European Commissioner Neelie Kroes speaking about Cloud Computing

Commissioner Neelie Kroes, European Commissioner for Digital Agenda speaks about Cloud Computing after the release the European Commission’s cloud computing strategy document titled Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe on 27.9.2012.

FULL VIDEO HERE

European Commission: Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe

The European Commission’s cloud computing strategy document – titled Unleashingthe Potential of Cloud Computingin Europe - has outlined the obstacles to establishing a vibrant
market for cloud computing.
The main obstacles are:

1. a lack of clarity on rights, responsibilities,and liability; 
2. insufficient data protection; 
3. and insufficient standardisation, particularly across jurisdictions. 

The European Commission (EC) has requested that the European Telecommunications Standards
Institute set-up a Cloud Group to look into the needs for cloud standardisation and conformity with interoperability standards. The EC also says it will work with relevant bodies to assist the development of EU-wide voluntary certification schemes in the area of cloud computing and plans to publish a list of such schemes by 2014.

Source: European Cloud Computing Stragety web site

Lamborghini web site takes advantage of Cloud Computing technologies

Supercar maker Automobili Lamborghini has migrated its legacy servers onto Amazon Web Services (AWS), halving the running cost.
The car company has replaced an outdated website and infrastructure with AWS. The new website was built in less than one month.
The old website infrastructure was not scalable, preventing the company from supporting new online initiatives as well as the increasing number of  visitors to the site. Lamborghini wanted to be online with an updated website in a very short time.

The car maker considered an on-premise datacentre, which would have cost more than AWS. It also considered a  local hosting provider, but this did not offer scalability. The firm eventually decided it needed cloud computing to support the required scalability and flexibility on its website, and chose AWS based on recommendations from analysts who rated Amazon as the best-in-class infrastructure-as-a-service (IAAS) platform.

Lamborghini has deployed the new website on AWS using various services including Elastic Load Balancing (ELB), Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2), Amazon Relational Database (Amazon RDS), Amazon Simple Shared Service (Amazon S3), Amazon CloudFront, and Amazon CloudWatch.  It also followed AWS Architecture Center for implementation guidance and best practices.

Roberto Ciacci, digital marketing manager at Automobili Lamborghini, said: “We reduced the cost of our infrastructure by 50%, while at the same time achieving better performance and scalability. Today our time-to-market is close to zero."

SOURCE (Computer Weekly)

Are highly rational individuals more sucessful?

In my humble opinion, no. Here is why, I think a strong emotional quotient can matter more.
Successful people knows that the core of any achievement will depend on personal relationships.
The most successful people are frequently unreasonable people who refuse to give up, even when evidence and odds are very much against them. In conclusion, human skills are more important than cold rational logic.

Good enough is always better than perfection

You must under no account dedicate your entire life to mastering a skill.

Showcasing Canadian Government Cloud Computing

In the report Building Canada's Digital Advantage (download the 40 page PDF here), the Canadian Government identifies that an under-investment in new technologies by Canadian CIOs is one of the root causes of the dreaded 'Innovation Gap'.

 “Governments can play an important role in promoting private sector innovation and driving ICT uptake by acting as model users and leading by example, by being an early adopter and demanding purchaser of emerging and next generation technologies like Green IT and Cloud computing.”

They also describe that the key to addressing this situation is for public sector CIO's to lead by example and encourage more adoption.

Imagine Yourself Succeeding by José Ferreiro

Highly successful people will often tell you that one of their secrets is visualization. In their mind’s eye, they see themselves succeeding. They imagine the situations they will
face, and they imagine themselves handling those situations beautifully. Visualization is a very powerful tool. It’s a way of telling yourself that you believe you can do it. The power of this kind of belief is staggering. If you believe you can accomplish something, you are far more
likely to accomplish it. Likewise, if you believe you can’t do something, you are far more likely to fail to achieve that goal. Positive visualization will make it easier for you..
Anyone can use the power of visualization.