Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Heather Clancy.

Stealthy startup Bracket Computing made its debut last month with more than $85 million in backing for its radical virtualization technology, which allows businesses to move computing workloads from cloud to cloud more easily. The vision is to help organizations process applications wherever it makes the most sense from a cost or resource perspectives.

The approach could also be used to bridge operations between on-site servers and those hosted in a cloud service. "When you have a million servers at your disposal, you have the appearance of an infinite resource," said Bracket CEO Tom Gillis. "Our question to ourselves was: can we build a layer that could present applications with highly reliable and secure performance?"...

Grazed from Porticor. Author: PR Announcement.

Porticor, a leading cloud data security company delivering the only cloud-based key management and data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud and keeps cloud data confidential, today announced that its latest Porticor Virtual Private Data (VPD) release supports the OpenStack cloud operating system, securing datacenter information across compute, storage, and networking resources.

The Porticor Virtual Private Data system is the industry’s only solution combining patented split-key encryption and homomorphic key management technologies with data encryption to protect critical data in public, private and hybrid cloud environments. OpenStack customers can now leverage the Porticor technology for key management and data encryption in a pure OpenStack deployment, or in a hybrid environment, such as across a private VMware cloud, OpenStack and Amazon Web Services...

Grazed from VirtualizationReview.  Author: Dan Kusnetzsky.

I've followed Splunk Inc. for quite some time and have always thought that its approach to exploring and analyzing data found in operational and machine logs to be clever and, potentially, quite useful. The company recently launched its newest edition of its enterprise product, Splunk Enterprise 6.2.

The idea is to make it easier for IT and business analysts to search through mounds of data, find patterns and glean useful and actionable insight. Splunk makes it possible for analysts to discover previously hidden relationships in their data, regardless of whether it's being created and stored on-premises, off-premises or in a cloud service provider's datacenter...

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Michael Vizard.

In one fell swoop this week EMC transformed into a force to be reckoned with in the cloud management space with the launch of new hybrid cloud services and the acquisition of three separate companies.

The EMC acquisition list included The Cloudscaling Group, a provider of a cloud operating system that spans public and private clouds; Maginatics, a provider of global namespace services; and Spanning Cloud Apps, a provider of a backup and recovery service designed specifically for software-as-a-service applications...

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Cloud Cruiser has launched version 4 of its solution for hybrid IT consumption-based service delivery. The aptly named Cloud Cruiser 4 builds on previous versions' features with the ability to track usage and costs with real-time visibility, greater financial control and hard cost savings of up to 10 percent of an annual IT budget.

Cloud Cruiser, which focuses on enabling hybrid cloud environments by providing IT with a centralized delivery service, traditionally plays in the cloud services provider market. It's a set of features and functionality that cloud services providers are interested in, said Deirdre Mahon, CMO of Cloud Cruiser, in an interview with Talkin' Cloud...

Grazed from BSMInfo. Author: Pete Johnson.

The data center world was changed forever by the virtualization revolution – and that change has only accelerated with the cloud computing technology that followed. Over the last 18 months the market has settled on the notion that any sizable organization that has enough workload diversity benefits the most by using both public and private cloud in a hybrid model.

Throughout this evolution, VARs and MSPs have had to ask themselves hard questions about where value can be added. The world of simply delivering hardware does not exist anymore - other aspects of the value chain have to be explored. As businesses begin to adopt hybrid cloud and all the flexibility it promises, a new class of products that help them do so effectively is emerging - and this is the perfect place for VARs and MSPs to play in because of the huge potential for added value on an ongoing basis...

Read more from the source @ http://www.bsminfo.com/doc/tips-to-adding-value-to-hybrid-clouds-with-cloud-management-platforms-0001

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Dave Hart.

If I asked you to name a multi-billion dollar market that’s getting a long overdue cloud makeover, would field service management be at the forefront of your mind? It should. This $15 billion industry has only just begun to dip its toe into the huge pool of possibility thanks to software as a service, the tablet and smartphone revolution, and senior management’s recognition that service is indeed strategic.

Add to this the commercial insight into addressable revenue-generating opportunities and the resulting top line growth, and you’ve got a new cloud darling. Service businesses represent around 70% of the world’s economy, yet to date, only about a third of the world’s large service businesses currently use field service management solutions...

Grazed from TechPageOne.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Business agility. It’s the true driver of cloud computing adoption — and it trumps efficiency, cost and the other things people talk about.  For example, when marketers sign up for Typepad online, they do so because the technology enables them to solve problems on their own timetables — not those of a centralized IT organization.

Likewise, when developers start virtual machines in the Amazon cloud because it takes six weeks to get similar resources from central IT, they do so because they need the virtual machines now — not because of how much less expensive the public cloud might appear...

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Dan Sullivan.

Deploying and configuring AWS resources can be time consuming and error-prone. If you ever had to configure an application stack using someone else's janky documentation, you will appreciate AWS CloudFormation.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudFormation allows developers to capture the state of existing platforms, tailor them to additional requirements and redeploy them as needed, in an automated way. It is designed to streamline the process of managing resources, such as storage, servers and security controls...

Grazed from CloudComputingNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

Those who implement cloud computing in general, and AWS in particular, are often confused by the role that managed services providers play. Cost and simplicity are driving the movement to leverage AWS through managed services providers as enterprises look for more ways to consume AWS services. These services are easier to mix and match with existing applications, and provide a better and more effective way to leverage AWS.

Managed services providers can place a well-defined layer of infrastructure, management, and governance between the cloud provider, in this case, AWS, and those who consume AWS as a managed service. Managed service providers get enterprises on-boarded quickly to AWS, and avoid initial issues that many enterprises encounter when going directly to AWS...