Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Archana Venkatraman.

OpenStack is a free, open source cloud computing platform giving users freedom from vendor lock-in. When it was alleged that Red Hat won’t support customers who use other versions of OpenStack cloud on its Linux operating systems, its president Paul Cormier passionately shared the company’s vision of open-source but steered clear from stating wholeheartedly that it WILL support its users no matter what version of OpenStack they use.

Any CIO worth his salt will admit that support services can be a deal-breaker when deciding to invest in technology. Red Hat customers opt for the vendor’s commercial version of Linux (RHEL) over free Linux versions because they want to use its support services and make their IT enterprise-class…

Grazed from CMO. Author: Editorial Staff.

Global legal firm Norton Rose Fulbright has produced a very useful free guide on the legal risks and issues associated with cloud computing. It runs to almost 90 pages but don’t let that put you off. If you host with an Australian cloud services provider like BitCloud almost half of it is not relevant to you: there are almost 40 pages devoted to the legal issues involved when using cloud services in countries other than Australia.

Then there are a dozen pages of executive summary, introduction and general info on cloud: what it is and why use of cloud is growing so fast. Another half dozen pages are devoted to how various national governments are using cloud computing. Then we get into the meat of the report. What service levels should the customer expect?..

Grazed from FinFacts. Author: Michael Hennigan.

Cloud computing has generated a lot of hype in recent years and the proliferation of smartphone and tablets devices has made many people aware of storage in a ‘cloud’ but as the use of remote computing grows, the limitations are becoming more obvious and Cisco, the internet infrastructure firm, is promoting what its calls fog computing.

Christopher Mims, the new technology columnist of The Wall Street Journal who joined from Quartz, in his first column this week writes that whereas the cloud is "up there" in the sky somewhere, distant and remote and deliberately abstracted, the "fog" is close to the ground, right where things are getting done…

Grazed from ViewSonic. Author: PR Announcement.

ViewSonic Corp., a leading global provider of computing visual solution products, presents its VSD241 smart display as the ideal desktop device for Amazon Workspaces. With its powerful NVIDIA® Tegra processor and its professional grade 24-inch LED IPS panel and multi touch screen features, the ViewSonic® VSD241 is the complete package for education, health care and small/medium businesses looking for alternative desktop solutions for their virtual desktop environments.

Amazon WorkSpaces addresses the increasing demand from customers for a virtual cloud desktop service. Customers have been frustrated by the available options of traditional desktops that are hard to manage and keep secure, that are expensive and deliver inconsistent performance. Amazon WorkSpaces aims to address these issues by offering secure, easy-to-manage, high-performance desktops in the cloud at a fraction of the price of traditional PCs. Amazon WorkSpaces is a fully managed desktop computing service in the cloud which allows customers to easily provision cloud-based desktops that allow end-users to access the documents, applications and resources they need…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Bob Brown.

OnlyBoth, a Pittsburgh startup whose first offering is an app that generates often surprising insights about U.S. colleges and universities, has seriously been a long time coming. Co-founder Raul Valdes-Perez says the cloud-based software at the heart of his new business stems from work begun in 1998 and funded via a National Science Foundation grant, but that the “niche finding” technology was shelved when a more immediate business opportunity presented itself in the form of Vivisimo. Valdes-Perez co-founded that clustering-powered search company at Carnegie Mellon University and sold it to IBM in 2012 (he was chairman of Vivisimo at the time, so never wound up working for IBM).

CEO Valdes-Perez describes the self-funded OnlyBoth as taking sort of a reverse approach to IBM’s Watson artificial intelligence technology, which can make sense out of unstructured information, as was on display during its famous Jeopardy! game show performance in 2011 (Hear Valdes-Perez compare the technologies below or here)…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Frank Konkel.

Perhaps data center consolidation, virtualization, cloud computing, remote access and infrastructure diversification aren’t the sexiest terms in the federal repertoire, but they do hold the keys to as much as $20 billion in annual savings, according to a study by Meritalk. The study, underwritten by Brocade, is based on survey results from 300 federal network managers who estimate that if the government were to fully leverage all five initiatives, it could save about 24 percent of the government’s $80 billion information technology budget.

The survey’s results sound promising, but there’s a caveat: Two-thirds of the surveyed network managers reported their networks are ill-equipped to meet current mission needs, and much further away from being able to fully embrace newer tech initiatives like cloud computing. If network managers could magically flip a switch and significantly increase network speed by approximately 26 percent, the survey claims the government could cash in $11 billion in savings in one year…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Frank Konkel.

Perhaps data center consolidation, virtualization, cloud computing, remote access and infrastructure diversification aren’t the sexiest terms in the federal repertoire, but they do hold the keys to as much as $20 billion in annual savings, according to a study by Meritalk. The study, underwritten by Brocade, is based on survey results from 300 federal network managers who estimate that if the government were to fully leverage all five initiatives, it could save about 24 percent of the government’s $80 billion information technology budget.

The survey’s results sound promising, but there’s a caveat: Two-thirds of the surveyed network managers reported their networks are ill-equipped to meet current mission needs, and much further away from being able to fully embrace newer tech initiatives like cloud computing. If network managers could magically flip a switch and significantly increase network speed by approximately 26 percent, the survey claims the government could cash in $11 billion in savings in one year…

Grazed from RealWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Technology giants, Intel, Oracle, HP, Dell, Google and Microsoft are among the industry elite converging in London next month for the sixth annual Cloud World Forum event. The conference and exhibition provides the perfect platform to explore the transformation of the IT industry by Cloud computing.

Day One of the Future Cloud track will see Kerry Bailey, SVP HP Cloud, HP, look at what is grounded for the enterprise after eight years of Cloud, followed by Jason Zander, the Corporate Vice President of the Microsoft Azure team at Microsoft, who will discuss the impact of the Cloud first, mobile first transformation of IT. Joining the line-up is Bob Evans, SVP, Oracle, who will discuss the top ten myths about Cloud computing and Robert Crooke, Corporate VP and General Manager of the NVM Solutions Group at Intel, who will assess the future of storage enabling transformational change in Cloud computing. Media is invited to join a technical workshop during the event on storage solutions at the Intel booth…

Grazed from Fortinet. Author: PR Announcement.

Fortinet today announced it has invested in Centrify, a manufacturer of unified identity management technology across data center, cloud and mobile environments. The companies have also initiated an alliance whereby Fortinet and Centrify can leverage synergies between their technologies.

Other strategic investors include Samsung Ventures and NTT Docomo Capital, and other Centrify strategic alliance partners include the KNOX Business Group of Samsung Electronics, whereby Centrify identity management software is to be integrated into Samsung mobile devices…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

VMware is not necessarily known as a company that thoroughly embraces open source, but one of its top CTOs says OpenStack could play an important role as a standard in the cloud computing market. The pronouncement reflects VMware’s efforts to support non VMware-workloads in its management products, something that may have seemed far out just a few years ago.

Chris Wolf, CTO of Americas for VMware – and a former Gartner research vice president – predicts that OpenStack will not be a pervasive standard cloud management software. But, he says in a world of cloud offerings from multiple vendors, OpenStack has an opportunity to be a standard that various cloud management platforms can integrate with…