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6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Services

January 31, 2012
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I have a new blog post up now at The CA Cloud Storm Chasers – CA Technologies on the 6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Service …

There is a persistent (mainly vendor-driven) meme going around the world of IT that building and running a responsible, secure, available, enterprise-quality cloud is simple. The theory seems to be that it just needs some server virtualization, adding automation, maybe dropping in some change control, and calling it done. Or that all you need to do is to log on to a public cloud provider, give them a credit card number, then click a button to migrate your workloads to the cloud.

(read the whole blog – 6 Core Competencies to Use and Provide Enterprise Cloud Services at The CA Cloud Storm Chasers – CA Technologies)


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Rating My 2011 Virtualization & Cloud Predictions

December 5, 2011
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Rating My 2011 Virtualization & Cloud Predictions

So it is prediction time again – a practice I am not keen on, but which provides a fun diversion for the silly season.

But before I attempt the foolhardy mission of predicting 2012, I thought I would attempt the even more foolhardy mission of looking back...
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As Cloud Becomes a Teenager, It Is Time for Adult Supervision!

November 30, 2011
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As Cloud Becomes a Teenager, It Is Time for Adult Supervision!

James Staten at Forrester recently published his Top 10 Cloud Predictions for 2012. In it, James talks about how cloud is maturing, and warns of the challenges as cloud enters, as he describes it, “the awkward teenage years” …

“Cloud technologies matured...
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Top 10 Things I Learned About Cloud Last Week

October 27, 2011
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Top 10 Things I Learned About Cloud Last Week

While travelling back from VMworld EMEA last week, I stopped at London and visited with a fantastic CA Technologies customer and partner, Logicalis UK. Logicalis UK is an international provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services, part of...
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10 Preconditions for IT Solution Design

October 13, 2011
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10 Preconditions for IT Solution Design

With VMworld EMEA coming up next week, I am reminded of an evening at VMworld last year, and a stimulating discussion about good product design with Prabhakar Gopalan (@PGopalan), a former colleague at CA Technologies who is now with Dell.

Prabhakar is insightful to a depth...
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Real-World Applications for the Private Cloud

October 6, 2011
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Real-World Applications for the Private Cloud

Not surprisingly, since the release of my new book, Visible Ops – Private Cloud, I have been talking with a lot of people about how to deploy private cloud, where to start, what to avoid, etc. So far, the most common question has been, “What...
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The Opportunity of Social & Mobile – If Not You Then Who?

September 29, 2011
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The Opportunity of Social & Mobile – If Not You Then Who?

I was amused the other day by a line I saw on Twitter from Wall Street Journal columnist, Jason Gay (@jasonWSJ – see image at left):

“If Twitter didn’t exist, you’d have no idea what airlines your friends are currently furious at”

The...
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A Service Taxonomy for Cloud Choices

September 22, 2011
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A Service Taxonomy for Cloud Choices

I have been talking with many CIOs for some time about strategic adoption of cloud solutions. A key step in these conversations is always the review of the portfolio of services they provide to business users, so they can choose which clouds to adopt and why.

This...
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VMworld Wrap Up: Extending VMware for Mission-critical Virtualization and Cloud

September 14, 2011
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VMworld Wrap Up: Extending VMware for Mission-critical Virtualization and Cloud

I had a great time at VMworld 2011 Las Vegas this year. As I predicted in my last blog post, I met with loads of amazing people – too many to list out here, let alone in 140 on Twitter! I also...
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Enter the World of Consumer-Driven IT

September 9, 2011
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Enter the World of Consumer-Driven IT

I posted a new article over at the CA Community website titled ‘Enter the World of Consumer-Driven IT‘, where I talk about (obviously) the impact of consumer-driven IT:

Consumerization of IT is not a really new concept. Consumers (as employees) have been ...
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Beyond BSM – Cloud Computing and the Next Generation of Service Management!

August 19, 2011
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Beyond BSM – Cloud Computing and the Next Generation of Service Management!

I have just started posting on BSM Digest on behalf of CA Technologies. You can read my first post there, Beyond BSM – Cloud Computing and the Next Generation of Service Management! In it, I talk about how cloud drives an urgent need for...
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