Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

CloudBolt Software recently added a host of new features to its flagship cloud management platform, including support for new cloud platforms, software-defined networking and container services. CloudBolt customers can now virtualize their networks with access to VMware NSX directly through the platform, with additional support for Docker and Kubernetes for app containerization.

The company has also added support for IBM SoftLayer, HP Helion and CenturyLink Cloud, raising the total number of cloud platforms compatible with CloudBolt to thirteen, according to the announcement. “In the past year, we have seen a marked increase in the number of enterprises that want to take advantage of the benefits of SDN and container technologies,” said Jon Mittelhauser, CEO of CloudBolt, in a statement...

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.

Application planners, architects and operations managers all know that deployment of applications today is complicated by application componentization, workflow steering and cloud adoption. Most use tools like DevOps to facilitate deployment, but hybrid clouds can defeat even those tools.

To understand hybrid cloud management, understand the challenges hybrid clouds pose for even modern management tools, think of application deployment and redeployment in layers, and recognize that full management automation is the final goal, so it's critical to know whether your hybrid cloud management approach will lead there...

Grazed from CloudTech.  Author: James Bourne.

If organisations could track all cloud consumption and usage across the enterprise, the majority (57%) would utilise it to improve IT forecasting. That was the key takeaway from a survey undertaken by enterprise software provider Cloud Cruiser, who collared 279 IT professionals at the recent Microsoft Ignite event in Chicago. Interestingly, 16% of respondents admitted they did not use Microsoft cloud technologies.

39% of those polled said they would use more wide-ranging tracking skills to compare costs across different platforms and vendors, while 34% said they would expand their on-demand and self-service access to cloud. 72% said tracking cloud usage and costs was extremely or very important to their IT function...

Grazed from Accenture. Author: Editorial Staff.

New cloud computing technologies are enabling breakthrough innovations in supply chain management (SCM) applications delivered via software as a service (SaaS) models. As a key enabler in this new digital world, cloud computing can have a transformational impact on the business and the supply chain operating model by enabling data and analytics, mobility and social media functions.

Cloud computing helps organizations realize major benefits from key marketplace trends that are redefining traditional supply chain networks, including volatility as the new normal, surging data volumes, industrial-grade digital technologies and the arrival of end-to-end visibility. Most supply chain strategies date back to when the business environment was more stable...

A number of RightScale enterprise customers already combine RightScale with ServiceNow. Today’s integration will make integrating RightScale and ServiceNow in the enterprise even easier.

Grazed from CloudComputing. Author: Rich Tehrani.

It’s exciting to see that cloud is being embraced by so many. From small businesses to the largest, cloud computing solutions are eagerly being rolled out for CRM, telephony, UC, accounting, storage and anything else you can think of. While the benefits of the tech are clear, what we need to worry about now is management of these cloud solutions.

In fact, we should be aware of the trend we see in cloud as it follows similar ones in telecom. There was a time when companies lost track of their telecom expenses. They had many users, many lines and typically overpaid for services because they didn’t know how much of a discount they could achieve. Moreover, they paid for many lines which were never in use...

Grazed from Enterprise Irregulars.  Author: Tom Rafferty.

Apple had a couple of interesting announcements last week. The first was that they were investing $848m in a 130MW solar farm being built by First Solar in California. With this investment, Apple enters into a 25 year power purchase agreement with the solar farm, guaranteeing income for the solar farm, and securing Apple’s energy bills for the next 25 years in California.

According to First Solar this is the largest agreement in the industry to provide clean energy to a commercial end user, and it will provide enough energy for Apple to fully power its headquarters, operations and retail stores in California, with renewable energy...

Grazed from CircleID. Author: David Eisner.

Your company can't ignore cloud computing: Some kind of distributed-access model is now necessary to tap global markets, manage big data and get access to best-in-class software. But with increased cloud adoption comes the issue of management, since it's no longer enough to simply spin up a cloud and hope for the best. Here are five of the top cloud management trends to watch this year — and the risks of opting out.

Standardization

According to a recent Cloud Tweaks article, there's a growing need for cloud industry standards. Organizations such as the Cloud Security Alliance and ISO are on the forefront of this standardization effort — through 2015, expect to see SLAs and other cloud contract start adopting this change by including "typical" language and clear-cut descriptions of service availability...

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Dan Kusnetzsky.

The folks from DivvyCloud, Brian Johnson, CEO, and Peter Scott, CSO/CMO, came by to introduce the company and talk a bit about what they're doing for their clients. After learning about the good, the bad and the ugly of using cloud computing as a platform while at Electronic Arts it became clear to them that managing in-house and off-premise platforms was a complex process. So, they decided to get together a team to make cloud use and administration easy.

DivvyCloud Management Platform

The company's primary offering is a Cloud Management Platform (CMP) designed to gather cloud infrastructure and the needed cloud application lifecycle management data together and make it easy for developers to use DivvyCloud's dashboard or write their own applications or use their on business intelligence tools for each cloud service they've chosen to use...

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: David Linthicum.

Today’s Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings enable near-instant productivity and capacity. Businesses, however, have little visibility into or control over their cloud solutions’ true cost. Cloud computing allows lines of business to self-provision tools, often without IT’s knowledge...

The result is an increase in localized productivity. But provisioned systems are often redundant, contracts are poorly optimized, and businesses are unable to manage or audit the lifecycle and usage of these services. They also lack the data and clout to negotiate more favorable terms...