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This Week in Cloud, December 20, 2012: Google cloud science grants, Cloud outages of 2012, Cloud predictions continue. And more…

Happy Holidays!

The This Week in Cloud team wants to wish you a happy holiday! We’ll be taking a break from our coverage next week, but we look forward to continuing to provide you with the latest cloud news in the new year.

Cloud News

  • Google announced that it has awarded grants to six science based projects, giving each project 100 million core-computing hours, according to this GigaOM article. Google detailed the winning research projects, ranging from pharmaceutical to astrophysical research, in its Research Blog.

  • There were many high profile cloud outages in 2012. This CRN slideshow reveals the top 10 outages that have occurred this year.

  • Amazon announced AWS Detailed Billing Reports in response to customer demand for more detailed billing of their cloud usage, according to this Talkin’ Cloud article. The new reports break down billing by the hour.

Feature Article

Measure the Cloud for Business Value

By George Watt, CA Technologies

Denise Dubie

Despite decades of talk about how IT needs to align to the business, in many organizations, IT and the business are not speaking the same language -- if they're speaking at all. In fact, nearly half (41%) of the business managers surveyed in a recent CA Technologies study said IT lacks communications skills.

This communication gap exists, in large part, because often we in IT don't focus on the right topics. We're likely to talk about service metrics: how long systems are up, how quickly systems that are down are brought back up, how many help desk calls are resolved, and that sort of thing. These metrics matter, but they're tactical to the business, perhaps aside from their use in preventing finger-pointing about lousy service. Read the full article.

Cloud Views

  • Having trouble sorting through all those cloud predictions? In this episode of CloudViews Unplugged, Andi Mann and George Watt of CA Technologies discuss the latest cloud predictions for 2013.

  • Should software companies be entirely cloud-based? In this Forbes blog, Joe McKendrick examines how cloud computing is shifting the traditional on-premise business model for software companies.

  • Did you miss the #CloudViews tweetchat on public cloud? We asked our 30 chat participants questions on the maturity of public cloud, cloud security, and where to get started with cloud. You can read the Storify transcript on Smart Enterprise.

Trend Watch

  • How do CEOs feel about big data? In this Forbes blog, Robert Reiss reached out to the CEOs of GE Healthcare and ADT, as well as the head of wealth management at Merrill Lynch to get their opinions on the rise of big data and the impact that it may have on their industries.

  • Where’s IT headed in 2013? In this press release, CA Technologies outlines its 5 IT predictions for 2013 including: big data grows up, enterprises adopt public cloud, identity is the new perimeter, the seventh sense, and mobile/social first in the enterprise.

  • IBM announced that it is acquiring StoredIQ, a privately-held company that specializes in big data, according to this ZDNet article.

Upcoming Cloud Events

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More Stories By CloudCommons 2012

CloudCommons is an independent online community of IT professionals, analysts, technology providers, and industry experts. Members can ask questions, learn from experts, and find the latest cloud-related news. Cloud Commons offers a forum to contribute and discuss best practices and successes, as well as research vendor solutions. Sponsored by CA Technologies, Cloud Commons has been growing steadily since its launch in May of 2010.

Hosted on Cloud Commons is the Service Measurement Index (SMI). Led by Carnegie Mellon University, SMI encompasses a growing consortium of members. SMI compiles user-submitted ratings of cloud services and scores them relative to other services of the same type. Ratings include metrics such as: quality, agility, risk, cost, capability, and security.

ThisWeekInCloud is Cloud Commons weekly newsletter listing the industry events we felt worthwhile reading about. Read them here or subscribe to have it delivered to you inbox as email or as RSS Feed.

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