Grazed from PCQuest. Author: Dhanya Thakkar.

Cloud computing, the long-debated dream of computing as a utility has the ability to transform a large part of the IT industry; making software even more interesting as a service and shaping the way IT hardware is designed and purchased. Developers with pioneering ideas for new internet services no longer require large capital expense in hardware to position their service or the human expense to operate it.

Cloud adoption is finally becoming mainstream. Over the past few months, the nature of the discussions has been shifting from theoretical, to architectural, and now to every operational challenge. The economic benefits offered by public clouds are attractive enough for many organizations to push some of their non-critical workloads to such services while also using private clouds for their mission critical needs…

Grazed from InfotechLead. Author: Editorial Staff.

IT market research agency IHS recently said the cloud will embrace more than just online storage. It will enable the market for the Internet of Things. Some of the IT vendors shared CIO tips for cloud deployments in enterprises. Enterprise CIOs need to first take a look at which applications they presently have on-premise and whether they will be able to co-exist with their cloud applications. Having a flexible infrastructure that can support both on–premise and cloud apps should be top priority, said Oracle India.

CIO tips for cloud deployments

CIOs need to have clarity on the reasons for migrating to the cloud, if such a decision is made and evaluate the service provider’s capabilities as the subject matter expert and also the authority in all decisions pertaining to IT. A cloud pilot project is a good way for an organization to evaluate cloud services to see how useful, reliable and cost-efficient they can be. A pilot project should be a non-critical application that has a limited scope, a short time frame and loosely defined estimates of its ROI…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Editorial Staff.

Rackspace Managing Director, Asia Pacific Ajit Melarkode and Accenture Managing Director and Technology Strategy Lead, APAC Jouni Hakanen discuss cloud computing, what its used for and why its so important to businesses with Mia Saini on Bloomberg Television’s “On The Move Asia.”

To view video and read more from the source, visit http://www.bloomberg.com/video/demystifying-cloud-computing-kz8LJYMjQd6EwMc~0_asLg.html

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Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission has shut down a worldwide pyramid scheme that falsely promised fast gains to tens of thousands of Asian-American, Hispanic, and foreign investors from cloud computing services. The companies in question, WCM and WCM777, allegedly raised more than $65 million over the last year. They did this by promising people they could double their money in 100 days by investing between $399 and $1,999 in cloud services.

The WCM entities used some new money to pay older investors, like a good old-fashioned Ponzi or pyramid scheme. They also spent funds on two California golf courses and other properties, as well as to play the stock market. I’m not sure which one is riskier. Although there is some humor to be found here, I suspect that we’ll see more and more of such shady occurrences around cloud computing, as the technology continues its hot streak and its startups’ worth climbs to the billions…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Ryan Huang.

Enterprises will spend more than US$235 billion on cloud architecture and services by 2017 — a 35 percent gain from the US$174 billion projected to be spent this year. “Enterprises today are trying to create faster, more efficient I.T. environments to ensure more responsive, agile and successful businesses,” said Jagdish Rebello, senior director for information technology at IHS.

"In these cloud-based settings, enterprises also want to integrate the deep analytical power of big data, which will give them competitive advantages through insights about present and prospective customers." Enterprises are simultaneously augmenting their on-site services and capabilities with the cloud and gradually transferring those functions to online competencies, noted IHS…

Grazed from ITNewsOnline. Author: PR Announcement.

Dell recently announced new networking solutions to help customers deliver faster results, maximize efficiency and modernize and transform operations in scale-out and cloud-based environments. New products introduced include the Dell Networking Z9500, an energy-efficient, highest density per rack unit, and only pay-as-you grow 10/40 GbE data center core switch available today.

The new Active Fabric Controller and efforts to accelerate Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) solutions into the sector through industry consortiums and collaboration with industry partners such as Red Hat also can help customers transform and modernize data center infrastructures…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Jonathan Salem Baskin.

With Satya Nadella at the reins for a few months now, and a major developer presentation under his belt, it seems apparent that Microsoft MSFT -2.76% is going to reinvent itself as a cloud-based, cross-platform software services provider. Like Yahoo YHOO -4.19% without Katie Couric, though with its own search, so sorta like Google GOOG -4.59%, too.

Like Facebook without the posts or user data, but kinda like Oracle, with a cadre of captive users, only not really. Similar to Apple, but lacking the dedicated hardware users, though lots of folks love Xbox…

Grazed from BusinessTechnology.  Author: Editorial Staff.

When looking at cloud security, you want to make sure that your data is protected, and that the risk of data loss is eliminated.  As businesses move more information and data into the cloud, the concern of security is important.  Commensus takes your data protection seriously and it is a priority to ensure that you are fully protected and that you can access your data quickly and safely.

“Over the last year we are seeing more questions being asked about risk of migrating to the cloud, and data protection. Compared to 2012 and last year we are finding that more organisations are moving to the cloud,” says Alex Parker, CIO of Commensus.  Commensus is often asked about platform and cloud services. Here are its answers to the top three questions asked about data security…

Grazed from BusinessTechnology.  Author: Editorial Staff.

At Phoenix we are taking a different approach to cloud services. We have many years of experience in delivering services remotely to our customers and have a well-established estate of UK data centres on our own high speed network.

By its very nature, the IT industry is great at confusing the world with new technologies and even more new ways of describing them. The fact is that cloud is a fundamental shift in the way IT is delivered, but the technology behind it is nothing new. Wide-area networks have existed for many years, as have data centres. What really is new is the level of innovation and improvements applied to these technologies that give cloud the potential to change IT service delivery forever…

Grazed from TechRepublic.  Author: Tony Patton.

One benefit of Google, Netflix, and other companies that build businesses on the web is that the innovations these businesses spawn can benefit everybody. Amazon is a great example; the company turned its infrastructure expertise into Amazon Web Services (AWS), which now powers much of the web.  Netflix utilizes AWS for services and content delivery and has refined the technology to better fit its customer base. Netflix is sharing this refinement with the world.

Make AWS more reliable

Netflix’s Open Source Software (NetflixOSS) is aimed at making the services provided by AWS more reliable; the company’s efforts have involved everything from infrastructure to caching to building and deploying. Netflix has not reached the point where outages do not occur (is that possible?) as we saw in December 2013…