Friday Cloud News Roundup
E-Passport Industry and The Cloud
At a seminar on border security in Singapore this week a presentation was made about how the coming growth of cloud technology will impact the development and direction of e-passports and related border security developments. The talk illustrated the room for new developments in this field that will use cloud-based technologies as tools for law enforcement.
The new developments regarding the securing of online identities and the integration of cloud-based technologies for border securities around the globe was just one aspect the conference considered in the discussion. For a more in-depth look at how the growth of disruptive technologies in the IT sector will continue to impact e-passport and border security procedures, read more.
What to Watch for in 2012 in the Cloud
Forbes asked ScienceLogic CTO Antonio Piraino to talk about what businesses should be watching for in the coming year when it comes to cloud technology developments. In this article he talks about the coming cloud wars as the industry matures as well as the very real possibility of a huge cyber-attack, the arrival of cloud technology as an essential good for business instead of a low-price add-on and the growth of using cloud technology for operational business intelligence decisions.
He also sees some fresh movement regarding acquisitions and how they will differ from traditional paths of industry growth, the maturation of cloud management and the increased attention to regulation as the need for energy to support data centers increases and the blurring of international borders with cross-country hosting relationships continues to grow. For more details on how Piraino sees the maturing of cloud computing impact business in the coming year, read more.
Environmental Businesses Gain Cloud Tool
One of the announcements to come out of the climate change conference in Durban was the launch of a new tool for many environmental businesses and agencies across the globe to collaborate on mapping environmental parameters. The cloud initiative is called Eye on Earth and will be an online community where information, data and news from a wide variety of locations is shared and collaborated on together.
A good example is one of the first projects to be launched on the cloud community: NoiseWatch. This is a web service that measures noise levels in 164 cities across Europe. Another possible use is for organizations who are involved in environmental data. The site will store and share map-based data and provide the translation of complex scientific information across the globe. The possibilities for a cloud-based tool of this scope to link ecological businesses around the globe are endless. For a more comprehensive look at the various services, read more.
Cisco Reassesses Cloud Computing Traffic Growth
With the release of its very first cloud traffic growth assessment, The Cisco Global Cloud Index, Cisco has increased previous discussion numbers to show that growth from 2010 to 2015 will jump twelve-fold. The report looks at data center traffic, of which cloud computing is by far the fastest growing element. The report highlights that the biggest area of growth will come not from the end users of cloud computing but from the traffic within the data centers for such activities as backup and replication. They estimate that only 17% of all traffic actually originates from end users.
With the majority of the traffic generated within the data centers, as support activities for that end user client base, it is easy to see why the expected growth in the use of cloud computing will cause traffic flow to increase substantially. They predict it will grow from 1.2ZB in 2010 to 4.8ZB by 2015. For more on how the Cisco Global Cloud Index sees this growth unfolding and a link to the actual report, read more.
Cloud Computing and The Patriot Act
Cloud hosting in the US has run up against a wall when it comes to hosting companies from other countries, and that is the Patriot Act. While it does not prevent anyone from choosing a US based host for their services, some foreign companies, and governments, are looking twice at using a US based cloud host.
This latest article looks at what the federal government is doing to clarify these misconceptions and make it easier for US businesses looking to expand into Europe and Asia via the cloud. The Obama administration is currently in a series of talks with various countries to disabuse the conception that data held in US-based data centers would be required to hand over data to US authorities. For a clarification of the Patriot Act and more on what the government is doing to clarify misconceptions on its role, read more.
A Look Back at the Cloud Technology Trends for 2011
VentureBeat is one of the leading technology investment sites and host to the just completed CloudBeat conference. It recently asked Luis Robles, a venture capitalist at Sierra Ventures to look back at the past year and give his take on what the biggest trends were for cloud computing in 2011. In his comments he looked at the problems Amazon was dealt this year, and their recovery from the big crash, how alternatives to VMware grew as well as private clouds, how the maturation of cloud apps for productivity took off and how Big Data has grown from simply sheer size to include complexity as part of the equation.
All of these trends come with growing pains and more than a few errors in judgment. And while they are just the tip of the iceberg for the cloud computing industry, they point to a direction for startups and SMBs that many others have echoed. For a look at how each of these trends has progressed in the last year, as well as where Robles feels they are heading in the coming few years, read more.
For the healthcare industry, the movement to cloud computing is a huge boon as the industry continues to grow and the need to manage enormous amounts of data grows with it. 
For many smaller businesses and especially SMBs that are under 1,000 employees, the move to cloud servers for data storage has become an area of increasing opportunities. The technology has gotten easier and the ability to move and control cloud servers for small businesses has gotten better every month as more cloud storage opportunities arrive.
Everywhere you look these days you hear about another business moving some or all of their business to cloud servers. If you have a small business, it make sense to find out as much as you can about what cloud servers are, and how they can help your business thrive. But there is so much information out there, how do you find the basics that will help you decide if the move to the cloud is right for you?
With cloud computing here to stay and many of the smaller businesses beginning to take advantage of what the cloud has to offer, PC World Magazine looks at cloud tools for small business. There are many great cloud server-based tools that are either free or very inexpensive that can help a small business to compete.
