Grazed from ReadWrite.  Author: Matt Asay.

Shadow IT is widely considered to be a significant problem for enterprise IT, yet nobody knows how to fix it, or even measure it. After all, how do you control something that, by its very definition, is designed to evade control?

Shadow IT, which is defined as those systems that are bought or built without enterprise IT’s approval, has been accelerating as business executives demand the flexibility to get things done—and may now dwarf the amount of approved enterprise expenditures on cloud services.  Is it time for the CIO to give up the fight against shadow IT, and simply learn to accept it?…

Grazed from Fool.  Author: Tim Beyers.

Microsoft Azure is challenging the notion that all cloud computing platforms are created equal. Fool contributor Tim Beyers explains Mr. Softy’s plan, and its implications, in the following video.  There are two primary elements. First, CEO Satya Nadella has rechristened Mr. Softy’s Embedded business as the Internet of Things business unit on the premise that embedded software can’t hide from the World Wide Web any longer.

Second, the company is packaging a new product entitled Microsoft Azure Intelligent Systems Service for capturing and managing machine-generated data. Think of it as a warehouse for sorting through the data flowing your own network’s Internet of Things. Mix in associated tools HD Insight for Hadoop access and Power BI for analysis and you’ve the makings of a Big Data processing machine, available entirely in the cloud…

Grazed from NextGov.  Author: William Matthews.

Two House members are proposing legislation they say would ease the way for cloud computing vendors to sell services to the Defense Department.   The Defense Cloud Security Act would require department officials to set clearer security requirements for cloud storage and other cloud services “and give vendors an opportunity to meet those standards,” said an aide to Rep. Niki Tsongas, D-Mass. Tsongas and Rep. Derek Kilmer, D-Wash., are expected to introduce the legislation April 28.

Although the Defense Department already buys cloud services from a number of private vendors, Tsongas and Kilmer say that more companies could be providing more cloud services if the military had clearer security requirements…

Grazed from Gartner.  Author: David W. Cearley and Kyle Hilgendorf.

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which scalable and elastic IT-related capabilities are provided as a service to customers, using Internet technologies.    Intense hype around cloud computing makes it difficult for buyers to understand their options.

Cloud services include system infrastructure (e.g., computing, storage), application infrastructure (e.g., process server, database), full applications, information services (e.g., search) and business services (e.g., order fulfillment). There are three main delivery models:…

Grazed from Investor’s Business Daily.  Author: Patrick Seitz.

Information technology professionals these days talk more about clouds than do meteorologists.  But in the IT world, clouds refer to cloud computing, where resources are accessed over the Internet and paid for as a service.

The Internet cloud is turning enterprise computing on its head, letting new players rise up and forcing incumbent tech companies to adapt. That makes it a pretty good bet to end up as one of the key technologies of the next 30 years…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Marc Ferranti.

Tech industry bellwethers, including Facebook, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon, weighed in this week with quarterly earnings and — surprise! — mobile and cloud offerings appear to be the key to their health. The earnings came out amid some upbeat market research about IT spending trends.

For example, Forrester Research reported Thursday that U.S. spending on technology will rise 5.3 percent this year to US$1.3 trillion and 6 percent to $1.4 trillion in 2015, due to an improving economy and a jump in IT purchases by businesses and government agencies. Software will grow faster than hardware and "one of the hottest areas in software is unsurprisingly mobile apps which will grow by roughly 50 percent in 2014, reaching $7 billion," Forrester said…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: John Koetsier.

Enterprise information management leader OpenText said today that it would be doubling its workforce in Ontario, Canada by hiring 1,200 new employees. That’s an investment of up to $2 billion, the company said, and it comes with a government inducement, as the government of Ontario gave the company a one-time grant of $120 million.

“We are an Ontario-grown global company,” CEO Mark Barrenechea said in a statement. “And we chose to invest here because of the highly educated workforce, our strong university partnerships in R&D, as well as the province’s robust and innovative startup communities.”…

Grazed from EnterpriseIrregulars. Author: Tom Raferty.

Supply chains? Yawn, right? While supply chains may seem boring, they are of vital importance to organisations, and their proper management can make, or break companies. Some recent examples of where poorly managed supply chains caused at best, serious reputational damage for companies include the Apple Computers child labour and workers suicide debacle; the Tesco horse meat scandal; and Nestlé’s palm oil problems.

What does this have to do with Cloud computing? Well, last week, here in GreenMonk we published a ranking of cloud computing companies and their use of renewables. Greenqloud, Windows Azure, Google, SAP and Rackspace all come out of it quite well. On the other hand, IBM and Oracle didn’t fare well in the study due to their poor commitment to renewables…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Ben Smye.

Did you know that cloud computing can trace its roots back to the 1950s? Back then, organisations started using large-scale mainframe computers but due to their high cost couldn’t afford to purchase one for each user. As a result, they employed a practice known as ‘time-sharing’ to maximise their ROI; this allowed multiple users to access a single mainframe using terminals that had no internal processing capabilities of their own.

Since then, of course, the technological landscape has changed dramatically. Mainframe computers are still around, but just about everyone has their own personal computer now, something unthinkable in the 1950s. This does show, however, that the basic premise of cloud computing is not actually that new…

Grazed from CloudComputingExpo. Author: Nicos Veklarides.

Take a moment to consider the things we put up with on a daily basis because they have been understood and accepted as the status quo. Perhaps the old adage, “better the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” rings no truer than for traditional on-premise data storage systems.

Sure, there have been numerous improvements in data storage over the years. Sure, the slower, capacity-limited storage systems of yesterday continue to be replaced by bigger, faster storage systems all the time — but has there really been much improvement to address the most common idiosyncrasies that have existed for so long?…