Has anyone used these cloud services? What do you want in cloud?

martaw

I know "cloud" is really hot right now and a lot of companies offer cloud provisioning of VMs and networks. Everybody seems to know about Amazon, but has anyone used cloud services like Rackspace, Terremark, Savvis, etc?

At your job, do you guys use these services? Do you think that what they provide is too rigid or not flexible enough?

Last are you concerned about your job stabiliy and all this cloud automation stuff?

inscom.brigade

I went to a cloud camp recently in Resten Va, the people their were all military or gov. Amazon, and rackspace were the only 2 mentioned. I am not saying that I know what was used or trusted, that was a big topic. Their currently is no regulatory agency in charge; therfore no regulations, no rules. NIST might be elected to develop regulations and monitor the cloud. Also mentioned by legal reps attending that once it is up their, no one is sure about laws or protection. It seemed unanomous that the only infomation put their would all be public information, and that private clouds would be built. An agency CIO expresed concern that since no regulation exsisted, that no protection of your data was in place, if the cloud service provider went out of business.

DPG

My company provides cloud services. Believe it or not, the "cloud" has existed for a long time and is just catchy buzzword at this time. As far as job stability, I have joked that business has been good getting companies into the cloud and that it will be just as good in a few years when everyone wants back out.

inscom.brigade

Isn't that funny how a new catchy word gets people excited.

I don't lot about the new catchy word, (yet),but is seems that if you had a server farm and a duel homed BGP connection, that would be a cloud.

I think that the main reason that lager company show interest, is only due to trying to save money now by decreasing 15 ~ 20 % of their servers, and the related costs.

Mike-Mike

my company is implementing a cloud service from EMC, i think they are banking on it to be the future of our company, or at least a major part of it

SteveLord

I am dabbling in file storage from Egnyte.com. Really easy to use syncing service.

J_86

I use Rackspace, no major issues with them. We also use thier hosted email where I work.

tycoonbob

I'm not a fan of public clouds...and I would only recommend them to SMBs. I work as a Systems Engineer for a consulting firm who is a Microsoft Gold Partner (and the Microsoft Partner of the Year 2012, Heartland region) so of course I deal a lot with Microsoft products. My personal expertise is with Microsoft System Center products, and I think private clouds created and managed with System Center 2012 products is fantastic. Can do it from something simple as VMs, to something more complicated such as SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS. I just can't seem to grasp the idea of using a public cloud if you are a large enough business with money. Just build your own. Heck, with easy off-site replication and geo-clustering getting cheaper, why not?

j23evan

Tycoonbob you are like my twin brother! The company I work for as a System Center 2012 SE is the Midwest Partner of the Year 2012, and I think exactly the same thing. Rackspace is meh, thinkgrid is more customer focused, but if you are a larger company you should be developing your own cloud. The idea of someone else having control over your data makes me shudder, and if you have the full system center suite SANS are fairly cheap with an excellent ROI.

martaw

Other than security, why should a company develope their own cloud? Or is that the main thing? Is Rackspace very flexible in what they can provide as in do they have a lot of load balancer/firewall/networking options? It seems like a lot of cloud providers place way more emphasis on turning up a VM or app stack and not a lot of robustness when it comes to networking options. Anyone know of a cloud provider that has a lot of options in networking, VMs, and app wise but is not crazy complicated to use?

pinkydapimp

martaw wrote: »

Other than security, why should a company develope their own cloud? Or is that the main thing? Is Rackspace very flexible in what they can provide as in do they have a lot of load balancer/firewall/networking options? It seems like a lot of cloud providers place way more emphasis on turning up a VM or app stack and not a lot of robustness when it comes to networking options. Anyone know of a cloud provider that has a lot of options in networking, VMs, and app wise but is not crazy complicated to use?

There are many legal issues associated with the cloud. take the ECPA for example. According to it, a warrant is not needed for authorities to gain access to your data that has been located on a third party server for more than 180 days(this includes email services like gmail as well). Therefore, i think we will see alot of companies go the private route.

tycoonbob

j23evan wrote: »

Tycoonbob you are like my twin brother! The company I work for as a System Center 2012 SE is the Midwest Partner of the Year 2012, and I think exactly the same thing. Rackspace is meh, thinkgrid is more customer focused, but if you are a larger company you should be developing your own cloud. The idea of someone else having control over your data makes me shudder, and if you have the full system center suite SANS are fairly cheap with an excellent ROI.

That is awesome! MidWest is right next door to the Heartland region, and I bet some of your guys met some of my guys at WPC in Toronto earlier this year.

Dead on too; System Center 2012 is so affordable now (for mid to large companies anyway), that deploying your own cloud just makes more sense.