Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

If your company is struggling to find the right cloud solution for your business, you are not alone – it appears an awful lot of companies are in exactly the same position. That was one of the principle conclusions from some new research by the cloud computing company iland, in conjunction with VMware, which found that the average company is using not one but at least three Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) companies for their cloud development. According to the research there are a number of reasons why organisations are casting around trying to find a cloud solution including:

• An ongoing effort to find the ‘right’ solution.
• A fragmentation of requirements at the departmental level.
• An unwillingness by IT to standardise on one vendor.
• A requirement for diverse suppliers because, amongst other reasons, of liability issues.
• A general urge by cloud providers to continually try new ideas that might meet their needs…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Regulatory pressure is likely to keep private cloud alive and growing within the overall cloud computing market, according to Rob Lloyd, president of Development and Sales at Cisco Systems (CSCO). ZDNet recently noted that Lloyd said "private cloud is not going away." Lloyd was quoted as speaking to a group of Australian media about Intercloud, the company’s global cloud network that it hopes will play a significant role in the cloud space.

But Lloyd also seemed to go against common belief that as enterprises become more confident and comfortable with cloud services, they will increasingly turn to the public cloud. Lloyd seems to believe the opposite—that as regulatory issues continue to put pressure on enterprises and cloud services providers that enterprises will focus more and more on implementing private cloud solutions…

Grazed from Bizjournals. Author: Mike W. Thomas.

Rackspace Hosting Inc. is still generating buzz in the technology industry about a potential takeover. The San Antonio-based managed hosting and cloud computing company announced earlier this year that it was looking at “strategic proposals” and had retained the services of investment banker Morgan Stanley to evaluate the proposals and explore any other alternatives.

The latest company to be touted as a potential buyer is Monroe, La.-based CenturyLink, a multinational communications company that provides services to residential, business, governmental and wholesale customers. Analyst David Phipps tells Motley Fool that a merger with Rackspace would double CenturyLink’s service revenue and increase overall revenue growth for both companies…

Read more from the source @ http://www.bizjournals.com/sanantonio/blog/morning-edition/2014/06/rackspace-eyed-by-another-suitor.html

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

InfinityQS International, Inc., the global authority on real-time quality and Manufacturing Intelligence , today announces the release of its eBook, "Cloud Mythbusters: Dispelling the Myths of Manufacturing in the Cloud." In this eBook, InfinityQS experts combat cloud computing fiction with fact, and encourage quality and IT professionals to consider cloud-based tools as a solution for enabling supply chain-wide quality, efficiency and productivity. To download the eBook, visit: http://www.infinityqs.com/cloud-mythbusters-pr .

Throughout "Cloud Mythbusters," InfinityQS reveals truths to common misconceptions of using cloud-based technology in manufacturing, citing real-life examples along the way. Readers will learn:

• The cloud is not only for consumers , it can also help manufacturers standardize processes and automate data collection across an enterprise, while reducing the burden on IT.
• Cloud deployment is cost-effective and eliminates many of the expenses associated with on-premise solutions such as installation, recurring maintenance and infrastructure costs.
• Storing data on the cloud is more secure than on-site computing…

Grazed from Cloud Computing Today. Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon’s announcement of details of its Amazon Fire Phone on June 18 promises to disrupt not only the economics of the smartphone industry, but also the use of cloud computing for backup and archival purposes more generally. In Wednesday’s unveiling of Amazon’s first phone, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos noted that the Amazon Fire Phone will offer unlimited, cloud-based photo storage for pictures taken from the phone’s 13 MP camera.

As noted by MG Siegler, the Amazon Fire Phone’s offer of unlimited photo storage outstrips its contemporaries because Apple’s iPhone cloud storage limits are capped in conjunction with a customer’s limits on iCloud. Whereas Android offers unlimited photo uploads to Google+, it does so at lower resolutions than that of the original image…

Grazed from InfoSec Island. Author: Michael Higashi.

Now that the cloud is sweeping the enterprise, it’s time to reevaluate your security strategy. A secure cloud deployment depends in large part on data security, which demands a different set of skills and solutions than traditional, on-premises infrastructure security. Here are two signs you should invest in cloud computing data security.

1. You’re using, or planning to use, the public cloud

When it comes to addressing cloud security concerns and implementing a secure cloud deployment, there are those within the tech industry who advocate private clouds for the enterprise. Private clouds allow organizations to enjoy many of the benefits of the cloud, such as anytime, anywhere data and application accessibility, without incurring the security risks associated with the public cloud. A private cloud is a secure cloud…

Grazed from NewYork Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

Oracle’s $5.3 billion deal for Micros Systems provides an uncertain forecast for shareholders in the database giant. Even if it’s the start of a new deal binge by Oracle’s chief, Lawrence J. Ellison, it’s not at a crazy valuation. But Mircos, a longtime partner, is more of an add-on than a way to supercharge Oracle’s effort in cloud computing.

Oracle is paying $68 a share in cash for the Micros, a maker of hotel and restaurant business technology systems. At a 24 percent premium to the undisturbed share price, it’s at about half the premium Priceline recently agreed to pay for the restaurant reservations site OpenTable, as one example…

Grazed from DBTA. Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM is accelerating the adoption of open technologies for cloud computing, with the goal of assisting enterprises in integrating existing infrastructures into the cloud space. To this end, IBM said it is working on an open integration model with Docker, an open source platform for developers and systems administrators to build, ship, and run distributed applications, and the open source Docker project community.

“The IT industry continues to rally behind a cloud built on open and community-driven technologies,” said IBM vice president of Open Technologies and Cloud Performance Angel Diaz. “IBM continues to firmly believe that the best means to truly drive wide-spread adoption and innovation of cloud computing is to ensure open technologies are at its core.”…

Read more from the source @ http://www.dbta.com/Editorial/News-Flashes/IBM-Tightens-Collaboration-with-Docker-Open-Source-Cloud-Community-97791.aspx

Grazed from Information-Management. Author: Bob Violino.

In a new study looking at the future of cloud, nearly half (49 percent) of the 1,358 organizations surveyed are using cloud services to fuel revenue generation or new product creation. The fourth annual "Future of Cloud Computing" study by venture capital firm North Bridge Venture Partners in conjunction with research firm Gigaom Research and 72 collaborating organizations analyzes the inhibitors and drivers behind cloud adoption.

Other key findings of the survey include that 45 percent of businesses say they already, or plan to, run their company from the cloud. Software-as-a-service adoption has more than quintupled since 2011, rising from 13 percent adoption to 74 percent in this year’s survey…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

In 1957, prolific science fiction writer Issac Asimov penned "The Feeling of Power." In it, Asimov describes a futuristic world in which humans no longer have the knowledge to perform even basic mathematical functions, leaving the task to computers instead. When math is reintroduced under the name "graphitics," there is speculation about its authenticity, let alone the ability of any human to comprehend its myriad rules. Midsize IT professionals may be witnessing the start of a similar progression with the rise of intelligent cloud services ? are they too smart for their own good?

Going… Going… Gone!

While there is little chance the average IT admin will forget how to add, subtract or multiply any time soon, a June 18 Ars Technica article makes a good point: Software and applications are disappearing. Consider legacy customer relationship management (CRM) software, for example. Painstakingly designed in-house from the ground up, many legacy deployments are now being replaced with cloud alternatives. It is a logical move, since cloud-based solutions are faster, operate in real time and give frontline employees access to everything they need at a single glance. But what happens to the legacy? In many cases, it vanishes forever…