Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Ed Scannell.

While SoftLayer was known in the cloud computing world as an up-and-comer the last few years, making top 10 lists as a company to watch, it struggled to get a seat at the table of Fortune 500 companies. But with IBM’s acquisition of the company last July, things changed. Not only does Lance Crosby, CEO of IBM SoftLayer, now have access to the clients and resources of the world’s second largest high-tech company, he is at the heart of what will drive much of IBM’s cloud software strategies involving all of Big Blue’s software and hardware groups.

Crosby recently sat down with SearchCloudComputing to talk about some technologies that will be revealed during the company’s Pulse conference this month, its competition with Amazon Web Services (AWS) and what life is like working for a company with deep pockets. How will the recent $1.2 billion investment in your data centers move IBM’s SoftLayer-based strategies forward?…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Greg Ferro.

Regardless of whether you choose Software as a Service, Platform as a Service or Infrastructure as a Service, one thing is unavoidable: You need a good, reliable network to connect to the cloud. The network can easily become a stumbling block, since the cloud drastically alters the role of the network — and its accompanying hardware and software.

The real Achilles’ heel of cloud computing is that many in IT fail to consider the deeper challenges of building a reliable network and only unearth network problems after a migration has been completed. The success of a public cloud initiative is critically dependent on networking infrastructure, and it’s no surprise that IT managers have their share of concerns. How much bandwidth will you need?…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Mike Alley.

Before strapping themselves into the cockpit of a jet airplane, most reasonable people would want to have a pretty detailed idea of what was involved in flying a plane. They’d want to know how the controls worked and how to respond to the variety of situations they could expect to encounter in flight. They would understand that once airborne, things happen much too fast to study up on what to do in an emergency.

The same could be said about cloud computing: like jet airplanes, cloud computing involves many interrelated systems that need to perform within very exact parameters or risk zooming out of control at extremely high speeds. Unfortunately, there are IT directors today who are strapping themselves into a cloud computing strategies without fully understanding what has to happen to deliver IT services to their business users without falling out of the sky…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Technologists working with cloud need a range of specific skills, from Java or .NET framework to REST API development to knowledge about Amazon Web Services. But businesses are also crying out for people who can take leadership roles in moving operations into the cloud world.

When it comes to leadership, it’s the "soft skills" that matter, as cloud often requires the ability to look at the big picture, marshal organizational resources and funds, and sell new ways of doing things to skeptical line of business managers. Bill Kleyman, writing at Data Center Knowledge, provides several pointers for imporving cloud skills:…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Wharfedale Technologies Inc. (WFT Cloud), a leading SAP Infrastructure and SAP Cloud consulting firm, has made significant gains within the cloud computing domain by focusing on cost savings and faster ROI for customers when they deploy or migrate SAP Applications to a Private Cloud.

Understanding the true cost-saving and benefits for customers moving SAP landscapes to a Private Cloud, WFT releases the Vblock™ based on-premise Private Cloud Solution for SAP customers to meet the rapid and evolving market demands. Features of the Vblock-based Private Cloud on customer premises:…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Cloud security newcomer FireLayers is emerging from stealth today with the launch of a policy-based security platform that enables IT departments to deploy pre-defined and customizable rule sets for popular applications like Salesforce.com (CRM), Microsoft (MSFT) Office 365, Yammer and Workday, among others.

The San Francisco-based company is a venture-backed initiative that aims to provide policy-based security, compliance and IT governance for cloud applications. As the company noted in its announcement, cloud apps have become critical business enablers, but they also expose those same businesses to risks and vulnerabilities…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Editorial Staff.

An increasing amount of companies are moving their processes and applications to the cloud and there are a large number of reasons for this. This HP whitepaper looks closely at those and seeks to help companies that are considering a cloud migration.

Cost savings

With the cloud, you have the ability to lower capital expenditure by not having to purchase and maintain expensive hardware. A cloud service provider can host your data on their own high performance systems, and you will no longer have the expense of maintaining and upgrading them either. Instead, cloud users can concentrate on improving their own products and services. In addition, there is also the potential to either reduce headcounts in areas of server and application management, or to re-allocate those staff to research and development or more strategic business roles on the technology side…

Grazed from BusinessCloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

The issue of security has been consistently talked and written about, ever more so since businesses first took the decision to migrate to the cloud. Regardless of the well-documented benefits of cloud computing to businesses — flexibility, agility, improved capabilities — every company looking to outsource key operations or storage has to have assurances about the safe keeping of its information.

The latest survey carried out by OnePoll on behalf of Interactive Intelligence conducted last year found that 43 per cent of respondents cited perceived concerns around data security as being the greatest barrier to cloud adoption. Even if that figure has improved in the last six months, there are still a significant number of businesses looking for more reassurance before moving their operations to the cloud…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

In September 2012, the European Union released its “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe” document, aiming for a yearly 160bn Euro (£127.6bn) boost to the European GDP by 2020 and a gain of 2.5m by the rollout of cloud. A full 15 months later, the response by the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) was published. The ‘Cloud Standards Coordination’ report, requested by the European Commission, aimed to analyse Commission VP Neelie Kroes’ opinion there was a “jungle of technical standards.”

ETSI asserted that cloud standardisation was “much more focused tha[n] anticipated” and added the landscape was “complex but not chaotic.” The executive summary outlined the state of play in the key areas. Important gaps in standards had been identified, with new standards encouraged, whilst the legal environment for cloud computing remains “highly challenging.”…

Grazed from TheGuardian. Author: Editorial Staff.

Last year saw a whole host of news – from the NSA revelations around data and privacy breaches, to examples of lost customer data – that caused businesses and consumers to question governments, technology and, more specifically, the cloud. As the cloud has risen up the agenda over the last few years, I thought we’d left behind arguments about the perceived negatives, particularly security.

So I was somewhat surprised to also read an article from Chi Onwurah, Labour MP for Newcastle Central, late last year, who said she was "reluctantly and unhappily" moving to the cloud. Onwurah said that she doesn’t think cloud computing is "fully ready for the mass consumer market", and that she, like many others, has worries over security and data protection…