Virtualization and Cloud Advisor Blog

What's your stance on SaaS? Is your perimeter as secure as you think? How can the insurance calculus on asymmetric risk illuminate your company's security exposure? CIO.com's Bernard Golden recaps the provocative discussions entertained at the Security Threat 2012 conference.

Are cloud services attractive because they are less expensive than traditional offerings or are IT professionals drawn by greater agility? Bernard Golden writes that it's not an either-or debate. Much like those famous 'tastes great ... less filling" beer commercials, the beauty of cloud computing lies in the beholder.

In the spirit of openness and with a willingness to have his cloud prognostication grades displayed in public, CIO.com's Bernard Golden scores--and comments on--his predictions for 2011.

From Apple's voice-activated assistant to Microsoft's gesture-based input device to IBM's computer that beat Jeopardy champs, it's clear that the capabilities of technology are moving beyond our human abilities. How can you flourish in a world where machines are smarter than humans?

It's nearly 2012, and if IT research firms are telling you to consider moving low-risk applications to the cloud, it means two things: 1) You're hopelessly behind the times. 2) You need advice that's much more cutting-edge.

Public cloud vs. private cloud: which model is cheaper for enterprises? In an environment where the future pricing of public cloud providers is uncertain and the reliability of internal private cloud deployments is far from guaranteed, CIOs need guidance. CIO.com blogger Bernard Golden offers four tips for determining which deployment is right for your organization.

SLAs don't provide much protection against cloud-related outages, writes CIO.com blogger Bernard Golden. They merely credit customers against the cost of a service. To prevent outages, IT departments would better spend their time planning application architectures rather than duking it out with their cloud computing providers over SLAs.

Conventional wisdom maintains that cloud computing will eliminate scores of IT jobs. CIO.com's Bernard Golden explains why that argument is flawed and describes the many IT jobs that will flourish in the age of cloud computing.

Most readers we asked are using some form of public or private cloud, and many are moving ahead with data center virtualization.

The biggest threat cloud computing providers present to IT organizations is that they raise the bar for IT management. If a cloud provider can get a server up in eight seconds when it takes the IT organization two weeks, IT will be seen as hopelessly ineffective--and ripe for a complete teardown.