Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Heather Clancy.

Backupify is building on its success with cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery services for Google Apps and Salesforce.com by opening up its application programming interfaces (APIs) so that other software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers can create similar solutions.

The Backupify Developer Platform, which has been in a beta test since earlier this year, is designed to let SaaS providers add backup features to their services in a matter of hours without requiring custom code. The backups are encrypted to the level of Backupify’s own services…

Grazed from IDG. Author: Brandon Butler.

The latest code release of OpenStack’s cloud computing platform named Havana is packed with features that organizers say appeal directly to enterprise audiences. OpenStack is a turning into a broad project with more than a dozen open source components. While it started with basic compute and storage functionality, it’s grown to support virtual networking, identity and access management, and now new to this week’s release are tools to help better manage and deploy clouds.

Havana’s release has two major new components, and updates to a variety of others. One major new project is code-named Heat, which is an orchestration platform that allows users to more easily provision OpenStack-based clouds. Using Heat application developers can feed templates into the program and it will automatically deploy the resources. It can launch applications, create virtual machines and it automates the entire process, they say. It also provides cross-compatibility with Amazon Web Service’s orchestration platform named CloudFormation, which means AWS templates will work in OpenStack environments…

Grazed from ChannelPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

New research states that more than two thirds (69 percent) of customers questioned believe that cloud computing is as secure as, or more secure than, on-premise IT. This is a higher figure than a year ago when only 54 percent of those surveyed believed this to be the case, demonstrating that confidence in cloud services is increasing.

The Claranet survey, which polled 300 IT decision-makers from a range of SMBs, and enterprises, found that 73 percent of respondents were using some form of cloud service, up from 62 percent in 2012. While adoption rates have shown healthy increases across all businesses, regardless of size or vertical, the most significant growth was found in the midmarket where 81 percent of organisations are now using cloud services, up from 65 percent in 2012…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Mainframe2, an innovator in cloud computing, announced and demonstrated its unique ability to deliver any software to a Web browser at DEMO 2013, a launch event exclusively concentrated on the best emerging technologies based on innovation and market potential. Dr. Nikola Bozinovic, founder and CEO of Mainframe2, showed an audience of worldwide technology veterans and press how any device (such as the Google Chromebook Pixel) running only a browser can now run even high-end 2D and 3D design software from the cloud.

"Sun’s John Gage said in 1984 that ‘the network is the computer’ a vision which modern Web-based software ranging from CRM tools to multimedia players is certainly living up to," said Dr. Bozinovic. "But many types of software such as Photoshop and AutoCAD are still delivered as packaged software designed to run locally on powerful and costly workstations. Today, leveraging the multi-year investments made by graphics industry leaders NVIDIA, Intel, and AMD we enable anyone with a browser to access these types of tools to unleash their creativity, design new products, and solve some of the world’s most challenging problems." …

Grazed from FierceGovernmentIT. Author: David Pererra.

Making good on its promise to contest an unfavorable Court of Federal Claims decision over its effort to have the CIA reconsider a lucrative contract award for intelligence community cloud computing to Amazon Web Services, IBM filed two requests for an injunction on Oct. 10.

Judge Thomas Wheeler issued an Oct. 8 order (.pdf) granting an AWS motion for judgment that vacated a Government Accountability Office June bid protest decision that found the CIA didn’t correctly compare IBM’s and AWS’s proposals. The GAO recommended the CIA reopen bid proposal evaluations, which the agency did. Wheeler’s order would make that process moot…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Richard M. Walker.

Nearly half (46%) of state and local government IT professionals in a new study said their jurisdiction has migrated — or is planning to migrate — applications to the cloud. However, state and local governments report that procuring cloud computing services remains a struggle, in part due to outmoded procurement processes.

Those are some of the conclusions reached by researchers at the Center for Digital Government in a new study released Tuesday. The survey found that more than a third of states (39%) that have migrated to the cloud, or are planning to, use shared-services agreements. Among those, 55% use statewide shared-services agreements. Fewer than 15% said they use procurement contracts for cloud services…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Corent Technology today announced that its ground-breaking SurPaaS® Velocity, an innovative, elastic, and scalable Software as a Service Delivery Platform, is now available "as a Service" on NephoScale Cloud — the very first self-service offering of its kind.

IT Link Solutions is the first software vendor to realize all the benefits of SurPaaS Velocity by taking its CRM application to production as a fully instrumented SaaS (Software as a Service) on NephoScale Cloud.  "Corent’s SurPaaS running on NephoScale’s High Performance Cloud Platform is a disruptive technology offering self-service SaaS delivery to ISVs. We applaud Corent for developing this advanced technology that simplifies, automates, and accelerates the migration path to scalable SaaS…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Jeff Baxter.

The inaugural IDC Government Insights report, released earlier this year, paints a revealing picture of how the U.S. Federal Government is spending and planning to spend information technology (IT) dollars on cloud solutions.

The report projects that federal cloud services spending will reach $1.7 billion in FY2014, and, boosted in part by U.S. Federal CIO Cloud Council efforts the past few years to usher agencies away from standalone computing to the Cloud, we are starting to see more tangible evidence of not only federal agency cloud spending, but also results…

Grazed from GlobalNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

SingleHop, a global leader in highly automated bare metal and cloud infrastructure, today announced it will exhibit its wide range of hosted bare metal and cloud infrastructure solutions at Cloud Connect Chicago, the premier technology event for the cloud community. Featuring the latest technologies, strategies and innovations, as well as a variety of cloud providers showcasing cutting edge products and services, Cloud Connect takes place October 21-23, 2013 at McCormick Place in Chicago.

As cloud computing continues to grow in importance and influence, the Cloud Connect event, produced by UBM Tech, provides CIOs, IT professionals, and developers with the information they need to deploy cloud solutions which drive business value. Through first-hand interactions with peers, luminaries, and emerging as well established companies, Cloud Connect attracts the best and brightest in the field, creating opportunities for conference attendees and customers to learn about cloud computing’s most important issues…

Grazed from Diginomica. Author: Phil Wainwright.

European policy makers are in a race against time to flesh out their strategy for encouraging the development and adoption of cloud services in Europe. But with so many different stakeholders to satisfy and so much at stake — almost €1 trillion in estimated economic benefits for example — the risk of failure is high.

The potential prize is the creation of a single market for cloud computing that allows European businesses to participate globally in the digital era. But it could all go off the rails in a matter of months.Speaking at the EuroCloud Congress in Luxembourg earlier today, Andreas Tegge, vice president of EU government relations at SAP, warned of the risks if the cloud industry fails to produce answers to the policy makers’ concerns:…