Grazed from WireService.ca. Author: PR Announcement.

"Files on the Cloud?", the art of storing and sharing files on the internet and accessible anywhere using any device such as laptops, mobile devices, tablets etc… is a trending phenomenon with incredible benefits. But with the latest reports of corporate espionage in the news, storing your files on the cloud is also an incredible risk.

If you are not familiar with the internet cloud or cloud file sharing, it is basically a means for people to store their files on the internet, and have them synchronized on all of your devices. For example, if you have several mobile products, you could use the cloud to store your pictures and have them accessible on all of your devices automatically. There’s no need to copy, paste, move etc… That means of transferring files is thing of the past. With the cloud, it just does it for you without even looking…

Grazed from eCommerceTimes. Author: Jeffrey M. Kaplan.

Computer and software companies have been battling for the hearts and minds of students for decades, and now school administrators are becoming the target of smart Software as a Service and cloud computing service providers. The most notorious examples of using classroom marketing tactics to gain a long-term strategic advantage are Apple and Google.

Apple made a concerted effort to win over a new generation of corporate end-users long before they ever entered the workplace by enticing them with brightly colored, easy-to-use eMacs. Google has been giving away Google Apps to public schools and college students for years to get them hooked on its simple collaboration tools…

Grazed from CloudComputingIntelligence. Author: Marcus Austin.

The scientists at IBM have invented a new technology to speed up internet data transfer rates to four times the current rates with speeds approaching 400 Gigabits per second (Gb/s) and all done at extremely low power. As Big Data and Internet traffic continues to grow exponentially, future networking standards have to support higher data rates. For example, in 1992, 100 Gigabyte of data was transferred per day, whereas today, traffic has grown to two Exabytes per day, a 20 million fold increase.

To support the increase in traffic, scientists at IBM Research and Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL) have been developing ultra-fast and energy efficient analog-to-digital converter (ADC) technology to enable complex digital equalization across long-distance fibre channels. The speed boost is based on a device that can be used to improve transferring Big Data between clouds and data centres four times faster than current technology. At this speed 160 Gigabytes, the equivalent of a two-hour, 4K ultra-high definition movie or 40,000 songs, could be downloaded in only a few seconds…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

Microsoft has quietly released details on license-included Oracle VMs for Windows Azure, months after the companies announced a strategic partnership that brings Oracle’s enterprise software to Microsoft’s cloud. Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s former cloud chief and now the software giant’s new CEO, announced the team-up, which brought the big competitors together, last summer.

"As part of this partnership, Oracle will certify and support Oracle software on Windows Server Hyper-V and Windows Azure," he said in a June 24 statement. Cloud computing’s impact on the IT market space can turn rivals into allies. The enterprise cloud era "requires companies to rethink what they build, to rethink how they operate and to rethink whom they partner with," said Nadella…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Too often these days, organizations plow ahead with cloud computing projects, without considering how it fits into the rest of the enterprise. An enterprise architecture approach will help align cloud plans with the short-term and long-term needs of the organization — just as it has helped with on-premises systems. In his latest book, titled Architecting the Cloud: Design Decisions for Cloud Computing Service Models, Mike Kavis, a seasoned chief technology officer and IT architect, shows how cloud proponents can map out their cloud plans. Mike identifies the five key questions that are essential to cloud architectural planning:

1) Identify the problem statement (why): "The single most important question to answer," Kavis observes. While cloud is a no-brainer for startups, more established enterprises need to evaluate how cloud will benefit the business. Ultimately, a cloud-based solution may focus on one specific business problem where existing systems aren’t delivering satisfactory results. An enterprise may end up with numerous cloud models to address varying requirements…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Open source virtualization for the cloud is at the center of the Linux Foundation’s latest move. This week, the nonprofit group announced the addition of seven new organizations that will become partners in the recently launched Open Virtualization Alliance (OVA) initiative, which promotes virtualization solutions based on the open source KVM hypervisor.

The organizations, which represent the latest additions to the Linux Foundation consortium, are Autonomic Resources, Bloombase, BlueCat Networks, op5, Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, Scale Computing and 6WIND. With legal, financial and advocacy support from the Linux Foundation, these organizations will collaborate to support the OVA, whose goal is to promote virtualization solutions for the cloud that are based on KVM (short for "kernel virtual machine") as "an alternative to expensive, proprietary virtualization solutions."…

Grazed from LinuxInsider. Author: Jack M. Germain.

Linux on the desktop may have missed its adoption time line, but Linux in the cloud is a win-win proposition for the post-PC movement. Linux shows signs that it is the go-to cloud platform. Microsoft’s Azure may be the only real threat to Linux cloud dominance — all other major cloud software platforms are based on Linux and open source software.

Some enterprise Linux distros are showing up as cloud-based offerings. It is becoming very common to find options to run Ubuntu, CentOS, Suse Linux Enterprise Server and openSuse offered on cloud platforms. Even better for Linux fans is that Microsoft includes openSuse as an option to run on its own Azure platform…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Katelyn Roberts.

Enterprises have loved data for years, but technology is bringing big data to the forefront for many small to mid-sized businesses in recent years. Thanks to the “as-a-Service” model, businesses can take full advantage of data center technology at a fraction of the cost of building their own data centers. Cloud computing relies on a data center infrastructure to function. But interestingly, it’s cloud computing technology that’s paving the way for the data centers of the future – which will be more flexible, more efficient, and more dynamic than ever.

The Cloud Relies on Infrastructure

Cloud computing is an abstract concept even to many businesses that utilize it. Cloud services, such as Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), still rely on the same hardware and servers that power any standard data center. The difference is that the storage, servers and networking of multiple systems are pooled and the resources shared among multiple applications or organizations. Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) are variations on this model with different levels of control and operational responsibility between the consumer and the provider…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

Arrow Electronics (ARW) unveiled an expansion of its cloud services today with the introduction of the VMware (VMW) vCloud Hybrid Service, which will be distributed via the ArrowSphere platform to its North American channel partners. The announcement came as part of VMware’s Partner Exchange 2014 (PEX 2014) in San Francisco. According to Arrow, the vCloud Hybrid Service offers automated replication, monitoring and high availability of applications without requiring code changes, allowing for simple deployment into public, private and hybrid clouds for low overall costs of ownership.

“We are pleased to join with Arrow to offer VMware vCloud Hybrid Service, which enables customers to obtain comprehensive IT services from partners, while providing an easy and fast path to achieve the agility and efficiency of the public cloud,” said Frank Rauch, vice president of Americas Partner Organization at VMware, in a prepared statement…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: James Carlini.

COMCAST’s recent $45 billion acquisition of Time-Warner Cable was big news in the Cable TV world, but it should be big news in the area of cloud computing and network diversity. Instead of looking at COMCAST as a cable TV provider, it is time that we should be looking at it as another alternative to the traditional network carriers like AT&T and Verizon for our data needs both at home and at the business location.

Re-Thinking Cloud Computing Strategy

Do you have network redundancy in place in your cloud computing applications? They cannot be considered "mission critical" if you only have them running on one connection to the central office. Ninety-nine percent of the commercial buildings are still in the horse-and-buggy days of having one main connection to one central office of the phone company for connectivity…