January 25, 2010

Despite the many benefits to cloud computing, security remains one of the biggest challenges. IT organizations have a hard enough time defending their in-house private cloud resources. Companies offering public cloud, pay-for-usage models are faced with a more difficult challenge since they must serve multiple organizations on the same platform. In response to security threats, there is an opportunity for innovation of flexible cloud-based security service offerings. Read more…

January 25, 2010

While cloud computing is enabling some fundamental changes on how IT groups deliver services, from a corporate management viewpoint, the basic principles of IT governance still remain true. However, the advent of cloud computing is having an increasing impact on how the components of the governance process are executed. For the purpose of this article, we will use the COBIT model (Control OBjectives for Information and related Technology) that is comprised of five major process focus areas: Strategy Alignment, Value Delivery, Resource Management, Risk Management, and Performance Measurement. Read more…

January 25, 2010

In theory, the realization of IT governance should be a seamless process running from the board room to actual delivery of IT services. In practice however, many organizations have an institutionalized steering committee with its associated processes that supports the organization's IT related goals while the IT group has a leadership team or council whose governance activities are focused inward on such things as technical issues, standards, and resource management. Read more…

November 3, 2009

Is cloud computing today's hot technology that promises to lower TCO, reduce energy costs, and enable dynamic, agile datacenters -- or is it just the latest hype? That is, will cloud computing really happen and will it deliver on its promises? And what does it mean for high performance computing? Read more…

November 2, 2009

High-end, public cloud computing offerings represent a convergence of grid and Internet technologies, potentially enabling workable new business models. Smaller, private clouds are a technical evolution that expands the ease of use and deployment of grids in more organizations. Read more…

November 2, 2009

Writing and implementing high performance computing applications is all about efficiency, parallelism, scalability, cache optimizations and making best use of whatever resources are available -- be they multicore processors or application accelerators, such as FPGAs or GPUs. HPC applications have been developed for, and successfully run on, grids for many years now. Read more…

November 2, 2009

Time and again, people ask questions like "Will HPC move to the cloud?" or "Now that cloud computing is accepted, are grids dead?" or even "Should I now build my grid in the cloud?" Despite all the promising developments in the grid and cloud computing space, and the avalanche of publications and talks on this subject, many people still seem to be confused and hesitant to take the next step. Read more…