Grazed from JournalGazzette.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft’s cloud-computing chief Satya Nadella, who has worked 21 years at the world’s largest software maker, took time in Paris this month to huddle with local startups.It’s important to speak with startups because “the tech cycle is such that the small guys make it big and the big guys die,” Nadella said in an interview in Paris, where he was attending a technology conference. 

As a senior manager at Microsoft – and a candidate to be its next CEO – Nadella needs to bone up all he can on how to keep a decades-old technology behemoth from getting lapped by upstarts. Since CEO Steve Ballmer’s August announcement that he plans to retire within a year, Nadella has emerged as one of the leading contenders, people familiar with the matter have said…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Nathan Toups.

Take a moment and look up. What you see is a sky we’ve been striving to understand for most of human civilization. Whether it’s the sun, moon, stars or clouds, we’ve been wondering: How does it all work? It was only recently that humans had a solid grasp of the observable universe. Cloud computing is a similarly tricky subject. Whether you feel that stormy weather affects it, roll your eyes at the much-abused marketing jargon, or you develop distributed web apps, rarely is a concept that is so important so misunderstood.

Understanding the cloud is important because of the potential power that comes with the knowledge. When you’re typing in your credit card number to a webpage do you ever stop and think about who exactly possesses the information afterwards? Most of us do not because of how commonplace the practice is within our culture. Black Friday online shopping this year reached a pinnacle milestone – $1.2 billion was spent, marking the first billion-dollar day in ecommerce history. If you were one of the people madly clicking “Add to Cart” that day, your orders were most likely processed through software that embraced modern cloud computing infrastructure…

Grazed from ReadWrite. Author: Michael Singer.

In looking back over the past 12 months, it’s apparent businesses pushed the envelope of the programmable web. Instead of being influenced by consumer apps and trends like BYOD, employers this year looked inward to solve their internal business problems.

Companies have expanded the use of potent business partners, providers, and platforms at the expense of more consumer-driven technologies that defined 2011 and 2012. Here now are the biggest influences on business, with a heavy reliance on cloud computing and avoidance of government intervention…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Rachel Craig.

What is cloud computing? Cloud computing is an Internet-based facility that allows users to access shared computer applications, storage and other resources through a network of remote servers, rather than each individual user installing hardware and software onto their on-site server and personal computer. It allows the user to store, manage and process data in exactly the same way as traditional computer systems and programmes, without the need to buy, install, manage and update a variety of expensive applications on one computer.

In cloud computing, you are renting a service rather than buying a product. You simply pay for what you use – much like a utility service – and the technical side is all taken care of by the host vendors that supply the applications. The data and files you create are stored in ‘The Cloud’ (on the web) and accessed through an internet browser from any device in any location; not just your personal computer. This offers so many benefits to the small business owner in terms of accessibility, flexibility, security, cost, time, energy consumption, competitiveness and disaster recovery…

Grazed from BusinessNewsDaily. Author: Sara Angeles.

In 2013, the cloud industry hit a milestone. As indicated by the massive surge in users and the slew of cloud vendors and service providers now available, cloud computing went from being just another buzzword to a viable infrastructure widely adopted by small businesses and large enterprises alike. It also revealed how vulnerable cloud users are to the dangers of cloud computing. In 2014, the cloud industry will aim to change that.

From public clouds to private clouds to hybrid clouds, businesses now have a wide range of services from which to choose that best fit their needs and budgets. Whether they implement Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), or Everything-as-a-Service (EaaS), the cloud can be used for storage and anytime, anywhere access of files, applications, networks and entire computing systems…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

Cloud computing continued its inexorable spread during 2013. Momentum continued to gather behind the open source OpenStack platform, while private cloud provider VMware looked to extend its reach to public cloud services. Meanwhile Microsoft moved to compete against Amazon with infrastructure as a service support on Azure.

With many organisations seemingly more confident about adopting cloud services for some IT services this year, the focus has been less on whether private cloud or public cloud would win out and growing acceptance that hybrid cloud – a combination of both – is the way that most customers will consume cloud services…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Robert Lawson.

Predictions and trends point to a specialized market of IT professionals in the new cloud computing environment that is already changing the overall economy at scale. The computing method that virtualizes data is becoming the top preference around the world, and study after study shows the same trend of exponential growth and adoption.

A Global Information Marketplace

The market is rapidly changing in the digital age. The Internet of Things (IoT) is emerging to disrupt the larger economy as more product and service delivery moves to cyberspace, consumers are increasingly connected to this space. The Daily Star noted that there is a "cloud economy ecosystem," which refers to the relationships between technology and business, government and innovation, production and consumption…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing is growing in use at federal agencies, according to a new survey that found that military, intelligence and civilian groups are rapidly adopting the cloud. Their reasons for adoption mirror those of midsize firms that are also increasingly choosing to transform their IT infrastructures with cloud services.

The Benefits

A new survey by Tripwire recently featured in Help Net Security found that U.S. federal agencies are experiencing important benefits as a result of cloud adoption. For example, 58 percent of agencies say that the cloud has improved their data security. Demonstrating an increase in trust, more than 50 percent are moving more sensitive data to the cloud, compared to just over 30 percent last year. In addition, more agencies are utilizing cloud vendors to help them optimize their IT…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Kevin McLaughlin.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison says his company intends to be price competitive with established cloud infrastructure-as-a-service players like Amazon, Microsoft and Rackspace. While Oracle’s cloud portfolio to date is focused on its own products, it’s planning to roll out a cloud IaaS service in the first half of next year that’s aimed at Amazon Web Services, IBM and other cloud providers. "We intend to compete aggressively in the commodity infrastructure as a service marketplace," Ellison said during Oracle’s second-quarter earnings call.

The Oracle empire was built on high-margin products, which is why this was a surprising comment. It’s hard to imagine Oracle engaging in a price war in the cloud IaaS trenches with Amazon Web Services, which is constantly slashing pricing for its cloud services, and Microsoft, which has vowed match Amazon’s price cuts with Windows Azure IaaS…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.

Revolution is a big word, and one that’s overused much of the time. In the case of cloud computing, the revolutionary potential seems bogged down in pedestrian early applications. Many enterprises report that the majority of their cloud applications have been simple extensions to Web hosting or server consolidation. But for the cloud to reach its potential, it has to be more than that. Fortunately, a few trends are driving the cloud to the right place at last. These trends — which represent the future of cloud apps — include platform services, cloud-centric operations and support, and cloud-ready software and data models.

Platform services: An ‘in-between model’

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) alone is simply hosted virtualization. It will be valuable to users with low utilization and high cost of labor for hardware support, but it doesn’t offer enterprises enough economy-of-scale benefits relative to their own data centers to spawn a real revolution. Platform as a Service (PaaS), which locks users into a specific operating system and middleware set, displaces more current cost but has a narrow target of opportunity. Led by Amazon, the cloud industry is creating an in-between model: platform services…