Posts Tagged Cloud computing
Business at the Speed of Light – Podcast with David Spratt
Recently David recorded a podcast as part of Umbrellar's Key Technology Hub series.
The podcast covers a wide range of topics including:
The business reasons Cloud computing is now the norm rather than the exception
The business impact of SaaS, PasS and IaaS services “doing
business at the speed of light”
The cost, consumption and spend issues around a variable
cost IT model
Changes to the way IT teams are structured in a cloud
environment
The critical role of partnerships in running and optimising cloud...
Read more
What does a risk-free cloud migration look like?
The below article was published recently in IT Brief New Zealand magazine.
The -aaS consumption model is nothing new when it comes down to brass tacks - it's exactly how we've been consuming electricity ever since Edison and Tesla were squabbling.
Over the last 130 or so years, electricity consumption has risen and with it, the cost.
This is why Total Utilities stepped in to help businesses in New Zealand ensure that their power costs were being thoughtfully managed through analysis of quantitative and qualitative data.
Now, the team at Total Utilities have brought their...
Read more
Are Cloud Computing Costs in for an Unexpected Surge?
Last week the IT industry was shocked to find that the Intel chipsets that drive many of our phones, smartphones, laptops, desktops and our servers, have an architectural flaw that exposes them to hacking. The other two major chipset manufacturers AMD and ARM appear to be much less affected.
By patching their operating systems to address this design flaw in the Intel chipset the OS providers have been forced to sacrifice the thing that impacts us most, performance. The numbers aren’t out yet but we could be seeing reductions in performance of between 5% and 30%.
For the average...
Read more
Ongoing Insights with Cloud Analytics: Zespri Case Study
In 2013, Zespri, one of the world’s leading horticultural companies, and the recognised category leader in kiwifruit, was facing many significant challenges. The Psa virus which attacked their main gold kiwifruit crop, had the potential to devastate the company and its grower shareholders. In addition, they were facing significant capital outlays associated with their existing ICT systems and the need to upgrade their computer hardware.
Zespri had to ask questions like, "Could the new variety of crop, Sun Gold, be more robust and become another bestseller?", or, "Would our outputs...
Read more
Is New Zealand business ready for Artificial Intelligence?
A decade or more ago I used to defeat chess playing computers for a small wager. It was simple stuff really – just find a weakness and ruthlessly exploit it – in my mind computers were basically binary and thus “stupid”. Today chess masters are fair game for computers. My party trick is ancient history and I am frankly a little scared about what happens when computers can outsmart humankind. Terminator anyone?
Some would argue that we have nothing to fear. Others feel exactly the opposite.
Stephen Hawking recently wrote “The full development of AI could spell the end for...
Read more
Technical debt: Why the IT team doesn’t get invited to the staff Christmas party – Part two
Complexity, cost, and increasing competitive inertia create big problems for business IT departments, as we saw in part one of this series. In today's post, David Spratt addresses what to do about it.
So where did we leave off, last post?
Competitive advantage through Information Technology seems a thing of the past.
Your business is loaded with technical debt - spending money on systems that add less and less value while costs continue to soar while nimble, more agile competitors grab your market share
The IT department is full of people focussed on boxes that go ping and red...
Read more
Technical debt: Why the IT team doesn’t get invited to the staff Christmas party
I had lunch with an old friend last week and he raised the issue of technical debt with me: the notion that complexity breeds complexity until a business’ IT systems are a burden rather than a benefit.
The realisation came, like a bolt from the blue, that this was the reason my beloved IT industry had moved from being a creative, savvy business industry to being seen as a dull cost centre, distrusted and feared by many businesses and their management.
Harsh perhaps, but why else then have we seen the CIO, a key executive team member in the 90s, relegated to the IT Manager,...
Read more
Controlling the Cloud: Making Cloud-Based Infrastructure Work for Your Business
This is the fourth and final part of this blog series on cloud service management.
We’ve written in the past about cloud service management but, in this final installment of our cloud management series, we’re talking about a strategy to ensure you are getting the most value from your providers’ service management activities, whilst simultaneously retaining a tight focus on your business’ own needs and the needs of your client – all while staying under budget, of course.
Sounds like magic, right? Well, so did the cloud a decade ago!
So how do we work this magic? How do...
Read more
2012 – Up’s, Down’s and Just Plain Crazy
David Spratt, ICT analyst from Total Utilities Management Group, reviews 2012 with a mixture of humour, bile and straight up taking the mickey.
Up’s
Cloud services
The tired old voices of vested interest have been drowned out in the rush to take advantage of lowers costs, flexibility and superior availability of cloud services.
When was the last time you heard some conceited individual from vendorland asking you to “define cloud services”? It’s been a while - because they have either been laid off or work for Google now.
Hosting Cloud Services in New...
Read more
HP Commits to the Cloud
We are delighted to hear that tech giant HP has just confirmed its commitment to cloud computing. It will come as a relief to many of HP’s customers around the globe that the company has finally moved to address their lack of a viable cloud computing offering.
Their Converged Cloud – a ‘technology framework incorporating public and private clouds plus managed hosting’ – is HP’s open-source answer to the market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud. HP has hinted at some major announcements ahead - at December’s HP Discover Event in Germany - and industry whispers are that...
Read more