Grazed from EnterpriseStorageForum. Author: Christine Taylor.

Cloud computing is a maturing technology but cloud storage is lagging behind – with hybrid cloud storage as the most forward looking technology. The lag in cloud storage reflects the same situation between on-premise servers, networks and storage: servers and networks have outstripped storage performance many times over.

There are a number of reasons for this, many of them based on the physical limitations of magnetic disk. Flash and optimizing data are helping to close the gap. Yet there is still a gulf between on-premise and cloud-based storage due to latency and low bandwidth. Sending backup and archive to the cloud relieves some of the pressure of storing massive data. However, on-premise production data can rarely take advantage of the cloud and its scalability…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Stephen Lawson.

The IT systems of the past 20 years won’t be able to handle the emerging Internet of Things, which will call for cloud computing, virtualization, efficient storage and big-data analysis, according to EMC. As more consumer devices and industrial equipment get connected through the IoT, the flood of data and the opportunities to make things run better will make the familiar client-server systems now in use obsolete, said Paul Maritz, CEO of EMC’s Pivotal division.

Maritz and the rest of EMC’s top executives used the EMC World conference in Las Vegas this week to sell their vision of a “3rd Platform” of computing driven by mobile devices, big data, public and private clouds and social networking, which they said is replacing a “2nd platform” rooted in client-server technology. The company has combined its core EMC storage business with VMware, RSA Security and the Pivotal division to offer the pieces enterprises need to make the transition…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Dmitry Sheynin.

Cloud computing is rapidly transforming the way entire industries conduct business, and the legal field is no exception. Like the rest of us, lawyers have been quick to embrace the cloud, but what happens when new technology bucks the very regulations governing professional conduct?

The benefits of cloud storage for most users far outweigh the security and privacy risks inherent to storing information remotely, but these concerns carry particular gravity for those working with privileged information. How does a lawyer reconcile the many benefits of cloud storage with the legal obligation to safeguard client information from unauthorized access? This was a question posed last week during “Privacy and Your Practice: Data Sovereignty for Lawyers,” a panel discussion held at CUNY Law School…

Grazed from ThoughtsOnCloud. Author: Allan Tate.

In my previous post, I addressed some of the inherent fears that some organizations have regarding cloud computing. Today, I’d like to take a look at why these institutions, and the people who lead them, might fear the cloud. I propose that it comes down to four basic concerns:

Fear of the Unknown: What is cloud computing? Is it just a place to store music files? If you asked a room full of ten IT specialists, you’d get ten different answers. Further, if you searched the web, you’d find answers, but many of them would be wrong. Cloud is a concept that is quickly evolving, and behind this concept are hardened data centers that follow best practices for security and regulatory compliance. Both shared and dedicated machines are available to be provisioned at a moment’s notice. You can decide where your data resides, how it is protected and how it is accessed. Like electric power, the cloud provides access to compute power on demand. Unlike electric power, the source can be specified down to the exact physical machine dedicated to running your workloads…

Grazed from VirtualizationReview. Author: David Ramel.

Software-defined networking (SDN) is an emerging and evolving technology, but "it’s the place where we’ll all end up at," speaker Anil Karmel told an audience of federal agency IT staffers in a recent webinar. While such a shift to SDN might well be inevitable, it entails many questions and concerns, with security being foremost in an event geared toward government IT.

Karmel, himself a former federal agency deputy CTO, told the audience that security and other SDN considerations in the new age of mobile computing are closely related to context-aware IT. He spoke about SDN and related issues last week in a webinar titled "Evolution or Revolution?…

Grazed from NYTimes. Author: Quentin Hardy.

The big incumbents in enterprise computing are doing a lot of keeping up with the times this month. In the latest example, SAP AG of Germany, the world’s second-largest maker of business software, announced Tuesday that it was teaming with VMware, a maker of virtualization software, to offer both SAP software and its fast data analysis tool, Hana, as a cloud-based service.

Instead of buying separate software packages and running them on dedicated servers, in other words, customers should be able to load their data and analyze it at a much lower cost, with a greater operational flexibility. Previous announcements from Oracle and EMC underline a move to new business models involving cloud computing and fast analysis of lots of data…

Grazed from PingZine. Author: Editorial Staff.

RapidScale, a leader in cloud computing solutions, has established one of the most expansive and comprehensive cloud solution sets in the market today. Aqua Connect is one of the most forward thinking and innovative development companies in the world having developed Mac Remote Desktop Services for Mac OS X.

Today, RapidScale is announcing that a partnership agreement has been established to integrate Aqua Connect’s innovative remote access and virtualization solutions with RapidScale’s CloudOffice and CloudDesktop solutions. The strategic partnership is expected to make waves in the virtualization industry as RapidScale will be the first cloud computing company to offer an application agnostic Desktop as a Service Platform (http://www.desktopasaservice.us)…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud services provider (CSP) Virtustream is now Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act-compliant (HIPAA-compliant), and its cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) meets the federal standards for breach notification, privacy and security in healthcare records management.

"Security of our client’s data and environments is Virtustream’s top priority," Pete Nicoletti, Virtustream’s chief information security officer (CISO), said in a prepared statement. "Healthcare enterprises and other clients with HR and medical records can confidently select our services knowing that we have the proper controls in place to safeguard their information."…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

As Microsoft prepares for its upcoming Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in July, the company has commissioned a study that shows that partners that have implemented cloud computing into their offering perform better than those who have not. The study, commissioned by Microsoft and conducted by IDC, showed that cloud partners – those with more than 50 percent of their revenue from cloud — have 1.5 times the gross profit percentage versus other partners.

They also have 1.7 times the gross profit percentage versus the bottom group of partners surveyed. In addition, the top two quartiles of cloud-focused partners also grow considerably faster than the bottom two quartiles, the report showed. Moreover, Microsoft said cloud partners have 1.6 times the recurring revenue as a portion of total revenue versus other partners…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

In an effort to make it easier to test and deploy applications to one or multiple clouds, open data services providers GoGrid is releasing the blueprints for its 1-Button Deploy solutions on OpenOrchestration.org. According to the company, the release of the blueprint will provide enterprises with the ability to quickly and easily evaluate and run best-of-breed open source Big Data solutions.

To kick things off, the blueprints will include four of its orchestration products, including those based on Cassandra, Hadoop, MongoDB and Riak. GoGrid noted that members of the Open Orchestration community will be able to take and modify the blueprints to use GoGrid-powered orchestration to test and deploy "any technology solution to a single cloud, multiple clouds and even on-premise."…