Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

IBM remains aggressive in pursuing innovation in its key areas of focus, including cloud computing, big data and analytics, mobile and security, among others. IBM has been busy of late with several major announcements areas including cloud computing, big data, security and more.

In any given week, IBM is in the thick of it with new technology announcements, partnerships and other news, but over the last couple of weeks Big Blue seems to have had a little extra going on. For instance, on Nov. 15, IBM announced that scientists at ETH Zurich, a prominent Swiss university and IBM Research, in collaboration with the Technical University of Munich and the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), have set a new record in supercomputing in fluid dynamics using 6.4 million threads on LLNL’s 96 rack “Sequoia” IBM BlueGene/Q, one of the fastest supercomputers in the world…

Grazed from GreatResponder. Author: Maria Dehn.

Amazon Web Services AWS has announced a very courageous step towards offering the latest virtual desktop services to its customer base. In a statement, AWS announced that ‘WorkSpaces’ would be very useful services for all types of businesses and corporations to reduce their capital as well as operational cost by cutting these costs to almost zero. Now, the companies can purchase high performance, secure and fully managed virtual desktops without any upfront cost.

This is a very courageous step of AWS to flex its muscles in the cloud computing industry. The company has also announced that the service will be available at as low as half of the traditional VDI solutions offered in the marketplace. The general manager of AWS WorkSpaces Mr. Gene Farrell said, in his statement “The majority of the queries from our customers during the near past were about the provision of virtual desktop services;…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Clint Finley.

Salesforce acquired Heroku in 2010, spending $212 million on the cloud computing outfit. But since then, the two have operated all but independently, with little integration between the Heroku cloud service and the rest of the Salesforce empire. On Tuesday, this began to change. At its annual user conference in San Francisco, Salesforce unveiled Heroku1, a tool that plugs the Heroku cloud service — a means of building and deploying online applications — into the company’s flagship business services. The idea is to make it easier for Heroku-based applications to access all the business data stored on Salesforce. “We want to make every Heroku developer a great Salesforce app without having to learn anything new,” says Heroku vice president of product Adam Gross.

Heroku offers what’s known as platform-as-a-service. Basically, it’s an online tool that lets you build and deploy large online applications without having to worry about the hardware and software infrastructure that keeps them going. Salesforce also runs Force.com, a visual tool for creating and integrating applications on the Salesforce platform, but the Heroku service is something that’s far more attractive to hardcore software developers…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Robert L. Mitchell.

Something happened on the way to the cloud: Too many business customers got burned by bad contracts. It’s not that cloud services can’t deliver value. But in the rush to the cloud, enterprises often end up stuck with contracts that don’t fully meet the business’s needs, lack accountability and cost considerably more than anticipated.

There are several reasons for that, say people who make their living studying licensing issues and advising businesses on contract negotiations. Among other things, seasoned veterans of on-premises software licensing may mistakenly assume that cloud services contracts are just another variation on the same theme…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

IBM (IBM) is moving its Watson technology into the cloud to create what it calls a new ecosystem of software application providers, infusing cognitive computing intelligence with application development. IBM will be launching IBM Watson Developers Cloud, a cloud-hosted marketplace for application providers looking to develop Watson-powered apps. The marketplace will also include educational materials and access to Watson’s application programming interface (API).

According to Big Blue, the move was designed to populate a new ecosystem of entrepreneurial software application providers, adding that these business partners, along with IBM, will transform the way both businesses and consumers make decisions. Application providers will be able to leverage two sources of data-driven content for uncovering user data: company data or third-party content by accessing the IBM Watson Content Store…

Next month, the Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) will introduce an open pattern that will enable governments, agencies and businesses to create a secure, hybrid IT environment quickly and cost effectively. Cloud computing expert Kevin Jackson has been named to lead the team that will assist organizations in adopting the process, known as the NCOIC Rapid Response Capability (NRRC), into their operations.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend AWS re:Invent 2013 this year; however, I did get the chance to speak with Matt Gerber, executive vice president of sales and marketing at 2nd Watch.  The company is a global leader in building, deploying and managing Amazon Web Services (AWS) based IT operations, so I was excited to learn a bit more about the company and their latest product news. 

VMblog:  For VMblog readers who may not be familiar with the company, can you give a quick overview of 2^nd Watch?

Matt Gerber:  2nd Watch builds, deploys and manages Amazon Web Services (AWS) based IT operations for enterprise customers.  In particular, we assist customers in evaluating the economics of moving IT operations into AWS, design and build highly reliable and scalable AWS-based enterprise IT platforms, and provide software tools and management services that enable enterprises to deploy, manage and optimize cloud based IT operations infrastructure.  We have effectively moved more than 2 MW of enterprise data center capacity into the AWS cloud as part of 300+ platform and data center migrations.

Jamcracker, the Cloud Services Brokerage (CSB) enablement company, today announced the release of the Jamcracker Services Delivery Network (JSDN) 7.0, enabling enterprise service providers and IT organizations to offer IT as a Service (ITaaS). ITaaS enables IT organizations to act as agile service providers, focusing on meeting the needs and outcomes required by lines of businesses (LOB).

"As IT as a Service becomes the standard business and operations model, enterprises will require the ability to manage the supply chain, including infrastructure services and application services delivery," said Paul Burns, president, Neovise. "With the ability to configure, manage, and bill IaaS services from multiple vendors with a seamless user experience, Jamcracker is ideally suited to change the way we adopt cloud services."

Grazed from BankInfoSecurity. Author: Eric Chabrow.

Computer scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology are developing new ways to apply encryption when storing or searching data in the cloud, says Paul Royal, associate director of the university’s information security center. This encryption research, designed to address security concerns associated with cloud computing, is highlighted in Georgia Tech’s just-issued Emerging Cyber Threats Report 2014.

The university has developed an application called CloudCapsule that encrypts data on mobile and other devices before its securely transmitted and stored in the cloud, Royal explains in an interview with Information Security Media Group. Encrypting data before it enters the cloud provides protection against cybercriminals seeking to pilfer data and governments demanding keys to decrypt data on servers situated in their jurisdictions, Royal says…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Nicole Laskowski.

When Aristotle said, "The whole is greater than the sum of its parts," he could have been talking about crowdsourcing. The concept makes some IT leaders uncomfortable, no doubt, but problem solving — like computing — can be powerful when distributed. CIOs bent on leading the innovation charge need to figure out how social tools can help bring the trend into the enterprise, according to Christopher Sprague, executive partner with Gartner Inc.’s research arm.

The Data MillCity of Boston CIO Bill Oates gets it, Sprague told CIOs at the Society for Information Management’s (SIM) annual conference in Boston last week. Oates introduced a pair of mobile applications that’s changing how the city and its constituents interact. With Street Bump, a handheld device’s accelerometer and GPS help city workers locate potholes and road deficiencies. With Citizens Connect, city dwellers can file a work order — directly with the facilitator of the request — and then keep tabs on its progress…