Grazed from TheWhir. Author: Chris Burton.

Microsoft is aiming to help its partners draw SMBs into cloud computing with a program called Cloud SureStep. Cloud SureStep is an educational program launched this week to teach SMBs about how cloud computing works and how it can benefit them. The announcement is detailed in a post on Microsoft’s blog on the World Partner Conference 2014 site.

The post claims that the program will teach companies how to use the cloud to lower cost-of-sale, increase sales volume, generate demand with digital marketing, and generate service revenue. “Cloud SureStep is the one-stop resource built within our MPN website to help our partners establish, grow and thrive in the cloud,” Thomas Hansen, VP Small and Medium Business, Worldwide SMS&P, said in the blog post…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

OneLogin, the innovator in enterprise identity management, today announced it has been named a "major player" in IDC MarketScape: Worldwide Federated Identity Management and Single Sign-On 2014 Vendor Assessment (March, 2014). OneLogin provides an on-demand, cloud-based solution consisting of single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, directory integration, user provisioning, and a catalog of thousands of pre-integrated applications.

Adopted by some of the world’s most well-known enterprises, the solution offers fast, easy, and secure identity management in the cloud. In assessing offerings from 13 vendors, including conducting interviews with customers, the study by the independent analyst firm identifies several strategies that have contributed to vendor success, including:…

Grazed from Sun-Sentinal. Author: Marcia Heroux Pounds.

Cloud computing company Citrix Systems has begun interviewing candidates for CEO, the current chief executive said Wednesday. "We’ve seen candidates," said CEO Mark Templeton, who previously announced plans to retire within the year. Templeton said the Citrix board would look for what Citrix most values in leaders, including cultural fit — "how we do business matters to us as much as how much business we do," he said.

Citrix’s search committee also will look for a "strong product leader" who can steer the company through a more competitive landscape and "a great team leader," he said. Fort-Lauderdale-based Citrix, which makes tools for people to "work from anywhere," said Wednesday that first-quarter revenues rose 12 percent to $751 million, compared with $673 million in the same quarter in 2013…

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Ian King.

Corporate spending on cloud-computing services, software and resources will reach $191 billion in 2020 as companies replace older equipment and programs with Internet-based systems, a research firm said. Growth in the cloud market is outrunning prior forecasts, according to Forrester Research Inc. (FORR:US), which projects a rise from $58 billion last year to $72 billion this year.

The market is on course to be about 20 percent bigger by 2020 than estimated earlier, Forrester said in a report to be published today. Cloud computing has reached “hypergrowth” as businesses replace standard licensed software from companies such as Oracle Corp., SAP AG and Microsoft Corp. with Web-based subscription versions, known as software-as-a-service, said Andrew Bartels, an analyst at Forrester…

Grazed from Cloudamize. Author: Editorial Staff.

When it comes to cloud computing, there is no shortage of noise in the marketplace. People trumpet about the savings you will see by migrating infrastructure to the cloud, and conversely, lament about the complexity of cost control or how time-consuming it can be. I’ve seen more than one person disappointed that their expectations of improved performance have not been met, or worse, their costs skyrocketed unexpectedly compared to their on-premises solution.

At Cloudamize, we know the Cloud can be easy and the benefits are endless. To this end, I challenged our team to paint an accurate picture of the truth around cloud computing to decipher the signal from the noise, and they met that challenge with this brand new infographic based on an analysis of 77,000 AWS instances: Cloud Computing: Myth vs. Fact…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Ryan Huang.

To help prospective users of cloud computing objectively assess the operational, performance and other critical capabilities offered by different cloud providers, the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) has put together a Cloud Assessment Tool (CAT). In doing so, it hopes users will be better positioned to select the right cloud solution for their given requirement. The product was the result of over 2 years of extensive and in-depth discussions within the group.

"The cloud computing parameters that determine critical operational criteria like performance and access are not obvious. We found that even when these parameters are reasonably well understood, there is no objective or standardize way of determining or measuring the criteria," said the ACCA. This was the motivation for a framework to help avoid misinterpretation or misunderstandings between users and vendors…

Grazed from ProfitBricks. Author: William Toll.

Explosive Internet growth, beginning in the mid-late 1990’s, has had a dramatic affect on the evolution of computer networking. Some new network technologies and initiatives boomed, but faded rapidly into oblivion. Others, notably Ethernet, invented by Bob Metcalfe at Xerox PARC, became the standard and a commodity.

While new technologies emerged in the 2000’s to solve many of the performance and latency problems associated with Ethernet, notably Mellanox’s InfiniBand which is rapidly becoming the preferred networking interconnect technology in the Cloud Computing space. InfiniBand offers speeds of 80Gbps between cloud servers and between cloud servers and cloud storage. This extreme performance is driving big data implementations and cloud deployments that rival the performance of High Performance Computing environments…

To view infographic and read more from the source, visit http://blog.profitbricks.com/high-performance-cloud-computing-networks/

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Grazed from Datamation. Author: Sean Michael Kerner.

Demand for virtualization and cloud technologies continues to grow, which in turn is fueling growth for VMware. VMware reported its first quarter fiscal 2014 earnings late Tuesday with revenue reported at $1.36 billion, for a 14 percent year-over-year gain. Net Income for the quarter was reported at $199 million or $0.46 per share.

"As we talk to customers, one thing is becoming clear, they not only see the value of the software-defined data center, they increasingly believe that this approach will become the model for leading data centers in the world," VMware CEO, Pat Gelsinger said during his company’s earnings call…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Jason Hannula.

Cloud computing has moved from a business and technology buzzword to a standard for software and storage implementation, and it is no surprise that businesses have begun reaping returns on their investments. As noted in a piece by Linda Tucci for SearchCIO, the benefits of a successful cloud computing implementation strategy are freeing up IT staff to engage in a more strategic role for the business.

However, the idea of implementing a cloud computing strategy is still met with fear and resistance from within IT shops when such solutions are broached by CIOs. For example, former Electronic Arts CIO Mark Tonnesen reported that the company’s initial "public cloud first" stance was reassessed in favor of the selective use of private cloud implementations. Forrester Research confirms that a trial and error approach by businesses is common when attempting to strike a balance between public and private clouds…

Grazed from ComputerScienceDegreeHub. Author: Editorial Staff.

It’s a fact: more data is added via the Internet every second than the Internet had in its entirety twenty years ago. This accumulation of “Big Data” comes from many sources, including consumer and business files — including photos and images, spreadsheets, mobile application data, and more.

In the past, much of this data was stored in the memory of computers and mobile devices. Now, data is increasingly being stored “in the Cloud,” which allows it to be accessed from anywhere with an Internet connection, and numerous companies are battling it out for this market. Let’s look at the numbers behind cloud storage, and particular for two hot companies in this market, Box and Dropbox — both of whom received additional funding in Jan 2014…

To view infographic and read more from the source, visit http://www.computersciencedegreehub.com/cloud-storage-battle/

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