Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

The primary drivers for moving data into private, public, or hybrid clouds are the efficiency and capabilities that clouds can bring. Enterprises have never seen such efficiencies and capabilities in traditional database technologies, including those from Oracle and IBM. What databases in the public cloud offer is hugely compelling: Elastic scalability, universal network accessibility, integration with mobile platforms, pay-per-use efficiencies, avoidance of capital costs, and the ability to work with widely scattered structured and unstructured data (that is, big data).

As a result, there’s been a massive migration to cloud-based databases, aka data-as-a-service — one that seems to have escaped notice perhaps because it seems such an obvious step to take. The cloud is just too cheap, too fast, and too compelling. We’ll see this massive migration continue this year as well…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

OW2, the global community for open source infrastructure software, announces the program of the first of its Open Cloud Forum Series, organised at Cloud Expo Europe in London on February 26-27. The Open Cloud Forum at Cloud Expo Europe 2014 is the first event in Europe exclusively dedicated to explore the trends shaping the future of open cloud computing.

The Open Cloud Forum Series are events dedicated to promoting open source cloud projects and market offerings as well as awareness for interoperability in the cloud. The Open Cloud Forum Series leverage OW2’s open source expertise and its support for many open cloud projects. The next two events in 2014 will be organised in Paris and in Brussels…

Grazed from ThoughtsOnCloud. Author: Rene D. Svendsen.

In a series of six blog posts, I will focus on how a migration from traditional development environments to ones that leverage the cloud impacts developers, their applications and the programming models they use. These blog posts will be based on my own experience as well as work conducted by the IBM Academy of Technology and the Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC). I also encourage you to read A reference model for moving your applications to cloud by Joydipto Banerjee and Migrating Applications to the Cloud: Roadmap for Success.

Background

Hosting in the cloudCloud computing promises benefits often historically reserved for specialized solutions and hosting, based upon the virtualization of physical resources, and delivering operational efficiencies through automation and standardization. The pure virtualization of infrastructure is rarely a concern for developers and it represents the first obvious step in migrating an existing physically hosted application to the cloud. However, the popularity of cloud computing has given rise to a misconception around the cloud provider magically offering boundless elasticity, resiliency and performance. In reality, applications are either authored with the cloud in mind or need to become more cloud-friendly…

Grazed from EvolvingSol. Author: Editorial Staff.

Jack Woods of Silicon Angle pulled together a number of key stats every CIO should know when they are thinking about cloud computing. Let’s check out what he has to share:

• By 2015, end-user spending on cloud services could be more than $180 billion
• By the end of 2014, U.S. businesses are projected to spend more than 13 billion on cloud computing and managed hosting services
• Global spend is predicted to reach $79.1 billion by 2018
• 82% of companies reportedly saved money by moving to the cloud

You must have been out of the picture of life for so long if you have not joined the wagon of cloud computing. For enterprise holders, the cloud can be a fairly crafty entity that lays bear several benefits. In the simplest case, it is a big thing for the IT fraternity since it means massive portable drives.

Cloud computing is the industry darling, which allows organizations to run all of its applications with a traditional corporate center of data. Targeted to improve system, making storage and access to data far easier, and ultimately cutting down costs, the cloud has expanded from a simple, promising concept all the way to being one of the rapidly growing portions of the new face of the IT industry.

Grazed from CXOToday. Author: Editorial Staff.

Corporate spending on cloud computing is expected to triple from 2011 to 2017, according to IHS Technology (IHS) report, which predicts that enterprise spending on cloud computing will amount to nearly $235.1 billion, triple the $78.2 billion spent in 2011. This year, global business spending for infrastructure and services related to the cloud will reach an estimated $174.2 billion, up 20% from the amount spent in 2013, says the study.

“Cloud services, applications, security and data analytics will account for an ever-growing portion of total information technology spending by enterprises, valued at about $2 trillion at present,” IHS analyst Jagdish Rebello says in a statement. He adds that the robust growth will come as an increasing number of large and small enterprises move more of their applications to the cloud, while also looking at data analytics to drive new insights into consumer behavior…

Grazed from Fool. Author: Anders Bylund.

"2014 is going to be a defining year for the technology industry," says Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst. "This will be the year when cloud architectures go from experimentation to deployment, where big data goes from promise to production, and when we get our first glimpse at how these innovations could potentially change our world." Sounds like a big idea to me. So I hopped on the phone with Whitehurst to discuss this game-changing trend.

"For the last couple of years, we’ve been talking about the cloud," he said. "But realistically, it’s only been about customers starting to toy around with it. You’re finally seeing these things go into production. So now, when I talk to CIOs of large companies, they are seriously talking about using Amazon.com to run applications. Not just running development and testing, but truly moving to production in the cloud."…

Grazed from GovHealthIT. Author: Tom Sullivan.

A majority of government organizations are planning to institute technology uber-trends within the next three years. The only thing is: A hefty percentage of them lack the infrastructure to actually do so. That’s according to a survey conducted by MeriTalk and, while the self-described government IT network polled state and local officials spanning the array of departments, its findings are particularly applicable to healthcare. MeriTalk lists the Big Five of IT as big data, cloud computing, data center consolidation, mobility, and security.

"Public health departments have perhaps the most to gain from Big Five initiatives,” said Steve O’Keeffe, founder, MeriTalk. “Mobile health drives community engagement, big data delivers better understanding of population health drivers, security keeps private information private.” That said, will state and local health departments follow through on intentions to adopt those technologies?…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Daniel Price.

Everyone knows what the cloud is, but does everybody know where the cloud is? We try to answer that as we look at some of the most unusual data centre locations in the world.

Under the Eyes of a Deity

Deep beneath the famous Uspenski Cathedral in the heart of Helsinki lies a converted World War II bomb shelter, which sees an unlikely fusion of data storage and green technology. Estimates suggest that in a typical data centre only 40 percent of energy use is for computing, with the remainder being used for cooling down the servers. The problem is so serious that data centres account for as much as 30 percent of a corporation’s energy bills and 1 percent of energy usage worldwide…

Grazed from Alavara. Author: PR Announcement.

Avalara Inc., (http://www.Avalara.com), a leading provider of sales tax and compliance automation services in the cloud, today announced it has been named as one of the top 100 Coolest Cloud Vendors of 2014 by CRN. The annual list recognizes the most innovative cloud vendors and solutions tailored to address the channel industry’s unique needs. Avalara was honored for its SaaS-based end-to-end compliance platform, AvaTax.

Each year, CRN honors the 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors in an effort to help solution providers navigate the growing cloud marketplace and identify the best solutions to support the IT channel. Winners are named across five major cloud categories including platforms and tools, infrastructure, storage, security and software, based on data and information gathered from both solution provider nominations and the CRN editorial team. Within the 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors list, Avalara was named to the 20 Coolest Cloud Software Vendors category…