Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Rick Robinson.

As pilots know, cloudy skies can make for a bumpy ride. According to one analyst firm, IT managers at midsize firms may also need to plan to fly around turbulence. The cloud computing marketplace is maturing amid fierce competition, and as many as one in four of today’s cloud providers could be gone by 2015.

Most of these providers will be acquired by other firms, but there is also the potential for some to go bankrupt. For midsize firms, the risk of turbulence in the cloud could be a serious matter. In the worst case, a cloud provider could evaporate, with its data centers going dark and the data they hold being lost without a trace. That is the nightmare scenario. It is more likely that a cloud provider will disappear through acquisition. The transition might be seamless, or it might mean major changes in service offering, sending some firms looking for alternative solutions…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Google’s Compute Engine cloud doesn’t yet have a Hadoop offering of its own, but the platform is making a name for itself as a viable, if not ideal, place to run big data workloads. The latest validation came on Thursday when Qubole, the Hadoop-as-a-service startup from Hive creators Ashish Thusoo and Joydeep Sen Sarma, announced an option that users choose to run on Compute Engine, which they claim provides better performance than Amazon Web Services.

Specifically, a company spokesperson told me via email, Qubole has seen 2-3x faster startup times for virtual servers using Compute Engine over Amazon EC2 and more reliable performance from Google Cloud Storage than from Amazon S3. We’ll also assume that AWS is the “CloudX” against which Qubole engineer Praveen Seluka benchmarked Compute Engine, some results of which he shared on the Google Cloud Platform blog…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ben Kepes.

One of the common comments about cloud computing is that it opens up the floodgates to so-called shadow IT, the trend of end users self-provisioning solutions either because of IT reluctance to give them what they need or due to apathy about IT policy. A recent survey by vendor Workshare highlighted this situation and in particular the trend of mobile users to circumvent IT and use unsanctioned applications for file sharing and collaboration. The survey took in around 6000 employees in both the US and EMEA and looked at their broader mobile device and file sharing activities. Some high level findings:

• 72% of those questioned had not received authorization from their IT department to use their consumer-based file sharing application, up from 66% in 2012.
• Over half (62%) of knowledge workers use their personal devices for work
• The majority (69%) of these workers also use free file sharing services to collaborate and access shared documents, which is a 3% increase over the last year.
• Larger companies, with over 20,000 employees, had a greater grasp of data security issues around file sharing applications. In contrast, companies with fewer than 500 employees had a much lower proportion (24%) of employees using authorized file sharing solutions…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: David Prosser.

There was a time when technology represented a barrier to entry for companies targeting new markets. The high spend required on IT in order to break into many markets acted as a brake on competition. Small businesses, in particular, found it difficult to compete with larger, more established rivals.

The advent of cloud computing, however, has turned that argument on its head, levelling the playing field for companies of different sizes. As they are now able to buy software and capacity as and when it is needed through cloud-based structures, small businesses no longer have to make huge upfront investments in order to get up and running in a new market. Those with good ideas for innovation can just get on with it, challenging the existing players…

Grazed from GCN. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is useful because it offers a new approach to IT, leveraging shared resources to maximize productivity and cut overhead. But with new approaches come new threats. How can agencies minimize risk in this environment? The Cloud Security Alliance and the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode) have collaborated to identify a set of best practices for developing applications that meet the unique security requirements of cloud computing.

The resulting paper, Practices for Secure Development of Cloud Applications, applies established methods of producing secure code to the architectural requirements of the cloud. “For cloud computing to reach its true potential, all parties involved – both consumers and providers – will need new ways of thinking about security needs and related standards,” the paper says…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Wyatt Cash.

As IT leaders get more comfortable moving their data operations into the cloud, concerns are growing about conflicting international laws that govern data generated in one country and stored in another. Policymakers around the world are fueling those concerns. Anxious to protect data privacy and security, they are advocating requirements to store certain types of data domestically, says Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Those policies, however, are not only creating headaches for technology managers moving data across the globe, they’re also bumping up against delicate free trade agreements that involve senior government officials well beyond the reach of the typical CIO’s office…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Todd Knapp.

Although the "year of VDI" never really came about, the desktop virtualization industry has seen many changes over the past year. Cloud computing, the consumerization of IT and improved graphics delivery have all contributed to a better virtual desktop experience — making virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) viable in more organizations. To help you get a handle on the big picture of VDI, we posed this question to five desktop virtualization experts:

What technologies or trends had the biggest impact on VDI in 2013?

Todd Knapp: The question itself supposes that something has, in fact, had a big impact on VDI in 2013. Sadly, I’m not so sure that’s happened yet. Nothing has had a big enough impact to make VDI see more adoption because there are still many obstacles to overcome…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: PR Announcement.

Five9, the leader in cloud contact center software, has earned a 2013 Cloud Computing Excellence Award from Cloud Computing Magazine. Specifically, Cloud Computing Magazine is honoring the Five9 SoCoCare social and mobile customer care solution. The Cloud Computing Excellence Award recognizes innovative cloud companies that are bringing differentiated solutions to the market to reduce operating costs and increase customer satisfaction among todays socially connected and smartphone savvy consumers.

“We are thrilled to be honored for our achievements in cloud innovation, as well as social and mobile product excellence. With the Five9 strategic acquisition of SoCoCare, two best-in-class cloud-based solutions have come together to deliver the next generation of cloud contact center software.” –Lance Fried, senior vice president of social and mobile, Five9…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Stephan Jukic.

The data storage and computing cloud offers small and large businesses enormous benefits as a medium in which to store and share documentation and data of all kinds remotely in an environment with extremely fast access and ease of use. Now while many business owners and managers already know this, what they often don’t know or are wary of are the security questions around using the cloud. And it’s only natural that this should worry them. After all, using cloud storage means handing your company’s extremely valuable and sensitive private data over to not just a third party service provider but also to one which is fully connected to the greater web by virtue of its nature.

Adding to these questions of security is a certain level of confusion that a lot of business owners have about just what cloud security really entails; the cloud is fairly new as a major business service and like many new things, it can be confusing! Let’s settle some of these issues below…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Editorial Staff.

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. introduced the Cloud OS Network, a worldwide consortium of more than 25 cloud service providers delivering services built on the Microsoft Cloud Platform: Windows Server with Hyper-V, System Center and the Windows Azure Pack. These organizations support Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision of a consistent platform that spans customer datacenters, Windows Azure and service provider clouds. Service providers in the Cloud OS Network offer Microsoft-validated, cloud-based infrastructure and application solutions designed to meet customer needs.

"This network of leading service providers will help our customers create datacenters without boundaries for apps, data and device management," said Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft corporate vice president of Cloud & Enterprise Marketing. "That translates into greater diversity of solutions, more flexibility and lower operational costs for customers, allowing them to focus on their core business rather than managing datacenters." More comments from Numoto can be found on the Official Microsoft Blog…