Cloud Best Practices Network

A headline theme for our next webinar will be ‘Microsoft Private Cloud 2.0′. Private Cloud Application Platform Two years ago I described an upcoming market that I initially defined as the Private Cloud Application Platform. Recently Microsoft began prosecuting this space with their PCSS initiative, the Private Cloud Solutions Suite, bringing together a partner group that enables the PCAP I described, wrapping lots of value around the core MS suite of Hyper-V and System Centre. This really starts to get the right ingredients for the real secret sauce to the Private Cloud story. As we have all gathered, simply implementing yet more virtualization is hardly a new story for the enterprise data-centre so instead to really make it cook we need a full implementation of all aspects of the Cloud, internally, in particular both PaaS and SaaS – Platform and Software as a S... (more)

Cloud Native Maturity Model

As the Enterprise Irregulars discuss in this blog the Cloud Native model is underpinned by early maturity model work, a journey that sees applications transform from a traditional to a fully Cloud-centric architecture: I. Cloud Ready A simple app that is Cloud ready by using basic Cloud services not its own file system. II. Cloud Friendly Begins to leverage platform more such as multi-zone High Availability and horizontal scalability, and is designed as a 'Twelve Factor' app. III. Cloud Resilient Cloud agnostic, can work across multiple Clouds and can tolerate failure of underlyin... (more)

Microsoft Cloud Services

Of course Microsoft has their own Cloud hosting services, Azure, but there are still other scenarios where Microsoft software can be Cloud deployed, and these offer a fertile product development area for web hosting providers. These 'Microsoft Cloud Services' (MCS) offer the ideal way to move into more of an MSP mode, providing a fuller range of IT outsourcing services and growing recurring revenues accordingly, but without having to stretch too far from their core web hosting product set. Most organizations already have apps like Sharepoint and Exchange deployed internally, so h... (more)

Cloud 2.0 : Re-inventing CRM

Cloud computing isn’t just re-inventing technology, it will also drive evolution of the business practices that the technology is used for. For example CRM: Customer Relationship Management. This is a science that started as simple contact management apps, like ACT!, through Goldmine then of course Salesforce.com. After their ASP (Application Service Provider) phase of the Cloud evolution we’ve since had the social media explosion and so the principle category to add is “social media CRM”. After that came Cloud and so we’re now at a phase best described as Cloud 2.0. This is most... (more)

The Cloud Name System – Addressing Architecture for the Internet of Things

Another 2014 prediction is the evolution and emergence of the ‘Cloud Name System’, a directory system for Cloud applications in the same way DNS (Domain Name System) works for the web and email. Lori Vittie wrote a while back about the  need for an ‘SNS’ – a Service Name System, a DNS type directory approach but for Cloud Services so that they can be entirely loosely coupled from their IT infrastructure. Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web, himself described a scenario of ‘Socially Aware Cloud Storage‘ that applies this same ideal of abstraction to our personal data across a... (more)