Grazed from BusinessInsider.  Author: Julie Bort.

Earlier this week, Cisco dropped a bombshell when it vowed to spend $US1 billion to build a brand new cloud service that competes with similar services from Amazon, Google, Microsoft, HP, IBM, VMware, and others.  Cisco is calling it the Intercloud.

With the Intercloud, Cisco is joining all the other enterprise tech companies who are chasing the cloud market.  That’s because companies today are using the cloud instead of buying new computers and software for new IT projects. They spent $US131 billion in 2013 on the cloud, Gartner says. They will $US174.2 billion in 2014 and $US235 billion by 2017, predicts market research firm IHS…

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Fonds de solidarité FTQ Investissements croissance (FSIC) and FSIC partner Investissements W2 are backing COLO-D, a company headquartered in Drummondville, Québec. Their financial support will fuel the growth of this new economy firm.

"COLO-D offers a new generation of server colocation services. Our strength is the flexibility of our products and services. We help our customers set up their high-density infrastructures, from a single cabinet to the deployment of many megawatts in dedicated corporate suites," said COLO-D’s chief executive, Patrick David…

Grazed from CopperEgg.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing has resulted in plenty of debates between IT professionals over the years, but the growing feeling about the technology today is much more positive than negative. Surveys continue to find that more businesses are embracing the possibilities of cloud-based environments as a way to replace antiquated solutions with more flexible models.

A recent 451 Research survey conducted on behalf of Microsoft found that 45 percent of firms have transitioned from pilot stages to real cloud deployments. Another 32 percent of respondents currently have a formal cloud initiative in place…

Grazed from PCAdvisor.  Author: Zafar Anjum.

Microsoft Azure is now generally available for all customers in China, making it the first global public cloud provider to have comprehensive cloud operations in China, Microsoft China announced today.  Operated by 21Vianet, Microsoft Azure provides fully functional services to cloud customers in China, and is already leading the market with over 3,000 customers, including CNTV, LineKong, GMW.cn, and Coca-Cola China, the software vendor said in a statement.

"Cloud computing is a strategic, growing industry in Shanghai that is playing a significant leading role in economic transformation and long-term sustainable development. Shanghai has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft, which has resulted in many contributions to local economic development and innovation," said Zhiqin Rong, the general secretary of Shanghai Municipal Commission Of Economy and Informatization…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Thomas Claburn.

Interop Las Vegas opens Monday at the Mandalay Bay Convention Center amid a time of accelerating change. Change has been a constant in the technology industry, but the pace of change seems to keep getting faster, as futurist Ray Kurzweil argued in 2001.

Much of the recent change has been driven by IT trends like the shift toward mobile devices, cloud computing, and the networking of everything. That and the need to store petabytes of cat videos, if you’ll pardon the pun.  Then there’s the fact that software, as Marc Andreessen once put it, is eating the world…

Grazed from TheVarGuy.  Author: Elliot Markowitz.

Solution providers have always been the linchpin holding the IT industry together. For the past 30 years they have evolved from simple hardware and software providers to small businesses and big corporations alike to being the critical component to making businesses more efficient and competitive. And their role will continue to grow in importance going forward, study after study after study proves.

A perfect storm is brewing in IT that is increasing the need for solution providers. The continued adoption of the mobile enterprise is causing the need for more efficient data storage and access, which is fueling the adoption of cloud computing and hosted environments. These three major movements are putting solution providers right smack in the center of the future of technology. Security is the common risk and, therefore, the underlying technology—as organizations continue to adopt these evolving computing advances, their security risks grow. That’s where solution providers can shine…

Grazed from CloudComputingPath.  Author: Pravin Anchan.
 

Microsoft Plans to make its Enterprise Mobility Suite active on 1^st May. Speaking to press the new CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella announced the new offering aimed at enterprises and designed to help them manage all portable devices used by their employees.  The Enterprise  Mobility Suite (EMS) is comprehensive in scope. It helps enterprise adapt to the clouds and manage mobile devices used by their employees through a seamless interface.

Both Satya Nadella and Brad Anderson, Vice President for Windows Server & System Center were of the opinion that this suite is a breakthrough offering. It should gain widespread acceptance and change the way large enterprises and their IT departments manage devices. The suite helps enterprises to identify Azure Active Directory Premium management and access…

Grazed from FederalTimes.  Author: Nicole Blake Johnson.

Grazed from CloudComputing Expo.  Author: Sarah Williams.

While technology changes on a regular basis, IT teams have had a standard approach to administration. In recent years, however, there has been a drastic shift in data center administration. One of the biggest shifts is the adoption of private and public clouds. In part one of this series, we will examine private cloud architectures.

Today, companies keep more and more data electronically in lieu of hard copies. Whether they are large multi-layer Photoshop images or files that need to be kept in order to comply with medical or financial regulations, files are getting bigger and there are certainly more of them. Historically, companies would have a series of onsite servers, a backup and retrieval system, miscellaneous supporting hardware, and lots of documented procedures. This would ultimately lead to a never-ending need for new capital expenditures. Above all, one of the biggest issues IT admins wrestle with is managing and adding server space to accommodate all those ever-growing files. Enter the cloud…