Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jon Oltsik.

We’ve all read the marketing hype about “shadow IT” where business managers make their own IT decisions without the CIO’s knowledge or approval. According to ESG research, this risk is actually overstated at most organizations but there is no denying that IT is getting harder to manage as a result of BYOD, cloud computing, IT consumerization, and mobility.

As these trends perpetuate, CISOs find themselves in the proverbial hot seat – it’s difficult to secure applications, assets, network sessions, and transactions that you don’t own or control. So what can be done? I’ve had this very discussion with a multitude of CISOs who’ve come to a similar conclusion: When you can’t control everything, you better have tight control and oversight over what you have. This type of security strategy centers on 5 areas:…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Centrify has launched a new identity-as-a-service offering that provides both Active Directory- and cloud-based single sign-on, access management, application management and mobile management across cloud, mobile and on-premise applications.

The new Centrify User Suite, SaaS Edition was designed to help organizations eliminate "password sprawl" and gain centralized control over access to SaaS applications and mobile devices in the enterprise. The real focus of the new SaaS offering is to tackle the "too many passwords" problem that most (okay, all) people are currently dealing with, and then provide a secure way for end users to gain access to apps, even when out of the four walls of the enterprise…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Anh Nguyen.

Cloud technologies are offering businesses agility but not the cost-savings they expect, a survey of senior IT directors has found. The survey of 50 senior IT decision-makers, including CIOs, IT directors and heads of IT, at UK companies with more than €1 billion (£0.85 billion) turnover, found that while 74 percent of respondents expected to see operational cost savings by using cloud, only 41 percent actually achieved these savings.

Alsbridge, the sourcing advisory firm that commissioned Coleman Parkes to conduct the survey, said that the mismatch of expectations with reality was because businesses were looking at cloud as a technology rather than at the problem that needed fixing…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Ceph, the open source, scalable, software-defined storage platform for the cloud and Big Data, is officially ready for the enterprise. That’s what Inktank, the company behind the system, has indicated with the release of Inktank Ceph Enterprise, which is now publicly available.

Inktank is offering the solution on a subscription basis. It offers support services and value-added deployment tools related to the Ceph platform, which itself is free and open source, and features Ceph version 0.67, which includes important enterprise functionality such as copy-on-write and compability with the Swift API, as well as a graphical management application aptly named Calamari…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

TelecityGroup has introduced a new cloud service to help customers fully exploit the potential of online services. Dubbed Cloud-IX, the product offers flexible and scalable public, private and hybrid cloud options, with the ability to connect to a number of well-known cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Iland, CSC, Fujitsu and Outsourcery. The Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider claims its hybrid offering will enable users to take full advantage of what cloud computing can offer.

TelecityGroup claims the offering is the next stage in its strategy to deliver business-focused products to support the cloud. Michael Tobin, TelecityGroup’s CEO, said: “Businesses across Europe are looking at ways they can maximise the power of the cloud to enhance the performance of their core platforms, manage big data with ease, and deliver enhanced and scalable service offerings; all against the background of ever increasing expectations in terms of security, auditability and data sovereignty…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Cisco announced three accelerator packages to make its Unified Computing Systems (UCS) servers part of future OpenStack private clouds. The three accelerator packages — High Density, Mixed Workload and Storage Intensive — for common data center cloud configurations were unveiled Monday.

The move suggests how some large compute and networking suppliers will try to stay relevant if large segments of their customer bases decide to move to a deeper implementation of virtualized resources. OpenStack offers management of virtualized servers, storage and networking, with the OpenStack Neutron Project working toward a fully software-defined approach to virtual networks. Many Cisco competitors are contributing to that project, in hopes of disrupting established network providers…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Object storage leader Cloudian today announced a coordinated effort with partners Penguin Computing and Intel to bring their production hardened object storage product to market as a bundled turnkey solution for OpenStack users. Cloudian natively supports full S3 APIs, is small-start capable with complete elasticity, and is fully integrated with OpenStack’s Nova, Glance, Horizon, and Keystone. Built by Penguin Computing, the new scale-out, multi-datacenter capable solution boasts ultra-low power consumption and high drive density, enabled by the Intel® Atom™ C2000 processor’s 64-bit architecture. The solution will be provided to enterprise users through Penguin’s global network of VAR partners. Cloudian is also available as software only for customers to install on hardware of their choice.

"We are excited to work with Penguin Computing and Intel to deliver our carrier grade storage on OpenStack, which precisely addresses the demands of our customers," said Michael Tso, Founder and CEO, Cloudian. "Penguin’s deep enterprise expertise coupled with Intel’s Atom C2000 processors offers industry leading efficiencies at a competitive price. The solution significantly eases the barriers for the adoption of OpenStack in the enterprise."…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudyn, the leading cloud cost analytics and optimization company, has released a new platform called Cloudyn MSP that enables Managed Service Providers to create new revenue stream, increase profit margin and round-out their cloud offerings.

MSPs, including system integrators and cloud resellers can easily visualize cost, usage and saving opportunities across all customers. Cloudyn’s offering also enables accurate cost allocation and calculation of profit margins for each and every customer. While MSPs currently control about 15% of on-premise business IT, enterprises are rapidly moving to the cloud, and MSPs are seeking new ways to stay relevant. Cloudyn’s monitoring and optimization tools enable them to be the cloud hero for their customers…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Kevin Benedict.

In our world of near ubiquitous connectivity the competitive arena in many industries has moved from the physical to the digital, and from the tempo-of-old, to the tempo-of-the-new. The word tempo means the rate or pace of activity (aka. business operations). Any IT decision that gets made today should consider how different options and choices will impact today’s and future’s tempo of operations. Can and will the solution you choose support tomorrow’s required tempo of business?

In many countries in Latin America new and emerging e-invoicing requirements have been passed by national tax authorities. In some countries today, the seller of a product needs to electronically record an sale/invoice (in real-time) with the tax authority before a product can be delivered. The tax authority issues a real-time unique transaction code to be attached to the invoice number. Once the product is delivered the buyer electronically acknowledges receipt (in real-time) with the national tax authority and the process is closed and documented with the tax authority. If a product is found to be sold and delivered outside of this real-time electronic reporting system, stiff penalties will be applied…

Grazed from WhaTech.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The use of cloud computing is growing and by 2016 will account for become the bulk of new IT spend, according to Gartner. “2016 will be a defining year for cloud as private cloud begins to give way to hybrid cloud, and nearly half of large enterprises will have hybrid cloud deployments by the end of 2017,” Gartner says.

Gartner expects cloud services revenue in Australia to have a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.3 percent from 2012 to 2017 across all segments of the cloud computing market. It expects software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS) to have even higher growth rates, 23.6 percent and 24.5 percent respectively…