Grazed from PCWorld.  Author: Dave Jeffers.

With the National Security Agency spying on pretty much everyone inside and out of this country, we can’t be too surprised, or offended, to find out that other countries are spying on us.  Besides, the cloud is such a tempting target.

According to the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission‘s annual report to Congress, "strong evidence has emerged that the Chinese government is directing and executing a large-scale cyber espionage campaign against the United States."…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cost savings are typically seen as the greatest benefit of cloud computing for many organizations, which six in ten cloud computing customers admitting they’ve reduced their IT capital costs, according to a study by Enterprise Management Associates. Yet there are a host of other benefits to cloud computing, listed below:

1. Decreased Total Cost of Ownership
With cloud computing, organizations don’t need to purchase expensive servers or systems and maintain them in-house. Plus, IT no longer needs to focus on the upkeep of in-house systems since the service provider handles maintenance issues, upgrades, patches and more…

Grazed from Cloud Computing Intelligence.  Author: Marcus Austin.

Open Source provider Red Hat, has announced the general availability of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5, the latest version of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 that includes support for open hybrid cloud environments, simplifies security, improves network speed and improves portability.

The update to the OS provides enterprises with a platform that can scale across cloud, physical and virtual environments and gives businesses flexibility to handle future requirements and is designed with those who build and manage large, complex IT projects, especially enterprises that require an open hybrid cloud…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: David Linthicum.

This is the time of year that when technology publications get contacted by any number of PR firms, hoping they will listen to their pitches, and perhaps publish their cloud technology client’s cloud computing predictions for 2014.  If they’re lucky, whatever they are selling continues to grow in the New Year.

I don’t really get into predictions as much as I look at emerging patterns or trends, which will be relevant to those who are currently evaluating and selecting cloud computing technology.  In other words, you need to understand what to look out for in the near future, as well as how to dial that into your enterprise cloud computing strategy.  Three emerging cloud computing trends that will be more relevant by the end of the year are actually rather easy to spot:…

Grazed from InfoStor.  Author: Pedro Hernadez.

Huawei, a Chinese provider of IT and telecommunications systems and services, is looking to help high performance computing (HPC) organizations cloudify their workloads with its new storage systems.  The company’s OceanStor storage line is now home to the new flagship 18000 series. The high performance systems help organizations bring the capacity-maximizing benefits of the cloud to their HPC environments, according to Huawei Enterprise USA’s COO, Jane Li.

Li argued in company remarks that "HPC cluster silos are giving way to HPC clouds." IDC’s data backs her up. In an email to InfoStor, a company representative cited IDC research revealing "that the proportion of sites exploiting cloud computing for part of their HPC workloads rose from 13.8 percent in 2011 to 23.5 percent in 2013."…

Grazed from CITEWorld. Author: Andy Patrizio.

Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing subsidiary of the Internet retail giant, recently announced Amazon Kinesis, a fully managed service for real time processing of high volume data streaming in to Amazon’s Web-based repositories. The intro was made at the Re:Invent conference held in Las Vegas. Amazon Kinesis allows a customer to store and process terabytes of data an hour from hundreds of thousands of sources as the data is coming in.

This allows developers to create applications that act on real-time data, such as Web site traffic, marketing and financial transactions, social media feeds, or logs. Kinesis is capable of accepting any amount of data, from any number of sources, scaling up and down as needed. The client library handles load balancing, coordination, and error handling, doing the background work, so the developer only needs to focus on processing the data as it becomes available…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Janel Ryan.

Each week I spend considerable time reviewing research papers, articles and blogs about technology. And I’m sick of reading about cloud. While cloud gets loads of press, it’s a nascent technology. Few companies are using cloud extensively. So, let’s not talk cloud. Let’s talk about something more intriguing – server virtualization. Server virtualization is a mature technology that the vast majority of enterprises actually use today. Your organization has a lot to gain by building on your existing virtualization technology and taking advantage of all the latest capabilities.

What is virtualization and what are its benefits?

Virtualization technology, in computing, refers to the creation of a virtual (rather than a physical) form of something, whether that’s a virtual hardware platform, operating system (OS), storage device, or network resources. Over the last decade, server virtualization on the x86 platform has been driven by the desire to gain both cost and operational efficiencies. Migrating physical servers to virtual machines and consolidating them onto far fewer physical servers lowers monthly power and cooling costs in the data center…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

FrontRange, the only provider of Hybrid IT Service Management (ITSM) solutions, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named HEAT Cloud Service Managementas a 2013 Cloud Computing Excellence Award winner for the third consecutive year presented by Cloud Computing Magazine.

“We are thrilled to be selected for TMC’s Cloud Computing Excellence Award for the third consecutive year,” says Kevin J. Smith, Vice President and General Manager, Cloud Business Unit, FrontRange. “This award is a validation of FrontRange’s continued commitment to providing its customers with the most innovative, high-quality products available in the ITSM market.”…

Grazed from WHTC. Author: Paul Sandle.

German business software group SAP may speed up a shift towards providing its products over the internet in order to tap demand for so-called cloud services and take advantage of Germany’s reputation for data privacy, it said on Friday. SAP and rivals such as IBM and Oracle are dashing to meet surging demand for cloud computing, which allows clients to reduce costs by ditching bulky local servers for network-based software and storage in remote data centers.

With the cloud services market forecast to grow 18.5 percent this year to $131 billion worldwide, according to research firm Gartner, competition is fierce and software firms face a challenge to adapt. "We have a situation now where we see the move to the cloud, particularly in certain markets like North America, happening even faster, and this is a great opportunity for us to revisit whether we should accelerate the move to the cloud," SAP co-chief executive Jim Hagemann-Snabe said at a Morgan Stanley investor conference on Friday.

Grazed from BankInfoSecurity. Author: Eric Chabrow.

Attempts to shame China haven’t been effective in stopping that country from pilfering intellectual property from the computers of American companies, a new report to Congress says. The report from the U.S.-China Economic Review Commission, issued Nov. 20, points out that China hasn’t changed its behavior despite widely covered reports this past year from security firm Mandiant and the Defense Department about the Chinese targeting American companies and military contractors over the Internet to steal intellectual property and trade secrets (see 6 Types of Data Chinese Hackers Pilfer and DoD Outlines China’s Spying on U.S. IT).

"It is clear naming and attempting to shame will not be sufficient to deter entities in China from emerging in cyber-espionage against U.S. companies," the report says. The commission says mitigating the problem will require a multifaceted approach, including linking economic cyber-espionage to trade restrictions, prohibiting Chinese firms using stolen U.S. intellectual property from accessing U.S. banks and banning U.S. travel for Chinese organizations that are involved with cyber-espionage…