Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Lee H. Badman.

Networking is changing fast with the rise of software-defined networking (SDN), cloud networking, and highly mobile network clients. Startup Pertino is banking on these trends with its interesting new way of providing connectivity. Pertino’s foundation is in SDN-enabled cloud-based networking primarily aimed at the SMB market, using what it calls its Cloud Network Engine.

Today, the company announced an addition to the cloud service, Network Service Virtualization, which could prove a game changer for networking. However, before we examine what’s new, an overview of the Cloud Network Engine is in order…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Eric Lundquist.

Microsoft gets a lot of justified blame for faltering in smartphones and tablets. However, while the company has a long way to go to catch up in mobile, it is playing a very strong catch-up game in cloud computing. Last week the company touted its cloud success in its quarterly analyst call, published a memo outlining a raft of new features and made an acquisition that didn’t get a whole lot of media play, but will buttress the company’s plan to be an easy on-ramp to the cloud and to deliver applications developed by tying together API-based services.

The company’s Azure cloud service has been enjoying triple digit growth, and the cloud computing unit (which also includes the Microsoft Office 365 line) grew at 103 percent in the past quarter, company officials said during its analyst call last week. Both Azure and Office 365 posted triple-digit increases. Last spring the company said Azure and related cloud software account for $1 billion in yearly revenue…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Filling prescriptions electronically is one of the demands of IT systems in healthcare and that is fueling cloud computing system purchases, according to a report from Kalorama Information. The global market for cloud computing in healthcare is estimated to reach $3.9 billion for 2013, representing 21.1% growth over the 2012 year, and that storage demands from e-prescribing will create sales opportunities for cloud providers. The finding was made in Kalorama’s latest report, “The World Market for Cloud Computing in Healthcare.”

An e-prescriptions is sent to pharmacies electronically instead of by fax. Re-fill requests are sent to health provider electronically from the pharmacy resulting in faster prescription management. Kalorama notes that the use of e-prescribing technologies has jumped from less than 10% in 2004 to about 35% in 2010. The healthcare market research firm says that hospitals, physician offices and retail pharmacies will adopt cloud computing systems, off-site servers that can store information accessible to healthcare organization employees at a different location…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Peter Waterhouse.

As an impoverished student I owned an old car. By today’s standards it was basic. It had no air conditioning or cup holders and it rusted continuously. Being broke meant I had to perform my own maintenance, which I wasn’t especially good at. But that aside, when I lifted the hood after a breakdown I could normally see and fix the problem. I could repair a damaged hose, change spark plugs, and if I was feeling adventurous, adjust carburettor settings. Sure it burned a lot of oil and the mileage was terrible, but it got me around.

Today in IT, and just like with new cars, if we look under the hood we are confronted with something very different: mass complexity. Worse still, some of it we can’t see. So even if we want to do some "tech mechanics," we can’t because we’ve lost our essential tools: visibility and control. It’s no wonder then that just like with new and advanced cars, we feel less inclined to lift the IT hood. Think about it: how many times have you looked under the hood on the car you now drive? Once, twice, ever?…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the organization where members work together to advance the deployment of enterprise cloud solutions and services that are interoperable, secure and free of vendor lock-in, today announced that representatives from global IT leaders Infosys and SAP are the newest members of the ODCA Steering Committee and have joined the ODCA Board of Directors. Senior executives from Infosys and SAP join ODCA board members from BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., NAB, NTT Data, T-Systems, UBS, Verizon Terremark and The Walt Disney Company in driving the strategic direction and output of ODCA on a global basis.

"The expansion of the leadership team marks the significant momentum ODCA is experiencing in global markets and comes as enterprises worldwide increasingly rely on ODCA usage models and requirements for easing and speeding the migration of data center IT operations to the cloud," said Mario Mueller, ODCA chair and VP of IT Infrastructure at BMW…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Carl Brooks.

Nearly two years after enterprise customers were given sanctioned Windows Server virtual machines to run in Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud and other services, Microsoft has adjusted its enterprise volume licensing to allow for "license mobility."

Microsoft applications bought through volume licensing agreements — such as SQL Server, Exchange, SharePoint, Microsoft Lync Server, System Center and Dynamics CRM — can now move to dynamic virtual environments like Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud if enterprises purchase Software Assurance (SA) for those licenses…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: JP Blaho.

In October 2012, we had the chance to attend SunGard’s IGNITE Conference for CIOs in San Francisco, and in May 2013, we were lucky enough to go again. The topic of both sessions was enterprise cloud computing, but there was one striking difference: between October and May, CIOs (and IT in general) seem to have lost their seat at the table when it comes to making decisions about cloud computing in the enterprise.

In October 2012, the conversation in the room was about how IT can maintain the driver’s seat of infrastructure management, and steer corporate policy on cloud adoption and procurement of cloud services. CIOs discussed their challenges with departments within their organization going outside of IT and buying cloud services. One CIO pounded the table and said, “We have got to make people understand that they can’t just agree to public cloud services willy-nilly when there are a whole host of other considerations to think about, from legal to regulatory to technical.”…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

IBM announced that its researchers have developed a new technique for protecting sensitive data prior to transmitting it to the cloud. Big Blue’s patented invention will overcome barriers to client adoption of cloud computing solutions by ensuring that private or proprietary information is secured before transferring it for processing by cloud computing services.

The new IBM security invention addresses cloud computing apprehensions by helping users protect confidential and private information in the cloud. This can help businesses meet regulatory requirements regarding the handling of sensitive client data. IBM received U.S. Patent #8,539,597: "Securing sensitive data for cloud computing" for the invention…

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Shawn Drew.

Despite years of success and a certain ubiquitousness in the lives of consumers, the cloud still has a long way to go to completely transform the enterprise data center. As time progresses, it would appear that complete public cloud adoption may never happen. Midsize businesses that think their only options are the openness of the public cloud and the closed confines of their data center are overlooking another option that might provide the best of both worlds: The hybrid cloud.

The Truth about Private and Hybrid Clouds

There is a gap in understanding that is preventing many IT professionals from fully understanding just what the cloud can do for their company. Virtualization, in which large-scale hardware segments itself into numerous instances, is a powerful tool and an integrated part of the cloud but is not itself a cloud solution. Virtualization is indeed a starting point for the cloud, but an IT department that believes it is harnessing the cloud optimally through the exclusive use of virtualization is missing the bigger picture…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing is necessary in the eyes of more CIOs and IT professionals today. A new survey found that more firms are integrating the cloud into their information infrastructure to help them gain a competitive edge. Cost and security ranked as the top concerns when IT decides on a cloud platform and vendor.

High Adoption

NTT Com Security recently commissioned a report from Vanson Bourne that solicited the opinions of IT professionals at firms around the globe. The research, featured in CloudTimes, found that North American companies were the biggest implementers of cloud computing. Almost 100 percent of North American respondents said that that they have had the cloud working for them for the past six months or more. Cost or security ranked as the most important factors when deploying new applications…