SaaS Increasingly Popular Among Small Businesses, Survey Finds - Midmarket from eWeek

SaaS Increasingly Popular Among Small Businesses, Survey Finds - Midmarket from eWeek

OPENWORLD CDCS TRAINING

Benefits Of Linux Training & Certification

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Those IT professionals who can describe themselves as fans of open source operating systems and wish to enhance their skills by learning technologies other than Microsoft, will find that exploring the Linux world may be quite of interest to them.

Linux operating systems have their growing market share, there's no doubt about that; at least that is what the tendency in the past decade has been. The popularity of the Linux server operating systems has experienced a considerable growth. A Linux certification may seem unfeasible, because there are many variants of Linux. However, the Linux+ certification offered by CompTIA is feasible and vendor neutral.

Experience with Linux+ and a Linux certification can provide better IT positions for professionals, as well as building their knowledge within a framework that is vendor neutral. A Linux certification can also serve as basis for further certifications, such as Fedora and LPI. Linux also lies at the core of numerous Novell products, which makes a Linux certification all the more valuable for those who are interested in such technologies.

In recent years, Linux+ has experienced some changes and improvements over the years, just like any other technology product, and therefore, a new set of objectives has been developed in 2004, which is the one that Linux+ is currently under. In order to be eligible for the Linux certification, candidates must have Linux support experience of at least six months. Holding a Linux certification demonstrates that the IT professional has knowledge in installation, configuration, troubleshooting, file permissions, open source licensing, network protocols, and local storage devices. The latest update, which is also the current exam for the Linux certification, emphasizes security and documentation, as additional requirements to the previous set of objectives.

The importance of systems security in the IT world is no secret to anyone, and the demand for ability in configuring and supporting systems security is overwhelming. The documentation of support activity and its understanding can have a major influence on the level of effectiveness that an IT support department has. These are the reasons why the new set of objectives for the Linux+ exam focus on documentation and security, along with the topics mentioned above.

The exam for Linux+ consists of six domains, installation, configuration, management, security, documentation and hardware. Most of the exam questions are concerned with management of Linux server and client systems, about twenty-five percent, whereas documentation represents the topic for the smallest number of exam questions, about six percent.

Successful completion of the exam and earning the Linux certification are more likely to happen should the candidate register for a Linux training program, which can prove extremely helpful. Linux training is concerned with providing access to high quality materials, so that candidates to a Linux certification can receive all the benefits available. Free materials for Linux training are available online, and these can be accessed by both students and commercials providers.

As the demand for skilled professionals who can work to the advantage of their organization by exploiting this powerful platform is increasing, the benefits of Linux training and certification are obvious.
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E-Tourism Meet for Nairobi

Aug 10, 2010 (East African Business Week/All Africa Global Media via COMTEX) -- The East African tourism sector is set to benefit from faster online speeds, the dominance of e-commerce and the rise of social networking websites.

This is more so because of the global interest in Africa that was generated by the 2010 FIFA World Cup that was held in South Africa.

In an interview with the East African Business Week via E-mail, Mr. Damian Cook, the chief executive officer of E-Tourism Frontiers said: "Online sales have experienced major growth in the past year." "Travel is now the number one selling commodity online and is generating over US $110 billion annually in sales. We must get more African tourism products available to the online travel shopper, especially following the massive interest in Africa after the World Cup." E-Tourism Frontiers will be holding a two-day conference, with a Travel Technology Exhibition in Nairobi on the September 2nd and 3rd this year where East African Community (EAC) member states are expected to attend and to promote EAC as tourism destination.

The conference will help the sector understand and leverage the online opportunities and the new technologies available in the EAC region.

Following the success of conferences held last year in South Africa and East Africa, the E-Tourism East Africa Conference, will be addressed by some of the world's leading experts on online tourism.

They will include Trip Advisor, Expedia, WAYN.com and Google to cover website development, e-commerce, online reservations and booking, e-marketing, multimedia, Web 2.0 marketing, user generated content, social networks and mobile marketing.

