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This Week in Cloud, January 17, 2013: Netflix Janitor Monkey, DARPA defends against cyber attacks, 9 questions for your cloud provider. And more…

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Cloud News

  • Netflix announced that they’ve open-sourced Janitor Monkey, a tool that finds and deletes unused cloud resources on Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to this ComputerWorld article. Janitor Monkey, which is part of Netflix’s Simian Army, could result in cost savings for AWS customers.

  • The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has created a new program aimed at keeping systems and cloud services running while a cyber attack is taking place, according to this AOL Defense article. DARPA’s Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds program is designed to test for corruption and divert resources around affected nodes.

  • The Department of Defense is on its way to drastically reducing the number of data centers it owns and operates by moving to a cloud model, according to this Defense.gov press release.

Feature Article

Time To Stop Forgiving Cloud Providers for Repeated Failures

By Andi Mann, CA Technologies

Andi Mann

For a long time now, cloud pundits – service providers, boosters, analysts, vendors, and other mostly vested interests – have stood behind a curtain of “downtime happens, design for failure” when assessing cloud outages.

It seems that with every new failure, the self-styled clouderati repeatedly implore IT leaders to believe that, despite what we are seeing with our own eyes on an almost weekly basis, cloud providers are better at IT than you are.

Over and over, the pundits’ response is a yet another chorus of, “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!” Rather, CIOs and others are implored to simply trust the great and powerful Oz (or is that ‘Aws’?) to provide better uptime than their own in-house IT services. Read the full article.

Cloud Views

  • What questions should you ask a cloud provider? In this Forbes blog, Joe McKendrick shares 9 questions that you should ask a provider before signing a cloud contract and details the parts of the arrangement that are negotiable.

  • What cloud computing model should enterprises plan for in 2013? In this Smart Enterprise blog, Jeanne Morain discusses how the public cloud may not be mature enough for enterprise adoption, but there are ways that enterprises can leverage the value of public cloud while mitigating risk.

  • Is cloud computing ready for prime time? In this Smart Enterprise blog, John Dixon recaps the December #CloudViews tweetchat on public cloud and shares his thoughts on public cloud strategy, security, and how to get started with cloud.

Trend Watch

  • How are new trends affecting the traditional IT model? In this GigaOM blog, James Urquhart describes how devops, complex adaptive systems, and anti-fragility are resulting in the emergence of a new IT model.

  • What’s in store for enterprise mobility in 2013? In this Smart Enterprise blog, Jay Fry takes a look at enterprise mobility trends and patterns of 2012 to predict where enterprise mobility is going in 2013.

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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