Grazed from Greg Ness Blog. Author: Greg Ness.

The next five years ought to be challenging for infrastructure appliance vendors, especially those who see their future “in the box.” We just wrapped up at the AWS Public Sector Summit, held in Washington, DC. An ecosystem of about 3000 attended the 3 day event. Massively disruptive software companies are springing up throughout the AWS ecosystem. It reminded me of the early VMware days, as a robust partner ecosystem appeared out of nowhere.

Amazon AWS is transforming the competitive landscape and ushering in a new era of innovation; the Seattle-based juggernaut is allowing software startups to have strategic impacts in very short periods of time. Business impacts. Operating impacts. Culture impacts. The AWS infrastructure is elastic, almost boundless versus the tired, fractured, stovepipe IT that evolved out of the collision between the mainframe and PC era. It is a dream come true for a new generation of software startups…

Grazed from WallStreet CheatSheet. Author: Editorial Staff.

Facebook has quietly migrated Instagram and its 20 billion photos from Amazon’s cloud computing service to its own data center. The transition took about a year in planning and a month for the actual migration, and Instagram’s 200 million users didn’t notice a thing. Wired reports that the company calls the transition the “Instagration,” and the migration was unlike any that Facebook had previously undertaken. In moving other properties that it had acquired, like FriendFeed, Facebook was able to shut down the service before migrating it to its own data centers.

But moving Instagram, which Facebook bought in 2012, was a much bigger operation. The process involved moving the service from thousands of virtual machines on Amazon’s cloud computing service, where it was originally built, to a private data center operated by Facebook, all while avoiding disruptions to a service used by 200 million people. According to Wired, the move gives Instagram access to the wide range of software tools built into Facebook’s infrastructure…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Rebecca Carroll.

At its best, cloud computing offers agencies a cheaper, more efficient, faster, more secure way to administer the information technology systems they’re already running. Whether it actually works out that way often hinges on who’s in charge, how much authority they have and the breadth of their perspective, industry executives say. Congress has been debating the best role for agency chief information officers, with broad — but not universal — calls for granting CIOs full authority over their budgets.

“It’s all about the business case,” Lt. Gen. Peter Cuviello, lead client partner for Deloitte Consulting LLP, told Nextgov during a discussion about cloud savings. “It’s not about technology; it’s about the business case. You have to have a business case that the agency agrees to, and then you’ve got to stick to it.”…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: David S. Linthicum.

A common misconception among cloud consumers is that private cloud architecture doesn’t have the same issues that arise with public cloud services. Due to its private nature, some believe that security is a given and failure is not an option. Those users learn the hard way that is not the case. But why do private clouds fail?

The core reasons that private clouds fail include a lack of planning on the part of IT and a failure to understand that cloud security requires attention and maintenance. Private cloud architecture is typically much more dense and intense than traditional systems, with processing and storage concentrated within a small cluster of servers. Most patterns of failure link back to three problems during private cloud builds. There are two types of clouds: clouds that are managed properly, and clouds that don’t work…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Eric Lundquist.

Google’s big tent strategy was in clear evidence this week at the Google I/O developers conference. The company with roots in linking ads to Internet searches now wants to own your wrist, your auto, your television and your whereabouts as you travel along in the Google cloud.

The big tech tent outlined by keynoter and Android boss Sundar Pichai is by far more comprehensive than any other single competitor or even groups of competitors. What does it mean? Remember that Google is fundamentally a media platform connecting the whereabouts and interests of users with advertiser products and services…

Grazed from Xconomy. Author: Curt Woodward.

After the U.S. Supreme Court smacked down online TV service Aereo for violating copyright law, worries instantly sprung up that the justices were putting a huge array of Internet and cloud-computing services at risk of similar treatment. That torch was carried highest by Justice Antonin Scalia, who wrote for the court’s three-person minority that the Aereo ruling would “sow confusion for years to come.”

But Scalia was complaining mostly about the court’s decision to forgo a detailed legal test for determining a specific kind of copyright infringement. Media outlets—and some enterprising lawyers they’ve interviewed—have been more than happy go further, trumpeting the supposed fear and confusion that Aereo’s loss is heaping on Internet distribution technologies of all kinds…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

In a world where cloud computing has already become a commodity, solution providers need to find a way to add value. Given the abundance of capital, there is no shortage of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) options. For solution providers to succeed in the age of the cloud they need to find a way to add value above the infrastructure level.

With that issue in mind Joyent this week announced that it is making the SmartDataCenter software the power its public cloud service available for deployment on private cloud. Faced with many of the same issues that plague solution providers, Joyent developed SmartDataCenter to differentiate its services from all the IaaS offerings in the market, said company CTO Bryan Cantrill…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Fay Humphries.

Many organisations are paying an ‘opportunity cost’ by overestimating the risk inherent in certain forms of cloud computing, while an equal number are taking unrecognised and inappropriately high levels of risk by placing sensitive data in cloud services that are not designed for it.

This was among the key findings listed in Gartner’s ‘Predicts 2014: Cloud computing affects all aspects of IT’ report, and indicates a significant disparity in how the survey’s respondents are tackling the move to the cloud. "A look at the local market shows a similar disparity, although for a different reason. While some progressive CIOs have successfully moved in to the cloud, other senior decision-makers are being somewhat risk-adverse here. Which is a real pity because, if approached the right way, cloud computing can make a real difference to the bottom line – without exposing the business to any increased risk," says Jon Tullett, senior editor: news analysis at ITWeb. "For a lot of South African companies, cloud right now means hosting."…

Grazed from SecureKey. Author: Editorial Staff.

When looking at the modern IT market, many trends will likely appear to hold equal importance for organizations in a wide range of industries and regions, including big data and mobility. However, cloud computing is likely the most critical one because of its ability to facilitate the deployment of other advanced solutions and capabilities, and this is evidenced by the fact that a majority of technology spending is already beginning to center around these services.

Cloud computing’s single biggest obstacle standing in the way of more widespread adoption has been security, and this has been the case since the industry first took off a few years ago. Regardless of concerns, though, businesses that handle sensitive information have already begun to leverage these tools to bolster productivity and technological power, working to implement modern access management controls alongside cloud deployments for safe outcomes…

Grazed from Cordis. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing – where storage facilities are provided on demand over the internet from shared data centres – enables effective research collaboration to blossom. Rather than having to purchase a cluster of computers or struggle to find space at the lab, researchers can outsource their computing storage needs to remote facilities in the cloud and make this data accessible to colleagues.

In order to facilitate closer research collaboration, an EU-funded project entitled HELIX NEBULA (HNX) has created an online platform where customers can choose between various cloud service suppliers. The ultimate objective of the project, which was completed in May 2014, is to enable researchers and scientists to buy, use and manage cloud services as seamlessly as possible…