Cook said many companies that attended previous events had already reported experiencing major results and a revolutionized approach to marketing.

"We have seen many companies switch to online marketing and invest heavily in their digital presence after attending our events. We have received great feedback especially from small and medium entrepreneurs (SMEs) who have made the move online and then recorded a dramatic boost to their business," Cook said.

"Uganda Wildlife Authority (UWA) for example placed its Mountain Gorillas on Facebook last year, through the Friend a Gorilla programme. We also saw Expedia expand into East Africa as a result of our first conference in Nairobi in 2008." With recent polls from eyefortravel, a leading research company on internet-focused travel, suggesting that 7 out of 10 travelers use the internet as their primary source of travel information and almost half of the planet's travel being distributed and booked online, it is crucial that the tourism sector across Africa invests in online marketing and management.

According to Cook, the registration for the E-Tourism East Africa conference is open now and those interested can register at on the company website.

Tourism experts reckon there are about 1.2 billion internet users globally. There has been substantial growth in all world regions, particularly in Asia and the Pacific. Current forecasts suggest 1.5 billion people will have internet access in 2011.

In general, travelers are increasingly computer literate and tech aware, with two thirds of the over 100 million travelers who are online using the Internet to make travel plans.

Among online frequent travelers, over 70%use the internet for travel planning, and a recent poll of young UK travelers showed an 89 per cent preference for online booking.

SOFTWARE AS A SERVICE Illustration

UNDERSTAND CLOUD COMPUTING

Making sense out of all of the components of cloud computing confuses even many of the major analysts. It's easy to understand how Google, Amazon, or SalesForce.com fit into the picture. But who is Eucalyptus and what do they do? Does CohesiveFT compete with enStratus or does it complement enStratus? And what is this vCloud thing anyway?

I've identified seven major components to cloud computing that I call "the seven pillars of cloud computing". I call them pillars because, as cloud computing evolves, they will form the foundation of a complete vendor cloud computing strategy. I'm not suggesting that you aren't a real cloud vendor if you lack one of the pillars—in fact, no one currently has a solid strategy for all seven pillars. The companies that end up seeing the most success as vendors in cloud computing, however, will not only develop strategies for all seven pillars, but also a strategy for integrating them into a comprehensive cloud offering.
The Seven Pillars

Seven Pillars of Cloud Computing.
The seven pillars of cloud computing are:

* Virtualization
* Storage
* Cloud Orchestration
* Data Center Systems Management
* Cloud Infrastructure Management
* Hybrid Cloud Integration
* Public Cloud Services

As I mentioned above, there's no company that has offerings in all seven areas. If you are an enterprise looking for the complete cloud solution today, you may have to talk to as many as seven different vendors—though most likely fewer—before you find your answer.

Virtualization

Virtualization is absolutely not a requirement for cloud computing. Google and many others offer cloud services without using virtualization to make it happen.
From the complete cloud solution perspective, however, virtualization absolutely must be a strategic tool in the cloud vendor's arsenal.

Virtualization makes it possible to dedicated the minimum number of resources to a workload as is possible so you can more efficiently share real processing power among different workloads. It thus forms the backbone of many services we think of as cloud services today.

The number of players in this space is quite small. The significant ones are Citrix, KVM (Open Source), Microsoft, Oracle, and VMware.

Storage

From the cloud perspective, storage isn't about making the media on which data is stored. Instead, it's about providing the hardware and software for turning that media into a massive, abstracted storage tier available over a network and impervious to failure.

The current key players in this space are Compellent, EMC, Flexiant, HP, IBM, NetApp, Oracle, ParaScale, and a number of other smaller players.

Cloud Orchestration

There's actually nothing "cloudy" about virtualization. It simply facilitates the programmatic provisioning and de-provisioning of resources necessary for a cloud infrastructure. To make your virtualized infrastructure cloudy, you need an orchestration layer on top of it.

