Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: David Weldon.

With the increased focus on cloud computing this year, CIOs are charged with making strategic decisions on what should go to the cloud, and whether a public, private or hybrid cloud environment is best. To help CIOs better understand the implications of their cloud computing decisions, Silicon Angle recently put together a list of 20 cloud statistics that every CIO should know.

They range from predictions on the growth of the cloud market, to what happens to the IT department when an organization embraces cloud computing. Source links for each statistic can be found at the Silicon Angle blog. Cloud stats that CIOs should take note of include the following:..

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing has risen to become a strategic technology that is imperative for IT professionals, according to a new report by Ovum featured in Information Management. IT departments are increasingly relying on the cloud because it is being applied to all areas of business and touching all kinds of game-changing technologies, including mobility and data analytics. With more cloud services options in the market than ever before, midsize firms have an opportunity to innovate and meet their business goals.

Establishing the Cloud

Ovum’s research report titled "2014 Trends to Watch: Cloud Services" found that companies are looking at various business case studies in order to make decisions about their first cloud service investments. The findings also showed that vendors are working with these companies by trying to help them implement hybrid cloud environments. At the end of the day, these firms are choosing to migrate to the cloud in order to build a good base on a long-term IT strategy…

Grazed from TechDirt. Author: Mike Masnick.

We’ve been writing quite a bit about the Aereo case lately, which is scheduled to be heard by the Supreme Court in late April. The case has an awful lot of powerful people and organizations lining up on both sides, filing briefs with the Supreme Court. Some have pointed out that Aereo’s technology really isn’t particularly innovative, and in fact, we’ve discussed how its setup is basically insane from a technology standpoint, but that the company is forced into building it that way to stay within the law (or so it and its supporters believe).

But some seem to be wondering why this one technology company, with something of a legal kludge is so important. It is incredibly important for reasons that have almost nothing to do with Aereo’s actual service. Rather, it’s about how the Supreme Court will interpret a key part of the Copyright Act, which could have an astoundingly bad chilling effect on pretty much all cloud computing…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Stephanie Overby.

The adoption of virtualization in recent years has laid the groundwork for many IT organizations to move from on-premise data centers to co-located environments and the cloud, says Craig Wright, principal at IT and outsourcing consultancy Pace Harmon. The increased acceptance of high-density platforms that require much smaller physical locations encourages portability as well.

Cloud implementation continues to grow, whether public cloud for standardized situations or private clouds for solutions that are differentiating or have increased security or regulatory requirements. That’s driving more focus on orchestrating and aggregating infrastructure services, Wright says…

Grazed from ResearchBible. Author: Editorial Staff.

SaaS (Software as a service) is one of the main service provided by cloud computing it has a feature of multi tenancy that virtually provides the services on one by one basis but physically all user utilize the services at same time. It has received considerable attention in past few years and an increasing number of countries show their interest in the promotion of SaaS market.

Although it has received significant attention but security issue is one of the major inhibitor in decreasing the growth of SaaS. Many organizations may still be hesitant to introduce SaaS mainly because of the trust and security concerns, they may observe more risks than benefits in introducing this service. In this study an attempt is made to discuss the security issues and their existing solutions in SaaS delivery model of cloud computing…

To download the research paper, visit http://paper.researchbib.com/?action=viewPaperDetails&paperid=13147&uid=r7f3e2

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Grazed from Citrix. Author: Rachel Berry.

A few weeks my colleague Bob, blogged (here) about how GPU-passthrough on XenServer under OpenStack had been achieved by the xlcloud project. This is a delightful demonstration of Citrix’s open technology stance. Although Citrix has heavily invested in CloudStack, over the last few years we have remained active in OpenStack development. You can find out more about building products using XenServer as the hypervisor using both OpenStack and CloudStack, here.

XLcloud – a fascinating project

XLcloud is an open sourced project, with sound financial backing ($Millions) and technological commitment from some heavyweight companies including Bull SAS. The XLcloud project strives to establish the demonstration of a High Performance Cloud Computing (HPCC) platform based on OpenStack, that is designed to run a representative set of compute intensive workloads, including more specifically interactive games, interactive simulations and 3D graphics. XLcloud is a three-year long collaborative project funded by the French FSN (Fonds national pour la Société Numérique) programme…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

As Computerworld reported, a panel at the RSA Security Conference last week agreed that, if cloud providers are vetted properly, most enterprise workloads and data are safe with those providers. This flies in the face of the common wisdom that cloud computing is inherently less secure and, thus, not a good fit when security and privacy are priorities. In fact, organizations that have already made the leap to the cloud appear mostly satisfied with cloud security, the panelists agreed.

A funny thing about misconceptions: They are typically more accepted than the facts. People cry out against "vulnerable clouds," and no one challenges their so-called facts, or lack thereof. When I’ve identified such falsehoods in calls or meetings, I felt as if I were pushing back on some kind of religion, where faith was both deaf and blind. Anything I would say to contradict the "fact" of the cloud’s inherent vulnerability simply had to be wrong…

Grazed from ScienceWorld. Author: Editorial Starff.

Last week’s event Cloudscape VI in Brussels, Belgium, which had the tagline ‘cloud for a smart economy and smart society’, featured much discussion of the policy aspects of cloud computing, as well as the potential benefits of cloud computing for both business and scientific research. “Cloud is still very emergent,” says Ken Ducatel, head of software and services, cloud computing at the European Commission. “There are a lot of business models and they’re very complex: there’s no one-size fits all solution.”

The event also featured a panel discussion on the subject of cloud adoption and how to measure success. In this session, Ducatel cited trust as the greatest barrier to adoption, whereas Abdella Battou from the US National Institute of Standards and Technology highlighted standards, particularly in relation to security, as the greatest barrier…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

"Cloud Computing" – it’s been a hot topic for the past few years. Despite the amount of press it receives, many people still don’t understand the "cloud" fully. There is a substantial amount of confusion, overlap, and even misinformation about the "cloud." First, is the common misconception that there is a single "cloud." Even worse is the assumption that the "cloud" is safe. It may be, but do your homework. While I’m not a huge fan of clichés, especially those that end in a preposition – "you get what you pay for" really applies here.

While the typical intended audience of my blog is highly technical, I decided to write this article for IT decision makers where their primary role may not be IT. Given my professional experience speaking to clients, prospects, sales staff – as well as my service delivery, technical architecture and educational background it is intended to be well rounded for the person who is familiar with business concepts and IT service management. As someone who speaks to customers and sales people regularly, one of the questions I get asked most often is:…