Kate's Comment

I contend that the next stage of evolution of storage is “Just a Bunch of Disks” (JBOD), comprised of a range of media types with different performance characteristics, and with software doing the cleverness. In this first post (1 of 2) I shall address the resilience aspects of this evolution. RAID failings Large RAID (Redundant Array of Independant Disks) systems…

Infographic summarising cloud security including using cloud computing as a weapon.

With a number of channel companies recently named in the 2nd iteration of the G-Cloud programme, Kate Craig-Wood, MD of Memset explores what real opportunities the G-Cloud offers the channel. I have been involved in the G-Cloud project almost from the beginning; as the technical co-lead on Phase two of the project, proposing the detailed architecture (on the Cabinet Office…

Scarcely a day passes by where you don’t see a headline about “Big Data” and how analysis of this big data is going to lead to huge efficiencies, targeted marketing and large profits. But are there really huge profits to be made out of data analytics (or data mining as it used to be known), both for companies collecting data…

Cloud security is nothing mysterious and the same approaches that one takes when verifying any supplier’s integrity should be followed. You should ask questions like: 1) Will the data remain within the EU (for data protection) 2) Who in the supplier organisation has access to my data and what control are placed upon them? 3) What checks does the supplier…

I am in my final year of a part-time PhD attempting to answer whether Moore’s Law (which has accurately predicted that computational power will roughly double per unit of cost or unit of energy every two years for some time) will mitigate the Jevons Paradox (see inset) in relation to energy efficiency of ICT thus allowing ICT to be an…

Over Christmas I have been pondering on the question of what the next big thing in technology will be, specifically in 2012. That question is perhaps especially poignant since we recently we lost one of our generation’s great innovators, Steve Jobs. When I recently took delivery of my magic mouse I was struck by how aptly it was named. If…

Why I’m skeptical of why George Osborne’s ‘credit easing’ scheme is likely to help British SMEs if it relies on the existing banking system. Further, I believe that now is a golden opportunity for British technology, especially cloud services, with the potential for us to become a new global export and engine of growth for UK PLC. However, without change, ideally with the Chancellor’s help, we will keep selling our golden geese and fail to grasp this opportunity. Here is why and how.

There has recently been a lot of news about cyber security, and it is a hot item in Whitehall, education and at the top levels in the IT industry. However, is this “new” cyber security concern warranted and do we need government and/or academia to get involved with a dedicated centre for tackling the issue? In short, I don’t think so, and this is why.

Here I provide a less technical description of cloud computing, which can be regarded as essentially the provision of computing resources and/or software as a utility, in the same way that your business uses familiar utilities, such as electricity, water, gas etc. Cloud computing enables you to pay for computing resources as you need them. These services are provided over the internet, on a consumption-based pay-as-you-use model, with short-term contracts and without up-front expenditure.