Orchestration layers hide the nuances of the underlying virtualization tier and exposes them to on-demand provisioning through web services APIs.

Companies with a footprint in this space include Amazon, CA (via their 3tera acquisition), Citrix, Enomaly, Eucalyptus, Flexiant, Rackspace, VMOps, and VMware.

Data Center Systems Management

Data center systems management is something most people forget about or ignore today when examining cloud services. It's the main tool a traditional IT operations staff uses to monitor provisioned resources, manage the provisioning, de-provisioning, and other IT workflows, and handle emergency situations.

The traditional data center management offerings are painfully "uncloudy" and the extent of the integration between traditional Data Center Systems Management and the cloud is largely limited to:

* BMC monitoring of RightScale
* enStratus pushing cloud health into Microsoft Systems Center
* IBM's limited support for AWS in Tivoli

Everything else in this space is currently about supporting traditional data center management, provisioning, and monitoring activities.

This space is a well established space with some heavy hitting incumbents: CA, BMC, IBM, EMC, HP, IBM, and Microsoft.

Cloud Infrastructure Management

Cloud infrastructure management is really a specialized version of data center systems management. Cloud infrastructure management tools enable an IT staff to manage, monitor, provision, and de-provision resources in a cloud environment. In a few years, it likely won't be a pillar distinct from data center systems management. I break it out separately because there is almost no overlap between the two pillars today.

Cloud infrastructure management is dominated by start-ups today. The traditional data center systems management tools are poorly suited to the task of managing highly elastic cloud computing infrastructures. This gaping hole has enabled startups to come in and fill the need. On the other hand, there's very little overlap among the different startups in this space.

The cloud infrastructure management space is a very crowded space with a few major players: CA (via Nimsoft), CloudKick, Elastra, enStratus, and RightScale. In addition, CloudSwitch and CohesiveFT have elements of cloud infrastructure management, but generally fit more into the hybrid cloud integration pillar.

Hybrid Cloud Integration

Another pillar dominated by startups is hybrid cloud integration. Hybrid cloud integration services enable a company to glue together the different kinds of clouds supporting their infrastructure (public and private, multiple public, combined SaaS and Paas) into a single, coherent infrastructure. With hybrid cloud tools, you can manage and automate the movement of workloads among clouds as well as communications between components in different clouds.

This space is the least mature space with a very small set of players: CloudKick, CloudSwitch, CohesiveFT, and enStratus. Among these four players, there's almost no overlap in functionality. CloudKick provides a unified console for managing resources in multiple clouds. CloudSwitch enables you to securely lift your private data center/private cloud enterprise applications and drop them into a public cloud without changing IP addresses. CohesiveFT provides technologies for enabling virtual VPNs among clouds and managing virtual private clouds. enStratus provides governance, provisioning, auto-scaling, and auto-recovery across clouds.

Public Cloud Services

The public cloud services are what most people have in their head when they think "cloud". These are the SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS vendors that leverage the other components of cloud computing to deliver a public cloud offering. As a customer, you procure public cloud services on-demand and stop using them when you no longer need them.

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SECURING YOUR NETWORK

In computer networks, a DMZ (demilitarized zone) is a computer host or small network inserted as a "neutral zone" between a company's private network and the outside public network. It prevents outside users from getting direct access to a server that has company data. A DMZ is a more secure approach to a firewall and effectively acts as a proxy server as well.

In a typical DMZ configuration for a small company, a separate computer (or host in network terms) receives requests from users within the private network for access to Web sites or other companies accessible on the public network. The DMZ host then initiates sessions for these requests on the public network. However, the DMZ host is not able to initiate a session back into the private network. It can only forward packets that have already been requested.

Users of the public network outside the company can access only the DMZ host. The DMZ may typically also have the company's Web pages so these could be served to the outside world. However, the DMZ provides access to no other company data. In the event that an outside user penetrated the DMZ host's security, the Web pages might be corrupted but no other company information would be exposed. OPENWORLD, the leading company specialized in products designed for setting up a DMZ.