted data a short distance ("near field") to a reader located, for instance, next to a retail cash register. Shoppers who have their credit card information stored in their NFC smartphones can pay for purchases by waving their smartphones near or tapping them on the reader, rather than using the actual credit card. Co-invented by NXP Semiconductors and Sony in 2002, NFC technology is being added to a growing number of mobile handsets to enable mobile payments, as well as many other applications.

The Near Field Communication Forum (NFC Forum) formed in 2004 promotes sharing, pairing, and transactions between NFC devices and develops and certifies device compliance with NFC standards. A smartphone or tablet with an NFC chip could make a credit card payment or serve as keycard or ID card. NFC devices can read NFC tags on a museum or retail display to get more information or an audio or video presentation. NFC can share a contact, photo, song, application, or video or pair Bluetooth devices.

The 140 NFC Forum members include LG, Nokia, Huawei, HTC, Motorola, NEC, RIM, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba, AT&T, Sprint, Rogers, SK, Google, Microsoft, PayPal, Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Intel, TI, Qualcomm, and NXP.

SOURCE: Wikipedia

Developments in the Azure and Windows Server 8 pairing

The shroud of secrecy has been lifted surrounding Windows Server 8 and Azure. What lies behind it is greater symmetry between the cloud computing and virtualized HA infrastructures, improved storage and an Azure toolkit that promises to help enterprises easily develop an Azure service and deploy it to end users.

This means DevOps teams will need to gain expertise with Window 8's new features to obtain maximum return on investment with public cloud computing as well as with private and hybrid clouds.

Windows 8 ultimately will provide the underpinnings of the Windows Azure platform with the intent to democratize high availability (HA) clusters to push the "scale-up envelope" with features previously reserved for high-performance computing Windows Server 2008 R2 versions.

Windows 8 will include new alternative disk storage architectures called Storage Pools and Spaces, Satya Nadella, president of Microsoft's servers and tools business, said here in his BUILD conference keynote. Storage Pools aggregate commodity disk drives into isolated JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disks) units and attaches them to Windows for simplified management. Storage Spaces do the same for virtual machines.