Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

Cloud computing and data services specialist EMC announced products and technologies designed to address the continuum of data protection requirements facing users today and as they address the challenge of transitioning to software-defined data centers. The software releases from the VPLEX and RecoverPoint product lines combine to deliver MetroPoint topology, a three-site business continuity capability for mission-critical applications.

MetroPoint topology combines VPLEX Metro continuous availability with RecoverPoint remote replication and continuous data protection (CDP) to deliver operational and disaster recovery over any distance. EMC also introduced a new product, VPLEX Virtual Edition, a virtualized solution to market that offers continuous availability and data mobility in a software deployment platform…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Pamela DeLoatch.

You’ve got a great idea for a product and you’re ready to launch it into the world. What’s the best way to create the IT infrastructure that will allow you to get it out there quickly and cheaply? Contemporary wisdom says cloud computing is the way to go — but before you go forth blindly, take a moment to assess your business needs to see if you can find public cloud value and how and if cloud will benefit you.

Startup ventures eager to get their businesses off the ground often find that using public cloud allows them to basically rent the infrastructure they need to get the business going quickly. "The sign-on and pay-as-you-go model certainly has very attractive offerings," said Christian Hestermann, research director at Gartner Inc…

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: Nicole Hemsoth.

Danish energy company, Maersk Oil, has seen a number of technology trends evolve since its founding in 1962, particularly in terms of its ability to stay ahead of the unending race to new sources of hydrocarbons. The company’s research and technology team hasn’t been immune to the promises of cloud computing in its evaluations of potential options for powering critical simulations. In a recent experiment in conjunction with the software company behind one of their core codes, Eclipse, which is a product from Schlumberger and Amazon Web Services, Maersk put the cloud to the test for its reservoir simulation runs.

While this experiment didn’t yield a great deal in terms of surprises performance-wise, it did raise some important questions about critical side topics in cloud for high performance computing codes. License models, overall cost, and the potential for “cloud gateway” services as delivered by companies like Panzura made this test use of public cloud resources noteworthy, even if the goal was not to come up with a world class-level infrastructure alternative…

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…