A study that took place last year predicted the managed services provider (MSP) market to nearly double over the next five years.  The study, by research and consulting firm MarketsandMarkets, forecast a jump in the market from $142.75 billion in 2013 to $256.05 billion in 2018. The study includes managed data centers,...

By David Linthicum

Healthcare providers and payers that utilize cloud platforms to store and access personnel records (and like data) are probably storing protected health information (“PHI”), which is protected by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (“HIPAA”). Rules now in place govern the use of cloud computing to store health-related data, including personnel-related data.  The consequences for failure to comply can be severe to a company’s...

The Affordable Care Act (ACA) aims to reduce costs while improving quality of care.  Of course, those in Healthcare IT have been trying to reduce costs and improve care for years.  Perhaps there are some real opportunities to improve IT delivery around the ACA, and those opportunities may exist more in cloud than traditional approaches.

Delivering high-quality clinical care is impossible without the support of strategic, integrated,...

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is like an F-16 Fighting Falcon.  In the right hands it can be nimble, graceful, and extremely powerful.  Not to mention that it often destroys other cloud platforms in a dogfight…  However, an important part of the analogy is the understanding that the AWS fighter plane comes in a thousand pieces with “some assembly required.”

Managed AWS services attempt to take care of some of...

A 2013 IBM survey shows that the cloud’s strategic importance to decision-makers, such as CEOs, CMOs, CFOs, HR directors, and procurement executives, is poised to double from 34 percent to 72 percent, vaulting over their IT counterparts at 58 percent.

The survey found that one out of five organizations is ahead of the curve on cloud adoption.  Moreover, they are achieving a competitive advantage by using cloud-based...

By Kenneth N Rashbaum Esq. and Jason M. Tenenbaum of Rashbaum Associates, LLC.

This blog post is for informational and educational purposes...

Last year Gartner released numbers that pointed to the growth of cloud computing from 2011 to 2016, specifically, the growth of cloud computing by vertical industry.  According to Gartner, anticipated growth opportunities put these industries at the top when it comes to global IT spending, which includes cloud computing:

$84,074M – Banking & Securities

$70,683M – Communications, Media & Services

$63,589M – Manufacturing & Natural Resources

$34,611M –...

What does SOA bring to cloud computing?  Most of those who design cloud architecture and build cloud-based systems don’t understand the answer to that question.  However, certain patterns are emerging that prove SOA is a best practice to define good cloud architecture…even though it may not be called SOA.

Many enterprises are just tossing things out of the enterprise onto public and private clouds and...

This blog post is for informational and educational purposes only. Any legal information provided in this post should not be relied upon as legal advice. It is not intended to create, and does not create, an attorney-client relationship and readers should not act upon the information presented without first seeking legal counsel.

In a profession notorious for being slow to change, cloud-based solutions for many of the traditionally office-based systems like...

Although healthcare was once considered an industry that would not adopt cloud computing due to systemic security, legal, and privacy issues, that no longer seems to be the case.  Those in healthcare IT are moving even farther into the world of cloud computing.

The use of cloud computing in the world of healthcare seems logical to me.  Healthcare providers, and payers, are cost sensitive.  They are also experiencing rapid change, thus they could use technology that’s more agile. ...

As the cloud industry matures, AWS (among other major companies) is quickly becoming part of what many pundits are pointing to when they reference infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS). With its scale and wide spread use, one could argue that AWS is the definitional IaaS platform.

While not rare by any measure, pure IaaS consumption is not the sole method for infrastructure delivery. Managed hosting, colocation, and internal data centers are all part of a fully considered approach to IaaS.

With so much variation...

When infrastructure-as-a-service is referenced, we are generally discussing virtual server offerings. Bare metal challenges that assumption, having become a major part of how hybrid clouds blend public, dedicated, and private virtual infrastructure.

Gathering Clouds’ contributor and cloud computing expert David Linthicum notes:...

In honour of the upcoming holiday, we wanted to spend a little time exploring how application development and product management can leverage managed services as well as (or better) other parts of the organization more traditionally associated with such outsourcing partnership.

Smaller organizations have few, if any infrastructure-specific employees, but instead focus hiring product and development roles to improve the development cycle and strength of features for an application. This makes a lot of sense,...

With Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) firmly built into how enterprise IT operates, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) seems a distant third for how big businesses are accessing cloud.

But should that be the case?

When we think of PaaS, you typically think of smaller companies starting up applications in the cloud. However, PaaS has a role to play in companies at scale.

According to Joe...

Data in the cloud is increasingly viewed as the reality of IT infrastructure management.

With such ubiquitous data storage on cloud-based, cloud-based is at odds with the naysayers who continue to cite security concerns as a reason not to move data to the cloud.

So we have a discrepancy – cloud data storage is widely used, yet there are concerns about the security (compliance and privacy also) of the data itself.

What gives?

The rapid rate of cloud adoption has given rise to the natural necessity to...

Too often companies are faced with a choice: elasticity or security.

On the upside, the benefits of cloud computing are achieved through elasticity as much as anything else. As Craig Sheridan notes:

“More specifically then, elasticity in the cloud is the ability of an application to automatically adjust the infrastructure resources it uses to accommodate varied workloads and priorities, while maintaining...

For some time, cloud computing has been moving from beyond a purely IT-owned paradigm to a more readily accepted part of how different business units achieve their end goals. Application development is no exception.

Product managers and application architects have been at the forefront of this mass adoption, utilizing cloud infrastructure resources to dramatically improve the way applications are developed,...

Cloud computing has become a major part of how IT organizations are approaching infrastructure requirements. To better support critical applications, networks, and websites, cloud infrastructure through CSPs, managed, and self-service models have become the go-to resource for a range of associated benefits.

However, given the ease with which it can be utilized, cloud infrastructure has appeal beyond the IT department. In fact, many other organizations within businesses readily jump into cloud usage to support...

Recently Gathering Clouds’ friend and cloud computing expert David Linthicum dug into a few ways in which AWS continues to create gaps between its offering and businesses.

While Linthicum focused on cost, contract, and utility-based computing issues, we thought we would explore a few other obstacles that still keep AWS from full enterprise adoption.

While we are sure AWS will eventually...

Hybrid cloud is an awesome concept for the world of enterprise IT and beyond. But a question remains as to whether hybrid clouds are truly being created in the current state of business IT infrastructure deployments.

One true definition?

Most businesses have their own data center and then they have cloud. Very few have really created a true hybrid yet that achieves the promised functionality.

So if businesses aren’t currently completely achieving hybrid deployments, what is it? The truest definition of a hybrid cloud...