Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

The latest server sales tally indicates that higher end systems are increasingly looking like glorified PCs that will experience the same slowing growth picture in the future. And the cloud is increasingly getting the blame. Cloud computing is to server sales what tablets are to the PC market.

IDC said that server sales fell 3.7 percent in the third quarter to $12.1 billion. Gartner pegged server sales at $12.34 billion, down 2.1 percent from a year ago. Both research firms indicated that HP was the market share leader. HP and Cisco were the only server vendors to show growth in the third quarter…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Eugene Rudenko.

For the last couple of years there have hardly been any new concepts in cloud computing. But hardly doesn’t mean never. Since the summer of 2013 you might have noticed the appearance of a new trend that has been called Fog Computing. The main purpose of fog computing is to gather services, applications, large data volumes in one place and unite them with the networks of a new generation. The aim is to offer data, computing power, memory and services at a really distributed level.

The thing is that today’s data is extremely dispersed and delivered continuously, in large volumes and to a large number of users with different devices. In order to make an effective cloud model, businesses need to learn how to deliver the content to their users via geographically distributed platforms and not via the cloud which is placed in one place. Thus, the idea of fog computing is to distribute all data and place it closer to a user, remove network delays and other possible obstacles connected with data transfer. Users need all their data and apps at any time in any place – this is the essence of cloud services. And fog computing may take this service to the next level…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

API management and cloud-based data solutions vendor StrikeIron has launched a fully-hosted API management platform in the cloud. Dubbed IronCloud, the cloud-based platform was previously only available to StrikeIron’s partners and early adopters, but now the cloud service is available more generally.

With the launch of the GA version of IronCloud, StrikeIron has added a new front-end user interface, as well as new management console support. The purpose of the software is to enable partners and customers to monetize their data and digital assets through APIs. That, according to the company, is done through enabling clients to host digital assets and software, and then access them across any system, including web, mobile apps, customer relationship management software, SaaS apps and on-premise solutions…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Cloud Ventures.

At a pre-conference Meetup recently, one of the organizers waxed poetic about how the cloud is changing how companies do business. His big example was ZipCar, the car sharing company. His example was how Zipcar uses cloud to deal with data.  But, I think he missed the bigger analogy there: how cloud is changing IT the way Zip car forever changed car ownership.

Before Zipcar, a few large firms dominated the car buying market. If you wanted a car you went to a dealership and negotiated a long term contract. You took on the responsibility for owning, maintaining, and paying down the costs for the life of your vehicle. Your car selection was also limited by what the local dealership had on the lot that day. The cost to buy, own, and maintain a car kept many people from having the mobility of a car…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Editorial Staff.

Rackspace is a familiar name on lists of top cloud computing providers, but that doesn’t mean that the company is content in its place. Listening to the needs of its customers, Rackspace Inc. had made moves this year to enhance its public cloud’s performance and features to better compete with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In the company’s second quarter of 2013, Rackspace’s public cloud business reportedly grew by 36.4% to $99 million — tripling its revenue growth for its dedicated hosting business. "Recently, [Rackspace] has really started to step up their game building out other cloud services," said Aaron Rankin, chief technology officer of Chicago-based Sprout Social Inc., which mostly uses Rackspace, though it has some AWS components…

Grazed from GeekWire. Author: John Cook.

A new Seattle area cloud computing startup called Nurego just scored $2 million in fresh funding with support from some heavy hitters in the tech industry, according to a SEC filing today. The company is led by Harel Kodesh, a former Microsoft vice president who previously served as group president of Amdocs and CEO of Mozy.

Among the directors listed in the filing are Paul Maritz, the former Microsoft VP and VMware CEO who now leads Pivotal, and Sumant Mandal, a managing director at Clearstone Venture Partners and an early backer of PayPal, NetZero and MP3.com. Others listed in the filing include Nurego co-founders Harinderpal Hanspal, who previously worked at VMware and Mozy, and Ilia Gilderman, who previously worked at EMC and VMware…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Tom McShane.

The popularity of BYOD (or ‘Bring Your Own Device’) has surged in recent years, with around 67% of employees bringing their own computing tech into the office for work – whether that’s something large like a laptop to function as your ‘office computer’, or something smaller like a smartphone or tablet which is used for pulling up data and accessing records while in the boardroom and away from your desk.

With the cloud computing market value expected to reach hundreds of billions of dollars within the next years, it comes as no surprise to learn that these two rapidly rising forms of technology are intrinsically linked and are both self-perpetuating. This guest post, written by UK-based cloud infrastructure suppliers GCC Innova, looks at how BYOD-days in business settings are giving the cloud an even bigger boost…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Recognizing the growing popularity of Node.js for building distributed Web applications, cloud provider Joyent will soon offer a commercial support package for managing the platform, wherever it is run. Priced at US$990 a month, Node.js Core Support is aimed at heavy commercial users of Node.js. The service will inspect Node.js systems and provide data to troubleshoot issues.

The service can work with the Node.js deployments that Joyent itself runs as part of its PaaS (platform-as-a-service) collection of hosted technologies. It can also work with hosted Node.js deployments from other providers, such as Heroku, Microsoft Windows Azure, and Engine Yard…

Grazed from CMSWire. Author: Tom Petrocelli.

Cloud computing provides tremendous value for businesses of all types. But as we can see from the number of products that shut down in 2013, it isn’t all a silver lining. Cloud applications, platforms and infrastructure offers a more flexible and agile IT environment, whether a large enterprise or a company that falls into the small-medium enterprise category.

Cloud computing allows companies to use their capital for creating business value rather than having it tied up in expensive data centers. Another way to look at cloud computing is that it doesn’t force an organization to be in the business of data centers unless that is its actual business…

Grazed from WashingtonTechnology. Author: Steve Charles.

True: Cloud computing has not yet come on like gangbusters in the federal government. More like footsteps of a steady series of app-by-app deals. But the cloud computing model as a federal service is still maturing, as is the government’s ability to craft the business cases and service level agreements it needs for cloud computing.

So before writing off cloud as just another fad, think again. It’s a mistake to conclude, from the past three years or so, that cloud is passé. The buzz has to move to the next fascination before procurements actually start to ramp. Feds often talk and dabble a few years before moving markets…