Grazed from Business Insider. Author: Ramon Ray.

Cloud computing, Infrastructure as a Service or whatever you want to call it, is getting bigger by the day. While previously you had only a couple of cloud-system providers to choose from, today you can install your own cloud system or choose a system from a variety of providers. Even big companies, which used to be server and system integrators, are now turning their businesses to providing cloud systems for small businesses as they are much more affordable.

On the other hand, small businesses aren’t likely to constantly choose different providers for this service, but are probably more likely to find that one trusted vendor and stick with it, right? If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it applies here – if your system integrator is working for you, there’s no reason to change it. A recent study by an SMB analyst firm Techaisle confirmed this and found that 69 percent of SMB’s prefer to use a single trusted vendor for their cloud applications, while 43% of them found it challenging to coordinate multiple vendors for integration…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: John Riberio.

Indian outsourcer Infosys Tuesday unveiled a package of services and technologies that aim to help companies deploying hybrid clouds.

Fragmentation of enterprise workloads across technologies and services running on both private clouds and multiple public cloud services is a key issue for customers, so Infosys is offering customers self-service catalogs of well-integrated business applications, platforms, and other point technologies from its partners, said Vishnu Bhat, Infosys’ vice president and global head for cloud.

The Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub has what it calls a "smart brokerage" feature, which is an enterprise-wide decision support mechanism to select, compare and deploy cloud services from across providers, Bhat said. Decisions can be based on an evaluation of over 20 parameters such as quality of service, technology compatibility, regulatory compliance needs and total cost of ownership of application workloads, he added…

Grazed from ChannelPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

According to a recent SpamTitan poll of 2,500 SMB customers worldwide, 50 percent said they expect to leverage cloud computing for cost savings while 44 percent confirmed plans were already in place to move key applications such as email filtering and storage to the cloud. The results of this poll are in strong contrast to previous polls when the majority of SMBs declared themselves to be suspicious and undecided about the respective merits of hosted applications.

Why? It is evident to small and medium-sized businesses that benefits exist when choosing cloud as a deployment option: reduced infrastructure costs, pay-as-you-go services, greater flexibility and significantly reducd IT costs and time. According to Dirk Robinson, Robinson Distribution, South Africa: “Security solutions like spam and web filtering are perfect for cloud deployment because they free-up in-house resources from responsibility for net-borne threats in a way that maximises flexibility and cost savings.”…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

The CloudFuzion team, leaders in high performance cloud computing solutions for computational grids, private and public cloud environments announced today that it now has released it’s CloudFuzion Rapid Transit module to significantly accelerate Big Data feeds to and from cloud based compute clusters and render farms.

Big Data is one of the obstacles to the widespread deployment of cloud based render farms and computational clusters. It takes time to move the Gigabytes of data required to execute a scene render in the 3D animation arena, or to complete the analysis of a section of the electric grid for electic power management. As the business demand for compute power steadily increases so do the constraints of improving the productivity, reliability and usability of these cloud based solutions, while at the same time reducing costs. CloudFuzion proves that such high demands placed on cloud providers from external factors like Big Data can not only be met but far surpass expectations…

Grazed from CBSNews. Author: Erik Sherman.

Everyone in the high-tech industry, along with the usual ardent early-adopters, is betting heavily on the emerging Internet "cloud." What often gets overlooked are the drawbacks, as tech writer Mat Honan learned when hackers destroyed his digital life. Not inconvenienced; not interrupted. Destroyed. He lost all the photos he had of his daughter, as well as many documents and emails that were presumably important to him.

Honan had trusted heavily in the convenience and seeming ubiquitous nature of cloud computing. That approach calls for storing all your content on the cloud, tying all your devices together with grand and expansive systems, and using uber-sophisticated software to control and protect everything. The payback: You always have access to everything you want when you need it.

However, systems and machines ultimately rely on human beings, and getting people to always do what is prescribed is a losing battle…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Zach Whittacker.

VMware is to buy analytics platform Log Insight as part of an ongoing spending spree to bolster its offerings in the cloud and virtualization space.

Currently owned by Pattern Insight, the team and technology will make a move to VMware headquarters, the seller said in a statement. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Log Insight gives a looking-glass view at cloud computing services by supplying providers with monitoring data on cloud and virtualized environments. It helps cloud operators examine the vast data that gets kicked out from such processes. It analyzes data in real-time and discovers patterns that can lead administrators to the root of problems as and when they arise…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

PerspecSys Inc., the leader in cloud data protection and residency solutions for the enterprise, today announced the results of an independent technical, architectural, and compliance assessment on its Cloud Data Protection Gateway. The report highlights the ability of the solution to secure highly sensitive information of any type, using encryption or tokenization, paving the way for cloud computing to be adopted for mission-critical applications in business and government.

Coalfire, a Payment Card Industry (PCI) Qualified Security Assessor (QSA) and a FedRAMP Third Party Assessor (3PAO), recently completed the assessment, which included technical testing, architectural assessment, and compliance validation of the PerspecSys PRS Proxy Server and related components. The assessment was conducted in the company’s technical assessment laboratories using Coalfire’s industry best-practice testing methodologies and its widely respected security and IT audit standards. A summary copy of the report is available at http://www.perspecsys.com/coalfire-assessment-summary-report …

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Abdul Salaam.

Cloud computing is quickly becoming a standard for business organizations, big or small. Everywhere you look in the industry cloud computing is being praised as the go to solution for companies trying to save money on IT costs and leverage their business processes to increase profits and probably save time too. But it is seldom shown how cloud computing benefits companies in terms of return on investment (ROI).

Well let us explore some ways to calculate ROI from cloud computing and maybe convince more people to consider this new computing paradigm. Cloud computing may give returns in the following areas:…

Grazed from ExtremeTech. Author: Paul Lilly.

Like it or not, technology is becoming ever more reliant on the cloud, and that has both positive and negative ramifications. On the positive side, cloud computing has opened up a whole new world of productivity that didn’t fully exist before services like Google Docs and Office 365 came into view. On a more personal scale, the cloud flipped the entertainment industry on its head with online music lockers that make it possible to access playlists and rock out to your ZZ Top albums wherever there’s an internet connection. Whether for work or play, living in the cloud can be truly awesome, but what happens when the sky starts falling?

Unfortunately, playing in the cloud isn’t always sunshine and rainbows, a point recently underscored when Mat Honan over at Wired fell victim to a band of hackers who weaseled their way into his Apple’s iCloud account. Honan recounted in frightening and fascinating detail how the cyber scoundrels took advantage of iCloud’s lack of a two-factor authentication process to access his account and remotely delete the data on his MacBook, iPad, and iPhone. Childhood pictures of his daughter and everything else he had stored on his mobile devices were wiped clean…