Grazed from TheGuardian. Author: Werner Vogels.

We are rapidly entering into an era where massive computing power, digital storage and global network connections can be deployed by anyone as quickly and easily as turning on the light. This is the promise – and the reality – of cloud computing which is driving tremendous change in the technology industry and transforming how we do business in Europe and around the world.

Europe’s fastest growing start-ups, like Hailo, JustEat and WeTransfer, some of the largest enterprises, like Royal Dutch Shell, SAP and Unilever, governments, education and research institutes, all are using cloud technologies to innovate faster and better serve their customers and the citizens of Europe…

Grazed from CloudComputineExpo. Author: Michael Bushong.

Grazed from For many SDN and DevOps enthusiasts, the natural outcome of this wave of technological change is a highly-automated network that is well-orchestrated with surrounding systems and applications. One of the prevailing thoughts is that this level of automation is a well-formed abstraction layer. With the abstractions in place, the army of network engineers will be unencumbered by device configuration, and automation will ensure. Or will it?

First off, let me say that abstraction is absolutely necessary. There is no doubt that networking will only advance if we can both remove unnecessary elements and simplify those that remain. We have to accomplish this in a way that is vendor (and ideally technology) agnostic. Abstraction is clearly the path forward…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Author: Jonathan Brandon.

Cloud management software provider Flexiant said Wednesday that the company has purchased the Tapp multi-cloud management business from Besol, a Spanish cloud software developer, for an undisclosed sum. The move will see Flexiant consolidate its cloud management tenchologies and focus on the telco and managed service provider markets.

Besol, which was founded in 2009, has expertise primarily in virtualisation and high-performance computing. The company has developed solutions for HPC, cloud-based video conferencing, and cloud platform orchestration and management software (the Tapp platform). All of Besol’s development and sales staff dedicated to the Tapp platform will move over to Flexiant once the acquisition closes…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

A survey of 1,000 ICT decision-makers in France, Germany, Hong Kong, the UK and USA undertaken by Japanese telco NTT Communications (http://nsaaftershocks.com) saw 88 percent of respondents saying they were changing their cloud buying behaviour. Thirty one percent said they were moving data to locations where they knew it would be safe.

“ICT decision-makers now prefer buying a cloud service which is located in their own region, especially EU respondents (97 percent) and US respondents (92 percent),” the report said. “Fifty two percent are carrying out greater due diligence on cloud providers than ever before and 16 percent are delaying or cancelling contracts with cloud service providers.” It added: “More than four fifths (84 percent) feel they need more training on data protection laws.”…

Grazed from SFGate.  Author: Kristen V. Brown.

Zendesk, a San Francisco cloud computing customer service company, is expected to make its much-anticipated New York Stock Exchange debut on Thursday. Here’s what you need to know:

Who: Zendesk, founded in 2007, sells what’s known as software-as-a-service. It’s a subscription-based platform that helps companies communicate with customers through e-mail, chat, voice calls, social media and websites…

Grazed from GCN.  Author: Michael C. Daconta.

The European Telecommunication Standards Institute’s (ETSI) Cloud Standards Coordination (CSC) initiative recently released a report on the state of cloud standards.  To be blunt, the report is the poor result of an ill-conceived initiative that is flawed in both its approach and conclusions.

And the Europeans aren’t alone in this folly over cloud standards. The ETSI report has been mirrored on the U.S. side of the Atlantic by the National Institute of Standards and Technology with its equally ill-conceived initiative making the case for Standards Acceleration to Jumpstart the Adoption of Cloud Computing…

Grazed from CruxialCIO.  Author: Brian T. Horowitz.

One in five Americans will be age 65 or over by 2030, so the health care industry needs a way to better manage medication safety for an increasing number of seniors while reducing the problem of overprescribing.  Some patients in elder care programs are currently ingesting as many as 16 different medications per day, raising the odds of dangerous side effects or interactions.

The Program for All Inclusive Care of the Elderly (PACE), a national initiative sponsored by Medicare and Medicaid to keep seniors in the community rather than in nursing homes, has received a grant from IBM…

Grazed from Brandeis.edu. Author: Nagendra Nyamgondalu.

It was only a few years back that most IT managers I spoke to would smirk when they heard the term “cloud” in a conversation. They either didn’t believe that cloud cloud-iaas computing would be viable for their businesses’ IT needs or were skeptical about the maturity of the technology. And rightly so. But, a lot has changed since then. The technology, tools and services available for businesses considering adoption of a public cloud, setting up their own private cloud or treading the middle path of a hybrid one, has made rapid strides. Now, the same IT managers are very focused on deploying workloads and applications on the cloud for cost reduction and improved efficiency.

Businesses today have the choice of consuming Infrastructure as a service (IaaS), Platform as a service (PaaS) and Software as a service (SaaS). As you can imagine, these models map directly to the building blocks of a typical data center. Servers, storage and networks form the infrastructure on top of which, the required platforms are built such as databases, application servers or web servers and tools for design and development…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

EnterpriseDB (EDB), the leading worldwide provider of enterprise-class Postgres products and Oracle database compatibility solutions, today announced support for Postgres Plus Advanced Server on the OpenStack platform. Support for EDB’s flagship database on OpenStack dramatically expands the options for companies seeking a low-cost, enterprise-class relational database for cloud computing within a private cloud or on a hosted environment.

Postgres Plus Advanced Server for OpenStack represents a portable and powerful relational database that can support 80 percent of the workloads most organizations run to support their operations. "OpenStack has emerged as the de facto standard for companies running private clouds or tapping into public cloud environments and our customers want the option of using Postgres on this platform," said Ed Boyajian, CEO of EnterpriseDB.

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Johnson Controls, a global multi-industrial company, is now Cisco’s preferred provider to construct, cool and monitor its data centers, as companies rely more on cloud computing to support their business operations in today’s increasingly mobile, connected world. "The Internet of Everything era is pushing businesses to use, compute and store data in ways that touch each of us every day.

Employee information, retirement accounts and even your cell phone records are most likely hosted in a cloud," said Dave Myers, president, Building Efficiency, Johnson Controls. "Our relationship with Cisco makes sure that those clouds are supported by reliable and secure data centers that are designed to meet today’s needs and easily adapt for the future."…