This week, Google's cloud computing customers experienced an outage of 18 minutes. It was a small hiccup, and one that Google is making up for with its customers. But we thought we'd take the opportunity to highlight other cloud news and articles from the week to provide IT pros with a full range of considerations, challenges, opportunities, and insights around the cloud for enterprise IT.
A fast-growing data center segment bridges corporate networks and the cloud [Wall Street Journal]: “Companies, looking to gain the best performance from the cloud, are placing a higher value on reducing the physical distance between their servers and those of their cloud providers. Colocation data centers, where their machines share space, have emerged as an important factor in enterprise cloud strategy.”
Living in the cloud: Millennials and the changing nature of work [DazeInfo]: “Cloud flexibility makes offices increasingly mobile, allowing millennials to work from anywhere, even while traveling around the world chasing their dreams. Cloud-based communication and collaboration tools enable easy access to files and documents, where remote employees can work on the same project (even on the same document), participate in a project meeting, and constantly stay in touch. The millennial generation lives in the Cloud. A new breed of worker now characterizes the labor force, compelling companies to change every aspect of their operation.”
The three little pigs on hybrid cloud security: New research on the straw, sticks and bricks [Security Intelligence]: “As businesses continue (or begin) to build their cloud platforms, it is more important than ever to start with strong building bricks. Security concerns continue to be cited as a major barrier to organizations’ adoption of cloud computing … With these concerns, organizations are turning to hybrid cloud deployments. Hybrid IT can help mitigate the risk of critical data loss while still providing the agility needed to keep a company’s competitive edge.”
10 cloud jobs in highest demand now [InformationWeek]: “In a study of online job ads that were posted between Feb. 15 and March 15, the term 'cloud' appeared in 460,000 posted ads – making cloud knowledge No. 3 among the most in-demand IT skills, according to data collected by CEB TalentNeuron, the employee recruiting unit of consulting firm CEB.”
Cloud data transfer remains sticking point in hybrid cloud model [TechTarget]: “As data sets increase in size, they've developed a huge inertia. Moving terabytes takes time, and, if we have to move data from the private cloud in bulk to feed those instantly available public instances, we are already in trouble.”
Cloud IT spending to reach $38B in 2016, IDC says [CIODive]: “Global cloud infrastructure spending on server, storage and networking is expected to grow almost 19 percent in 2016. Even though spending on traditional data centers will fall, they will still account for almost 64 percent of total spending, IDC said.”
