Cloud Hosting

On March 7th, the software alliance group BSA released a scorecard on the worlds top twenty-four countries for cloud hosting. These countries were selected for being the biggest players in the worlds Information Technology market, making up about 80% of the entire market. The 24 countries were graded on their individual commitment to promoting cloud technologies within their own countries and globally.

Among the criteria that contribute to a nations overall cloud climate, according to the BSA, are: its attitude toward user privacy, free-trade, cybercrime, cybersecurity, and broadband network.

Chris Hopfensperger, who is the technology policy counsel at the BSA, critiqued the progress made since the release of last years global cloud-computing scorecard, calling it patchy but stating that the BSA remains hopeful that soon enough the good laws will eventually outnumber the bad ones that inhibit the expansion of reliable cloud hosting technologies.

Japan Wins Big in the Cloud Arena

For the 2nd year in a row, Japan has scored the #1 spot, being called the friendliest atmosphere for cloud development and enhancement in the world. The honor is attributed to the countrys dedication to user security and privacy, as well as its unyielding stance against cybercrime. Japan also has a growing rate of broadband acceptance that contributed to its high score.

Coming in at 2nd and 3rd were Australia and the US, respectively, after the US pushed Germany down to 4th from last year. The decision-makers at the BSA owed this ranking change to the fact that US-based cloud providers have made consistent developments in strengthening their cloud computing technologies. At this time, the ranking switch is not owed to new and better policies made by the government.

And the top 5 countries for cloud computing are

Germanys drop to 4th is blamed on potentially restrictive privacy laws, protectionist policies, while Singapore leapt up five slots thanks in part to the release of a recent data privacy law that took effect since the previous scorecard was released in 2012.

The Not-So-Heavy Hitters

The 5 worst countries for cloud hosting providers are:

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Best Cloud Server - cloud hosting

Ten Reasons Why Cloud Computing is a Bad Idea

Author: Hamad Subani | Date: 2009.06.02 | Category: Cloud Computing, Trends | Tags: Amazon Web Services,Cloud Computing,Fads,Software as a Disservice,Trends

If you havent jumped into the Cloud Computing bandwagon yet, here are ten reasons why you should reconsider.

Note:The above image is licensed under a Creative Commons License. Feel free to use it. You canget a high quality image for printing here.

Cloud Computing exists on the premise that the Internet will always be as robust and reliable for all time to come. While one can be fairly optimistic, there is always the danger of the unforeseen. For example, Congressmen in the United States are pushing for bills that can shutdown/limit Internet traffic in the event of war, so that the sheeple stick to their prescribed content on television. Another country, Syria, managed to completely erase itself from the Internet when civil war broke out in late 2012. If a Company loses Internet connectivity to its Cloud even for a few days, as a result of an Internet outage affecting either it or the Cloud Computing Service, there could be very damaging consequences. I am not talking about your E-store going offline. Suppose the daily activities of your Company were on a database on a Cloud? In such a scenario, you may wish your servers were in that makeshift bunker in your backyard, rather than on the Cloud.

And because of its dependence on the Internet, Cloud Computing can never perform as a substitute for in-house servers. For example, there are speed limits, related to hardware and bandwidth, when transferring data to and from the Cloud via the Internet. Using VPNs and SSL tunnels can further slow the speed.

Cloud Computing implicitly assumes that the Internet is as robust throughout the world as it is in North America, Europe and some parts of Asia. But clients from countries where Internet connectivity is sporadic will be discouraged from boarding the Cloud. And no, I am not talking about Namibia. IT powerhouse India still has sporadic Internet connectivity. The general speed of the Internet is still very poor. The infrastructure is so haphazard that most Indian Internet subscribers prefer the limited speeds of wireless mobile Internet from the cell phone companies, rather than trust the cable/landline infrastructure. In addition, uninterrupted supply of electricity is still unrealised in India. A power outage affecting any intermediary can cripple access to the Cloud. Indian IT giants have learnt the hard way not to trust state infrastructure, even for electricity. They keep their own backup power generation on site. Adopting any trend that makes them more dependent on state infrastructure will require more than a leap of faith.

Cloud Computing may require gratuitous bandwidth for the client, depending on what the client is hosting on the Cloud. And the same ISPs who are clamouring for bandwidth caps may charge and arm and a leg if the client exceeds his or her bandwidth quota.

Major ISPs have come under fire for spying on their customers P2P networks on behalf of the Recording Industry. Can these ISPs be trusted with sensitive traffic to and from the Cloud? We are told that everything will be encrypted through VPNs. But still, given the tainted role of ISPs, can ISPs be trusted for non-encrypted traffic?

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Ten Reasons Why Cloud Computing is a Bad Idea

Amazon EC2 enables you to increase or decrease capacity within minutes, not hours or days. You can commission one, hundreds or even thousands of server instances simultaneously. Of course, because this is all controlled with web service APIs, your application can automatically scale itself up and down depending on its needs.

You have complete control of your instances. You have root access to each one, and you can interact with them as you would any machine. You can stop your instance while retaining the data on your boot partition and then subsequently restart the same instance using web service APIs. Instances can be rebooted remotely using web service APIs. You also have access to console output of your instances.

You have the choice of multiple instance types, operating systems, and software packages. Amazon EC2 allows you to select a configuration of memory, CPU, instance storage, and the boot partition size that is optimal for your choice of operating system and application. For example, your choice of operating systems includes numerous Linux distributions, and Microsoft Windows Server.

Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS), Amazon SimpleDB and Amazon Simple Queue Service (Amazon SQS) to provide a complete solution for computing, query processing and storage across a wide range of applications.

Amazon EC2 offers a highly reliable environment where replacement instances can be rapidly and predictably commissioned. The service runs within Amazons proven network infrastructure and data centers. The Amazon EC2 Service Level Agreement commitment is 99.95% availability for each Amazon EC2 Region.

Amazon EC2 works in conjunction with Amazon VPC to provide security and robust networking functionality for your compute resources.

If you do not have a default VPC you must create a VPC and launch instances into that VPC to leverage advanced networking features such as private subnets, outbound security group filtering, network ACLs, Dedicated Instances, and VPN connections.

Amazon EC2 passes on to you the financial benefits of Amazons scale. You pay a very low rate for the compute capacity you actually consume. See Amazon EC2 Instance Purchasing Options for a more detailed description.

Quickly get started with Amazon EC2 by visiting AWS Marketplace to choose preconfigured software on Amazon Machine Images (AMIs). You can quickly deploy this software to EC2 via 1-Click launch or with the EC2 console.

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Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud - Official Site