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Wolverine is one of the most awesome superheroes in the Marvel Universe. It’s not because of his fierceness, the fact that he’s Canadian, or the fact that he has indestructible metal claws coming out of his fists. It’s because no matter what happens to him, no matter what harm he endures, he has a healing factor that lets him come back and continue to fight, time and time again. Wolverine can push bullets out from his wounds to heal, or regenerate from an atomic blast if he has to. He is the ultimate example of resilience and a metaphor for what you want in a cloud application — a... Continued

!CloudOps has been helping companies leverage the power of cloud services for nearly as long as cloud services have been around. We were early adopters and evangelists of AWS and open source cloud technologies such as OpenStack, CloudStack and Docker. We understood the value of API-driven, self-service scalable infrastructure, and so did our customers. However, as the industry matured, we kept getting the same question: can I do this in Canada? For many years the answer was a resounding “no”.  And so we built cloud.ca, a regional IaaS and leading contender in the next wave of cloud... Continued

CloudOps is often asked to provide proposals for organizations migrating to cloud IaaS from their local or self-managed physical servers by people very experienced with virtualization, SANs and dedicated servers. Questions frequently come up about what level of RAID we use in cloud storage and how long it takes to increase the storage amount available to a server. There is also concern with using network storage, as it is perceived to be slower. Our answers surprise people, and upset their beliefs. Our cloud IaaS offers a network block storage service that provides the redundancy, performance... Continued

Cloud computing’s roots lie in the evolution of on-demand computing and computer networks. It has benefitted from important developments in virtualization, resource allocation and shared architectures. Now there is a true Canadian (Infrastructure as a Service) IaaS cloud. Cloud computing is attracting more and more Canadian companies, as it positively affects an organization’s strategy. It promotes innovation through the use of new applications developed in cloud environments. It also lowers the overall cost of ownership and maximises IT investment. Cloud computing offers an open and... Continued

The cloud is a powerful tool for business. Many company leaders are still debating whether or not to even use the cloud, without envisioning how the cloud can shape their long term strategy.  This article aims to help resolve this debate by identifying the different stages of the cloud and the objectives that are attainable with each one. The first phase of cloud use is Optimization. During this period, a company uses the cloud to incrementally improve their internal operations as well as their customer facing value propositions.  Currently, this is the stage that many companies are still... Continued

Cloud computing is a victim of its own success. For one thing, cloud advocates have promised so much—worry-free, turnkey IT that just works— that the reality is bound to disappoint. Worse, clouds seem immune to tough economic times, so nearly every technology company is wrapping itself in a cloud mantle, and every dynamic website is claiming it’s a cloud. We don’t want to get bogged down in definitions, but any discussion of clouds requires a clear understanding of three things: Cloud technology versus a cloud business model. Infrastructure-, platform-, and software-as-a-service... Continued

Cloud computing is a significant shift in the way companies build and run IT resources. It promises pay-­‐as-­‐you-­‐go economics and elastic capacity. Every major change in IT forces IT professionals to “rebalance” their application strategy—just look at client-­‐server computing, the web, or mobile devices. Today, cloud computing is prompting a similar reconsidering of IT strategy. But it’s still early days for clouds. Many enterprises are skeptical of on-­‐ demand computing, because it forces them to relinquish control over the underlying networks and architectures... Continued