Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Recently I was asked what I thought was the most important trend in IT. And it wasn’t hard to answer: The shift from proprietary, scale-up systems to commodity, open source, scale-out systems. NoSQL databases provide a good example of scaling out versus up. To beef up Oracle or any other conventional, proprietary RDBMS, you need to scale up the database server with more cores, more caching, more flash, and so on. At a certain point, you’ll need another server, which means you’ll be saddled with sharding the database and maintaining it in that state (yes, you could use Oracle RAC, but that’s another story).

With a NoSQL database — and all the major ones are based on open source — you scale out when you need more performance or capacity. Instead of powerful database servers than can never go down, you deploy a NoSQL database across commodity servers in a distributed architecture that permits failure of individual nodes. A popular analogy uses "pets versus cows" to illustrate…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Editorial Staff.

Virtualization and cloud computing giant VMware articulated the idea of software-defined data centers last year, aiming to revolutionize the way data centers are built and operated. VMware’s SDDC vision involves virtualization of storage and the network in addition to server virtualization to have a complete software-defined setup.

This architecture is gradually gaining popularity among enterprises and data centers, as it makes more sense than a hardware-centric approach. When the idea of SDDC was bought forward, analysts expected that the private infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offered by VMware could cannibalize the markets of public cloud providers such as Amazon and Rackspace…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Databricks, the company trying to commercialize the Apache Spark data-processing framework, announced on Monday at the second-annual Spark Summit that it has raised $33 million in series B venture capital, and is rolling out a cloud computing service for easily creating, deploying and running Spark workloads. NEA led the funding round, which also included existing investor Andreessen Horowitz and follows up on a $14 million series A round in September 2013.

While the pace and amount of Databricks’ fundraising is impressive, the new service, called Databricks Cloud, is the real big deal here. It gives a lot of guidance as to the company’s plan for making money from Spark — a plan that includes a lot more than just certifying applications to run on Spark, and providing enterprise support and certification to Hadoop vendors that support it…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: David Linthicum.

The use of Amazon Web Services (AWS)-based resources requires that we understand how those resources are consumed. It should include answers to the questions: who, what, when, where, why and how much. Last month we discussed how to understand and manage your AWS bill. This month let’s explore how that bill tracks back to specific resources and consumption patterns through cloud financial intelligence systems.

To reach this goal, we need to determine patterns of cloud use that lead to demand planning capabilities, as well as revenue or cost projections. This information should be presented in such a way that it’s not only operationally effective, but effective in driving core decision support around the use of single-, hybrid- or multi-cloud –based resources…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Last week was a big one for IaaS cloud provider Joyent – not only did the company pivot to offer a private cloud management software (previously it only offered public cloud services) but it also has cherry-picked a Cisco cloud executive to be the company’s new CEO.

Joyent, a rather small niche provider of services – according to an assessment by research firm Gartner – is looking to stay relevant in a market dominated by mega-vendors like Amazon, Google and Microsoft. In an effort to differentiate itself, the company now offers a private cloud compliment to its established public cloud, giving customers an opportunity to create an all-Joyent hybrid cloud…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Syed Raza.

Is your data exponentially growing? Are you using orthodox storage systems like Storage Area Network (SAN) and Network Attached Storage (NAS)? Cloud computing with its numerous benefits and innovative capabilities now offers a novel way of working with data through ‘Object based storage model’. Due to the ever increasing pressure exerted by the industry on the interface to storage, the storage technology has progressed to the point that a change in the device interface is needed. Well, the answer perhaps lies with object based storage, an emerging standard aimed to address this problem. Let’s further elaborate about object based storage.

Objects can be categorized as either:

• history
• Files
• Blocks…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Peak(R) (formerly PeakColo), an enterprise-class Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) Cloud provider for channel partners, announces that FusionStorm, a global IT solution provider, is boosting its cloud computing service by integrating Peak’s secure cloud infrastructure and NetApp storage platform. FusionStorm is leveraging Peak’s cloud nodes located in Chicago, Ill., and Santa Clara, Calif.

With clients in more than 30 countries, FusionStorm has a long history of solving business issues for clients by providing expertise in core data center technologies, networking, communication and collaboration. FusionStorm offers logistical capabilities and customs knowledge to enable the delivery of multivendor technology solutions around the world. Its global engineering team provides a full suite of professional services, coordinating the efforts of local engineering resources for onsite implementation and 24×7 support…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Auuthor: Editorial Staff.

A recent landmark US Supreme Court ruling on the legality of searching a mobile phone without a warrant is a ‘historical moment’ for defenders of privacy rights according to Microsoft general counsel & executive vice president, legal & corporate affairs Brad Smith. This case focused on whether police can search a suspect’s cell phone without a warrant during an arrest.

David Leon Riley was arrested on August 22, 2009 after a traffic stop, which resulted in the discovery of loaded firearms in his car. The officers subsequently seized and searched Riley’s phone and its contents, and the officers charged him with an unrelated shooting that had taken place several weeks prior to his arrest based in part on information found during that search…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

IBM’s SoftLayer cloud division is due to launch an additional data centre in London as part of a $1.2bn global expansion that will also see Paris and Frankfurt added later this year. The firm also said its BlueMix development platform is now out of beta and generally available from SoftLayer.

The opening of the new data centre is part of an expansion programme that IBM announced at the start of 2014, which will see the IT giant deliver cloud services from 40 data centres worldwide in 15 countries across the globe by the end of the year. The London data centre, which was due to be operational by the end of June, will now come online sometime in July, IBM said. It will deliver additional capacity for IBM SoftLayer cloud services, and its location near Chessington places it close to key customers in the City of London, according to the firm…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Juan Carlos Perez.

A "unique" breakdown coupled with a previously unknown flaw in Exchange Online caused Tuesday’s extensive outage, and to make matters worse, the service disruption alert system also malfunctioned, leaving some affected customers in the dark.  So said Rajesh Jha, corporate vice president of Office 365 engineering, in an incident report posted to the Office 365 support forum in which he also addressed another separate, prolonged Lync Online outage from Monday.

"I want to apologize on behalf of the Office 365 team for the impact and inconvenience this has caused. Email and real-time communications are critical to your business, and my team and I fully recognize our accountability and responsibility as your partner and service provider," he wrote. For customers on U.S. Eastern time, the Exchange Online outage covered virtually the entire workday…