Both businesses and consumers rely on public clouds for a range of tasks and activities from collaboration and video streaming to gmail and Netflix. New companies are born with just a dozen employees, a laptop and an Internet connection practically overnight. This is all thanks to cloud computing.
It’s no surprise that in the next six years, almost 90 percent of new spending on Internet and communications technologies, a $5 trillion global business, will be on cloud-based technology, according to industry analyst firm IDC. Cloud applications will also account for 90 percent of total mobile data traffic by 2018, according to the Cisco Visual Networking Index: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2013–2018.
The benefits for users are almost too numerous to count, but most IT professionals agree that cloud computing epitomizes constant change. Its ability to provide ubiquitous, on-demand access to a shared pool of networks, servers, storage, and services whenever and wherever they are needed is creating both market opportunity and market upheaval.
To temper the turbulence, capitalize on the opportunities and best prepare for any number of cloud unknowns, several of the world’s largest public providers including Amazon Web Services, Rackspace, IBM/SoftLayer and Verizon Terremark rely on Xen Project virtualization. Open source Xen Project software offers superior IT efficiencies, workload balancing, hyperscalability and tight security by running VMs on a cloud service.
While today the media is focusing on price wars and the possible commoditization of infrastructure as a service (IaaS), cloud providers like Verizon Terremark are innovating with novel Quality of Service agreements and new levels of automation. In his talk in Chicago at our Xen Project Developer Summit, Verizon Terremark’s Don Slutz will present an overview of the Verizon Cloud architecture based on Xen.
Read more at the Xen Project blog.
