Grazed from CSO. Author: David Braue.

Businesses concerned about the security of cloud-computing systems should appoint a ‘cloud purchasing czar’ whose sole responsibility is to evaluate cloud service providers (CSPs) and manage their interactions between business and IT executives, a leading security consultant has advised.

Speaking at the recent CSO Perspectives Roadshow, BRM Holdich director of information security and IT assurance Jo Stewart-Rattray said the czar model – promoted by the likes of Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer – offers the important ability to bring order to what is often a chaotic process of cloud-system purchasing and deployment…

Grazed from The Washington Post. Author: Mohana Ravindranath.

San Francisco-based cloud computing giant Salesforce got big as one of the few companies that helped businesses manage and store customer data. Fifteen years later, it is trying to help businesses reach those customers through their smartphones, tablets and social media.

Salesforce’s recent product launches and acquisitions suggest the company is expanding its focus from business-to-business communication and branching out into business-to-consumer services. At its recent Dreamforce, Salesforce’s annual conference and product launch, the company unveiled Salesforce1, a cloud-based system helping businesses, sell, market and deal with customer service issues through smartphones and tablets. It also announced the ExactTarget Marketing Cloud, which tailors advertising to customers on e-mail, Web, mobile and social media sites…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Security vendor Symantec (SYMC) seems to be shutting down its Backup Exec.cloud service in January, according to a report this morning by Bloomberg News. The report noted that the security vendor began alerting customers this month of its decision to discountinue the service, adding that "the decision was prompted by changes in the PC market."

In an email statement prepared for Talkin’ Cloud, Symantec said it is aligning with a new offering strategy and efforts to streamline its product range to provide fewer, more integrated solutions for customers. "We are firmly committed to doing everything we can to help our partners and customers successfully navigate this process," the company said…

Grazed from CMSWire. Author: Ashish Thusoo.

Data silos days are numbered. Businesses that organize around products or business functions and not data will disappear. The development and adoption of service oriented architecture (SOA) and cloud computing created a steady stream of incentives to abandon data silos. However, data inertia — the difficulties of easily giving access or moving data — and organizational structures have posed significant stumbling blocks in exploiting them fully and organizing businesses around data at the same time.

A Turning Point

We are at a turning point with big data. SOA and cloud computing were about efficiencies — which could be ignored — big data is a strategic shift and will transform businesses in a way that adopters will supersede the stragglers. Businesses, especially large ones, have long been trying to break down the silos of data storage and computing…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing is being embraced by an increasing number of midsize firms, according to a new study. The researchers from Spiceworks, Inc. found that, in addition to the cloud, two other third-platform technologies, virtualization and mobility, are what midsize firms are using to increase productivity and to meet their business goals.

More Cloud to Go Around

The new report, "State of SMB IT 1H 2013," featured in ChannelPro SMB, took into account the responses of IT departments with fewer than 1,000 employees. The semiannual study found that employees at these smaller firms used more cloud services compared to larger firms. Virtualization grew as well; more than 80 percent of firms with 250 to 999 employees have adopted virtualization technology. As for mobility, tablets are ruling the roost at midsize firms; almost 60 percent of IT professionals said that they have tablets in their networks. Researchers expect that the percentage will grow, with 70 percent of midsize firms adopting tablet use by the end of 2013…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Tom Bradley.

Everything’s coming up mobile these days. Gartner estimates that PC sales will make up only about 13 percent of device sales in 2013—and some undisclosed portion of those PCs are notebooks. The more we rely on small, mobile devices to get things done, the more we also depend on cloud storage and services to extend functionality beyond what the mobile device itself is capable of. That’s why mobile and cloud will become mobile cloud.

The IEEE Computer Society lists mobile cloud as one of its Top Technology Trends for 2014. IEEE explains, “Mobile devices are constrained by their memory, processing power, and battery life. But combined with cloud computing, data processing and storage can happen outside of mobile devices.”…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Klint Finley.

Docker wants to help developers run their applications anywhere and everywhere. This week, the project got a little closer to that goal by bringing the platform to all major versions of the Linux operating system. Docker is a tool for bundling everything you need to run a particular application into a single “container.”

These containers can be moved from computer to computer — be they physical machines or virtual computer servers — in much the same way a standardized shipping container can be loaded onto any ship or train or loading dock. Each container runs in isolation of all the other containers on a computer…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

I recently attended a discussion of the key components of the phenomenon known as Amazon Web Services (AWS), which I’ve turned into a basic walkthrough for anyone considering making a first move into cloud computing. AWS is Amazon’s fast growing cloud service: each day AWS adds server capacity equivalent to what Amazon had when it was a $5bn company back in 2003.

In 2006 Amazon servers handled 2.9 billion requests and in 2010 that hit 262 billion. This year the company expects its servers to handle 2 trillion, which works out at a million requests per second. That’s some pretty heavy computational lifting, and at these volumes Amazon benefits from great economy of scale…

Grazed from US News and World Reports. Author: Tom Risen.

International concern about digital spying by the National Security Agency could make it difficult for U.S. companies to gain customers in the growing cloud-computing business, and could cost them up to $35 billion through 2016. European cloud computing businesses could gain customers by portraying themselves as less vulnerable to data requests and spying than U.S. companies, according to a report from the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, which called for greater transparency about government monitoring to combat this perception.

If the U.S. loses about 10 percent of foreign business to European or Asian competitors and keeps its projected domestic market share, American cloud-computing providers might lose $21.5 billion over the next three years, explained Daniel Castro, the senior analyst at ITIF who wrote the report. "On the high end, U.S. cloud computing providers might lose $35.0 billion by 2016," Castro said in the report. "This assumes the U.S. eventually loses 20 percent of the foreign market to competitors and retains its current domestic market share."…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Dan Kusnetzky.

I recently attended a Cloud Forum sponsored by IBM that focused on the needs of the midmarket, what companies were likely to do and tried to look five years into the future. IBM gathered together an impressive group of made up of members of the analyst, journalist and developer communities. A few executives of midmarket companies were also attending. All-in-all, it was a fantastic exchange of views. One of the segments focused on what midmaket companies were hoping to find when looking at cloud computing products and service. Although the conversation moved back and forth across the room very rapidly, I’ll do my best to summarize the key points.

Software integration

Midmarket companies often have neither the resource nor the staff to construct their own complete solutions even though they have similar operational issues as the largest of companies. They are seeking complete solutions that address their own unique operational needs rather than having to find and integrate services from many suppliers…