Roger Strukhoff

I was pointed to an article in VietnamNet about cloud computing by my colleague Jeremy Geelan, Editor of Cloud Computing Journal and President/COO of Cloud Expo Inc. Vietnam is making some strides when it comes to cloud, according to executives from IBM Vietnam, Microsoft Vietnam, HP, and TrendMicro who were interviewed for that story, even as HP exec Aman Neil Dokaria reportedly said "it will still take a long time to popularize in the country." As in other parts of the world, the present excitement in Vietnam is focused on private and hybrid approaches, rather than public cloud. In IBM's case, the company has developed a major cloud computing center to study and develop the use of cloud computing in Vietnam. Separately, according to the article, IDC has found that 40 percent of Vietnamese business execs "have concern about the legal regulations on the obeying of ... (more)

CIVETS: Oh No! Another Country Grouping!

IT purveyors and executives looking for new sources and markets have been bombarded with tales of the potential of the four BRIC countries - Brazil, Russia, India, and China - since London-based, Goldman Sachs economist James O'Neill coined the term in the 90s. More recently, Mr. O'Neill created a grouping called "the Next Eleven," nations that have the population heft and economic potential to emerge as significant global players in coming years. Now, there's another grouping - the CIVETS - coined by Robert Ward of The Economist Business Intelligence Unit. These countries are vi... (more)

Drool, Britannia? Is the UK Failing the Cloud?

A new study found that 60 percent of UK businesses do not use any type of cloud computing. Furthermore, 20 percent of them "suspect they will sidestep cloud computing all together," according to the report, which was conducted by IDC on behalf of the British hosting provider Fasthosts. About one in four companies surveyed said a lack of cloud expertise was a primary concern for them. Contrast this with recent research known as the Cloud Maturity Index conducted by Forrester Research on behalf VMware: 64 percent of respondents in Malaysia said they have deployed or are actively p... (more)

IBM: Enterprise Cloud Innovation "Virtually Untapped"

Cloud computing's potential for innovation in enterprise IT remains "virtually untapped," according to a new report from IBM's Institute for Business Value, conducted among global business executives in conjunction with the Economist Intelligence Unit. The IBM report also said its research "suggests that while cloud is widely recognized as an important technology, relatively few organizations today actively embrace it to drive business model innovation." That said, 90 percent of respondents said they would eiter pilot, adopt or "substantially implement" cloud in their organizatio... (more)

Cloud: The Zettabyte is the Coin of the Realm

I'm more of a words-and-numbers person than a graphically oriented one, but do find occasional insight in a number of these wild cloud infographics that are going around. One of them, from Cisco's Global Cloud Index, recently caught my attention - because of some of the incredible numbers it contained. According to Cisco, global datacenter traffic will more than quadruple in size between 2010 and 2015, from 1.1 to 4.8 zettabytes. About a third of that will be cloud-based traffic by 2015, compared to 11 percent in 2010, and will represent a growth of 12X over the five-year period.... (more)