Grazed from GlobalPost. Author: Editorial Staff.

One of the most famous "Jeopardy!" champs of all time is moving to Manhattan. No, it’s not Ken Jennings. IBM announced Thursday that it’s investing over $1 billion to give its Watson cloud computing system its own business division and a new home in the heart of New York City.

The Armonk, N.Y.-based computing company said the new business unit will be dedicated to the development and commercialization of the project that first gained fame by defeating a pair of "Jeopardy!" champions, including 74-time winner Jennings, in 2011. In the years since Watson’s TV appearance, IBM has been developing the computing system for more practical purposes and changed it to a cloud-based service. Its massive analytical capabilities are currently being used in industries ranging from health care to banking…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Cloud computing continues to break barriers and deliver new types of workloads and content. Just look at how many users are connecting via the Internet. Statistics show us that a typical user accesses two to three devices every day. If you work in tech, I have no doubt that this number is even larger.

The security environment around cloud continues to evolve as well. The days of the PC, as we all know, are coming to an end. With so much more information traversing the cloud, the focus has shifted from endpoint security to delivering applications, data, and a great user experience. But this leaves open questions about how we keep all of this data secure, provide a powerful end-user experience, and still maintain information integrity…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

WidePoint Corporation (NYSE Mkt: WYY), a leading provider of secured, cloud-based, enterprise-wide solutions and services in mobile communications management and identity management solutions, has launched a robust, cloud based, internally developed Identity as a Service (IDaaS) capability. This service provides secure digital certificates to all types of mobile devices (e.g., smartphones, tablets, laptops, IP cameras) in order to enhance the information security assurance level of mobile transactions and access management to corporate networks, databases, and other IT assets.

The combined shipments of PCs, tablets, and mobile phones are projected to reach 2.48 billion units in 2014, with growth being driven predominantly by sales of tablets and smartphones, according to Gartner Group. Gartner further predicts that by 2017, half of all employers will require employees to bring their own device (BYOD), which will introduce a host of added potential vulnerabilities including:…

Grazed from thwhir. Author: Nicole Henderson.

Cloud infrastructure provider Peak, formerly PeakColo, announced on Thursday that it has raised $4 million in new financing to help support key partnerships and increasing demand for cloud computing services. Meritage Funds and Sweetwater Capital, both existing investors in Peak, participated in the funding round.

Peak has cloud nodes in eight locations across the US and Europe, and plans to use the funding to expand its reach and serve a larger customer base. Currently, it has cloud nodes in Silicon Valley, Seattle, Denver, Chicago, New Jersey, New York, Atlanta and the UK. Peak added its cloud nodes in Santa Clara and Atlanta at the beginning of December…

Grazed from IT Pro Portal. Author: Jamie Hinks.

Hong Kong has become the latest jurisdiction to implement its own cloud platform that will host government services utilised by a range of bureaus and departments. GovCloud will be housed in local data centres and initially be used to develop electronic record keeping as well as collaborative working systems that will be shared by internal bureaus and departments.

"With robust and fully resilient infrastructure, GovCloud provides a stable and reliable environment for bureaux and departments to develop and host their e-government services, stated a spokesperson for the Office of the Government Chief Information Office [OGCIO]. "Through adopting cloud computing technologies, GovCloud brings about the benefits of cost saving, time saving and enhanced agility in meeting the growing demand of bureaux and departments on IT resources. This will expedite development and delivery of e-government services."…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

If you were to do a Google search for "government and cloud computing" you’d likely be bombarded with stories of NSA spying, how it?s made businesses nervous about cloud adoption and why it could cost the major cloud vendors dearly in terms of dollars and perception.

Because of this, you’d be likely to miss the other government cloud story that’s evolving right under our collective noses: that cloud-based file sharing is the perfect tool for the smaller government bodies and before long, the smaller entities will be far superior in terms of technical efficiency…

Grazed frin ITWorld. Author: James Niccolai.

If it’s not the NSA or Google it’s someone else. These days it seems there’s always somebody scanning your data, looking to make a profit or to learn something about you. What if you could set up your own social network or e-commerce site that didn’t require putting your information in someone else’s data center? That’s the idea behind Pixeom’s palm-size cloud in a box, a $125 device (or $99 if you’re among its first backers on Kickstarter) that aims to make it easy to set up your own social network, file exchange and e-commerce site at home without using public cloud services.

You take the plastic device home, plug it into your Ethernet network and access it from a PC using the device’s IP address or, for the less technical, from a mobile app. It comes with three applications installed — one for hosting online discussions, one for file sharing and one for setting up a digital storefront…

Grazed from ArsTechnica. Author: Dan Goodin.

LinkedIn is suing a gang of hackers who used Amazon’s cloud computing service to circumvent security measures and copy data from hundreds of thousands of member profiles each day. "Since May 2013, unknown persons and/or entities employing various automated software programs (often referred to as ‘bots’) have registered thousands of fake LinkedIn member accounts and have extracted and copied data from many member profile pages," company attorneys alleged in a complaint filed this week in US District Court in Northern California.

"This practice, known as ‘scraping,’ is explicitly barred by LinkedIn’s User Agreement, which prohibits access to LinkedIn ‘through scraping, spidering, crawling, or other technology or software used to access data without the express written consent of LinkedIn or its Members.’"…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Author: Jonathan Brandon.

Enterprise Linux distributors Red Hat and CentOS are partnering to accelerate open source innovations in cloud computing, virtualisation and software defined networking. The partnership will see Red Hat taking an active role in the ten year old CentOS (Community Enterprise Operating System) project, which is essentially a clone of Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) compiled with open source code; Red Hat will hire and dedicate new developers to work full-time on the project.

The two companies are collaborating to develop one open source Linux OS that will focus on driving support for Open Stack (another darling of Red Hat and the Linux community) and other open source projects, SDN, and optimised for cloud (high concurrency, multitenancy, etc.) and virtualisation…