Grazed from eWeek. Author: James McGuire.

To understand why the pricing of cloud computing is so confusing and semi-chaotic, take a look at the cloud’s confusing and semi-chaotic history. The exact start is hazy, but 2006 was a major milestone. That’s when Amazon Web Services started offering utility computing services to external customers. The story is often told that Amazon, with its vast data centers, had excess compute capacity to sell.

Yet Amazon CTO Werner Vogels calls this a myth: “Within two months after launch, AWS would have already burned through the excess Amazon.com capacity," he told Quora. "Amazon Web Services was always considered a business by itself.”…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Elena Malykhina.

IBM has opened a Federal Cloud Innovation Center in Washington, D.C., with 500 employees on board to help government agencies adopt cloud services and open standards. The Federal Cloud Innovation Center will connect agencies with experts in cloud computing, including software as a service, platform as a service, infrastructure as a service, and business process as a service. The experts range from IBM researchers to IT infrastructure architects to software developers. Consultants with agency-specific expertise will also be part of the staff.

The center will be headed by Jane Snowdon, IBM’s chief innovation officer for U.S. Federal. Snowdon spent 17 years at IBM Research, and was appointed to the newly created position in June. She’s tasked with developing strategies for government clients in emerging areas, such as big data, cloud computing and mobile…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Michael C. Daconta.

Many virtual machines are being spun up in the cloud to run a single application. Often, the resources consumed by that application are dwarfed by the size of the operating system in terms of memory, disk space and CPU utilization. So why run an entire OS just to run one application? That is one problem virtual containers were created to solve.

Containers-as-a-service is a type of infrastructure-as-a-service specifically geared toward efficiently running a single application. A container is a form of operating system virtualization that is more efficient than typical hardware virtualization. It provides the necessary computing resources to run an application as if it is the only application running in the operating system — in other words, with a guarantee of no conflicts with other application containers running on the same machine. For agencies and enterprises moving applications to the cloud, the containers represent a smarter and more economical way to move to the cloud…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Converge Enterprise, a leading cloud-based CRM solution is proud to announce its nomination in the 2013 UP-START Cloud Awards. Converge Enterprise is nominated in the Best SaaS Application 2013 category along with 23 other contestants. The nominations have been published in the website of UP 2013 Cloud Computing Conference.

The UP-START Cloud Awards is a worldwide effort to recognize and honor the next generation Cloud Computing companies. It is a universal de-facto recognition platform that brings together entrepreneurs, business owners and investors to showcase their products/solutions; receive coveted industry recognition and win a tangible prize…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

"The enthusiasm for getting everything out of your data center and into the public cloud is starting to wane." That’s the assessment from Eric Hanselman (pictured), chief analyst at the 451 Research Group based on his latest study on cloud computing usage trends, which he presented this week at Cloud Connect in Chicago.

The interest among enterprises in public cloud computing platforms has grown steadily over the last couple of years in 451’s survey it commissions every few months. In the latest round though, the interest in public IaaS resources has begun to level off. Instead of growing again, IT directors of Fortune 2000 companies interviewed by 451 are no more likely today to explore IaaS compared to four months prior…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Robin Chase, founder of ZipCar, told attendees at Cloud Connect 2013 in Chicago that the human race must reorganize around the means provided by cloud computing and social networking to better utilize resources to solve pressing world problems.

Chase spoke in Tuesday’s opening keynote session to argue that human activity in recent history has consisted of individuals spending part of their week working for a company, then acting as a consumer for the rest of the time. Now those roles are beginning to merge as consumers gain the social networking and feedback mechanisms to react to their consumer experiences. Their reactions in turn influence the course of the companies around them. She refers to her ideas, which focus on individuals acting without waiting for their governments, as "cooperative capitalism" involving businesses that share "excess capacity" in the hands of individuals…

Grazed from InvestingDaily. Author: Chad Fraser.

The move toward cloud computing continues to pick up speed. According to a September report from technology research firm IDC, global spending on public IT cloud services will total $47.4 billion in 2013 and will rise to over $107 billion in 2017. In all, cloud computing’s compound annual growth rate (CAGR) during the period (23.5%) is expected to be five times that of the IT industry as a whole.

IDC sees the U.S. as holding its place as the largest public IT cloud services market, though its share will fall from 56.9% in 2013 to 43.9% in 2017. In emerging markets, however, cloud spending is expected to post a CAGR of 37.3%, nearly twice the rate of developed countries…

Grazed from PropertyCasualty360. Author: Anya Khalamayzer.

Risk managers may have their head in the clouds with concern over the liabilities of cloud computing. However, an uptick in companies moving to cloud data hasn’t correlated to a cybercrime storm, says Bryan Sartin, director of Verizon Enterprise Solutions’ Research, Investigations, Solutions, Knowledge (RISK) Team.

“By and large, major cloud providers have figured out their own native security architecture, so hackers can’t use the same recipe of attacks on different providers,” says Sartin. It is the risk manager’s company that should be concerned about its safety culture, especially those in the financial and insurance industries, which Sartin says are “classic” victims of cyber attacks…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Jeremy Kirk.

Google is lending its vast infrastructure to websites that may be targeted by distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks because of their content. The program, called "Project Shield," is invite-only and accepting applications from websites dealing with news, human rights or election-related content.

Those accepted will benefit from Google’s DDoS defenses, which help repel barrages of traffic designed to cause websites to stop responding. DDoS attacks are an effective, low-cost way to disrupt companies and organizations. The attacks are difficult to counter even for well-resourced organizations that can afford separate security services specializing in DDoS mitigation…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing storage is on the rise, and that’s creating new vendor offerings in the market. A new survey found that the United States is the largest revenue generator in the worldwide cloud-based storage market. The growth of acceptance of the cloud to digitally store information has created better choices for midsize firms aiming to implement the cloud at an affordable price point.

Bright Forecast

Global research firm TechNavio recently released its official forecast of the cloud storage market. The results show that the market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 36 percent until 2016. Out of all the global regions, North America is considered the largest adopter of cloud computing storage technologies. The highest enterprise adopters include the manufacturing sector and the information and communication technologies (ICT) sector. Companies in the fields of retail, health care and entertainment will also be implementing cloud storage at an aggressive pace in the future…