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…

Grazed from FCW. Author: Editorial Staff.

As government agencies work to become more agile, efficient and cost-effective, cloud adoption has become an increasingly important part of the federal IT agenda — and rightfully so. Cloud computing has the power to transform the way the government does business and the way it delivers services to the American people despite resource constraints.

In fact, research by IDC Government Insights shows that by 2018, the government will decrease traditional IT spending by 15 percent and redirect spending to the cloud. Despite the need to rapidly provision cloud service technologies, the public sector’s adoption of cloud computing has been slowed by questions about acquisition policy, financial management, service-level agreements (SLAs) and IT sprawl…

Grazed from TheLawyer. Author: Editorial Staff.

Nuix, a worldwide provider of information management technologies, today announced it has developed the ability to apply massive eDiscovery processing power on demand by adapting the Nuix Engine for popular cloud computing infrastructures. Nuix continues to invest in innovation and product development, now enabling customers to meet court deadlines by conducting rapid, large-scale eDiscovery indexing, searching, case assessment and export in the cloud. Crucially, processing can take place within cloud environments such as Microsoft Office 365, without having to move it or download it behind the firewall.

“I have been saying for many years that as more organisations move their data to the cloud, it will become essential to conduct eDiscovery and investigative search in the cloud, alongside the data,” said attorney and forensic technologist Craig Ball. “Nuix remains ahead of the game in building the next-generation tools the legal industry needs now and will need in the future.”…

Grazed from GlobeNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

ChinaCache International Holdings Ltd., the leading total solutions provider of Internet content and application delivery services in China, today announced that it has signed a memorandum of understanding ("MOU") with Server Farm Realty, LLC, a leading data center developer throughout North America, to form strategic partnership relating to ChinaCache Atecsys International Data Center ("Atecsys") in the Tianzhu Comprehensive Bonded Zone in Beijing. The cloud data center will focus on helping multinational enterprises host their cloud services in China.

Server Farm Realty’s senior management recently visited Atecsys, which has been under development since 2013, and is strategically located in Beijing’s tax free, custom bonded zone. Atecsys is a green, eco-friendly and low-carbon data center that meets national cloud computing data center standards…