Maria Spínola

Cloud Expo on Ulitzer Step 1- Determine the Bad and Good "Candidates" for the Cloud First, start by taking a broad look at the applications and other IT resources and systems under your "control" (both existing ones and planned ones); categorize them into mission-critical (i.e., if it goes offline your company will not "survive") and non-mission-critical. Both mission-critical and non-mission-critical can be further sub-categorized into core business practices (those that provide competitive differentiation) and non-core practices (typically internal activities such as HR services, etc.) Then apply the following rules of thumb: 1. If mission-critical and non-core, then the application is a good candidate for deployment in the public clouds 2. If mission-critical and core, ... (more)

The Five Characteristics of Cloud Computing

In the previous article Cloud Equals SaaS, Grid, Utility Computing, Hosting...? I made the following statement: "SaaS is one of the three possible Cloud Computing delivery modes; however, to be considered Cloud Computing, any of those delivery modes must have certain specific characteristics" So, in this article we will look at those specific characteristics that define exactly what is Cl... (more)

What Are the Cloud Computing Challenges and Risks?

Perhaps by now, after you have read the: - Cloud Computing, in Plain English, to IT Directors, VP's, CIO's and CEO's - Why Should IT Directors, VP's, CIO's and CEO's Care About Cloud Computing? - Cloud Equals SaaS, Grid, Utility Computing, Hosting...? - What Exactly is Cloud Computing? - Why Large Public and Private Sector Organizations (not just SMB's) Are Seriously Considering Cloud Computing?... (more)

Rushing To Cloud Computing Can Be Bad

Business managers know that in spite of the benefits of every new technology/business model, there are also risks and issues like trust, loss of privacy, regulatory violation, data replication, coherency and erosion of integrity, application sprawl, and dependencies, among others. Therefore they realize that rushing things when it comes to Cloud Computing can be a very bad decision. Howeve... (more)

Cloud Equals SaaS, Grid, Utility Computing, Hosting...?

With virtually every vendor/provider on the planet jumping on the Cloud Computing bandwagon, sometimes it's difficult to tell whether a service is truly a Cloud Computing offering or simply a pre-existing offering that has the Cloud label slapped on it, such as hosting, outsourcing, ASP (Application Service Provider), On Demand Computing, Grid computing, Utility computing, SaaS (Software... (more)