Grazed from GoogleCloudPlatform. Author: Editorial Staff.

Today, at Google Cloud Platform Live we’re introducing the next set of improvements to Cloud Platform: lower and simpler pricing, cloud-based DevOps tooling, Managed Virtual Machines (VM) for App Engine, real-time Big Data analytics with Google BigQuery, and more.

Industry-leading, simplified pricing

The original promise of cloud computing was simple: virtualize hardware, pay only for what you use, with no upfront capital expenditures and lower prices than on-premise solutions. But pricing hasn’t followed Moore’s Law: over the past five years, hardware costs improved by 20-30% annually but public cloud prices fell at just 8% per year…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Karen S. Evans.

In the technology-rich world we live in, it’s critical for everyone to understand how their data is processed and used. For the government, it is arguably even more important, given the massive amounts of sensitive citizen data it possesses and stores. As we move to more sophisticated, data-driven technological environments such as the cloud, it is imperative that all government entities become hypervigilant about making sure that vendors are handling this information appropriately.

I am not the first person to say this, and I will certainly not be the last. Recent disclosures in a California lawsuit have raised several red flags about how government data could be used by cloud vendors — particularly vendors with business models that rely heavily on advertising revenue and monetizing user data…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

Many people complain that renting computer power from Amazon and other cloud companies is too expensive. Though the cloud is a great way to get a startup off the ground or run a website where the daily traffic ebbs and flows, the voices say, there are other times when it’s far cheaper to just buy your own computer hardware. “I’m not a big believer in the public cloud,” one Silicon Valley CEO told us this past summer. “It’s just not effective in the long run.” But Google wants to change this.

Today, at an event in San Francisco, the tech giant significantly reduced the prices attached to several of its cloud computing services, seeking an edge over Amazon, the world’s dominant cloud company. “This brings you industry leading pricing without the complexity you’re used to,” said Urs Hölzle, who oversees Google’s cloud services and its entire online infrastructure…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Henry Kenyon.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is rolling out a new cloud computing service as part of its ongoing efforts to trim IT costs and provide more streamlined services to its military and civilian users. The service, called MilCloud, provides an integrated suite of capabilities, including the ability for users to configure infrastructure resources and manage applications on a self-service basis.

Developed by the Defense Information Systems Agency, the DOD agency responsible for managing the military’s communications infrastructure, MilCloud represents the latest effort by DOD to reduce IT costs. But DISA officials also claim the service will provide agencies with more flexibility and control over how they manage their computing environments…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

High Performance designed with enterprise customers in mind, LSN Cloud was built to provide high availability, performance and scalability. Using technologically advanced network equipment and hardware, including Intel SSD drives for speed, Juniper rack-level switches, Cisco core routers, Supermicro chassis with redundant power and dual Intel Xeon E5 series hypervisors, LSN Cloud is ready for the most demanding business applications.

LSN Cloud is located in a Tier 3+ state-of-the-art data center where it uses Tier 1 fiber carriers for optimal data transmission. Located in the former Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, the data center is a stone fortress with government-grade security features and maximum failover…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Jelastic, Inc., the first company to deliver Platform-as-Infrastructure, has been named as one of "12 cloud computing companies to watch" by Network World. Brandon Butler, Network World Senior Writer says, "Startups are forming up and down the cloud stack, from optimizing infrastructure services to offering development platforms.

There are applications served from the cloud and new classes of apps that could not have been made without the cloud. Network World has scanned the universe of cloud computing startups founded within the past few years and built this non-exhaustive list of companies (listed in alphabetical order) that give a glimpse of what’s to come in this fast-growing market."…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

What does Google’s Go programming language have in common with the cloud? It’s the language of choice of cloud projects like Docker, Force.com, and Cloud Foundry’s (Go)Router. Go is five years old, but you may not have heard much about it. That could soon change. Although languages like Java continue to be the most popular way we build software these days, new models are emerging.

They are constructed for modern computing architectures — specifically, for the use of private, public, and hybrid cloud computing delivery models. Go is one of the modern languages written expressly for the cloud. Its growing popularity is due to its ability to provide concurrent operations, as well as other features that exploit the provisioning models of clouds…

Grazed from MuscatDaily. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing in business transactions can help reduce corruption, according to Gergi Abboud, managing director of the Gulf region at SAP. He was speaking at the SAP Forum Oman 2014, which was held on Monday at InterContinental Muscat. The event was attended by local and regional experts from SAP. Transparency is one of the factors that cloud computing ensures, said Abboud. “Business transactions using cloud computing are more transparent as the whole process is automated and can limit corruption attempts,” he said.

In 2013, the demand for cloud computing from companies in the Middle East saw a growth of 300 per cent. According to a press release from SAP, a forecast by Business Monitor International stated that Oman’s IT market is likely to be worth RO174mn in 2014, up from an estimated RO164mn in 2013. Deniz Kilyar, director, line of business, cloud and mobility, SAP, said that predictability of budgets for businesses is one of the very important services that SAP cloud computing provides. “It later enables the possibility of support and upgrading.”…

Grazed from NYTimes. Author: Quentin Hardy.

Box, an online storage service that aims to become an essential part of the cloud computing-based business, on Monday released financial data before a public offering. Many more cloud businesses, for both business and consumers, are expected to follow this year.

Box, based in Los Altos, Calif., said in an S1 document filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it planned to raise up to $250 million in its initial public offering. In a recent round of private funding, Box was valued at $2 billion, but would most likely be worth several times that after the I.P.O…

Grazed from OpenSource. Author: Gordon Haff.

It seems like it was only yesterday that the OpenStack community found itself gathering in Hong Kong to set the design goals for the Icehouse release. As we entered March development was still progressing at a fever pitch in the lead up to the feature freeze for the release but now the dust has started to settle and we are able to start getting a real feel for what OpenStack users and operators can look forward to in the Icehouse release.

Today I’ll be giving a sneak peek to just some of the changes made in one of the two projects that made up the original OpenStack release and today is still one of the largest—showing no signs of the innovation slowing down—OpenStack Compute (Nova). OpenStack Compute is a cloud computing fabric controller, a central component of an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) system. It is responsible for managing the hypervisors on which virtual machine instances will ultimately run and managing the lifecycle of those virtual machine instances. This list is by no means exhaustive but highlights some key features and the rapid advances made by the contributors that make up the OpenStack community in a six month release cycle…