Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Google (GOOG) is offering its mobile app Quickoffice — a tool for working with Microsoft (MSFT) Office documents — for free to to all users. The app was previously available to Google Apps for Business users and enables users view and work with Microsoft Office documents across all devices, from PCs to iPad, iPhone and Android phones and tablets. The VAR Guy has said that QuickOffice could be Google’s ultimate Trojan Horse into the Microsoft Office market.

The release of QuickOffice to all users for free has the potential to further disrupt Microsoft’s lock on the productivity market. "Everyone likes free stuff, which is why … we’re making Quickoffice available for free, for everyone," Google Engineering Vice President Alan Warren acknowledged in a Google blog post…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: TalkinCloud.

Big Data analytics are being used to help organizations make better decisions based on large volumes of data they have collected, but such analytics are also being used to determine threats to cloud computing. The Cloud Security Alliance’s Big Data Working Group has released the results of its "Big Data Analytics for Security Intelligence" report.

The initial report does focus a little bit on the differences between traditional and Big Data before it dives into how Big Data analytics is being used to obtain actionable intelligence in real time. It’s still early on in the technology’s maturation, though, as there are still a few challenges to be overcome, according to the report. Data provenance, privacy, securing Big Data stores and human-computer interaction are all areas the report noted still need some work and continued evolution…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

In a move that represents one of the first pure cloud players to go public, Covisint unveiled its initial public offering (IPO) of 6.4 million shares this week. But this isn’t a typical Silicon Valley IPO story, as Covisint is a wholly owned subisidary of Compuware, technology performance solutions provider.

Covisint joined the Nasdaq Global Select Market to offer its shares to potential investors at $10 per share, starting yesterday. The shares being offered represent 17.6 percent of its issued and outstanding shares. Credit Suisse acted as the lead bookrunner for the IPO, with Pacific Crest Securities acting as joint bookrunner. Evercore acted as co-manager…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Raj Sabhlok.

IT departments are being marginalized by SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and the rest of the cloud-driven “aaS”es. At least that’s what some are suggesting, like Scott Bils at InformationWeek. And I’m inclined to agree, at least in spirit, if not in the specifics.

Highly automated IT services give end users do-it-yourself options — or perhaps more accurately, do-IT-yourself options — that undermine the value IT departments have traditionally delivered. And that means chief information officers and the rest of the IT team must adapt to meet changing demands and expectations — or risk becoming marginalized into irrelevance…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: John Riberio.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of multifactor authentication on its Windows Azure cloud platform. Besides using a user name and password, users can authenticate through an application on their mobile device, automated voice call, or a text message with a passcode, Microsoft said Thursday.

Windows Azure multifactor authentication can be used for applications that require additional security, including on-premises VPNs and Web applications. Users have to run the multifactor authentication server on existing hardware or in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Users can synchronize with their Windows Server Active Directory for automated user set up…

Grazed from Utilizer. Author: Yeshim Deniz.

CloudPassage, the leading cloud infrastructure security provider, Thursday announced the availability of Halo Enterprise, a security-as-a-service solution built specifically for large-scale, heterogeneous cloud infrastructure environments.

Halo Enterprise extends CloudPassage’s patented Halo cloud security platform to large enterprises with complex security and compliance requirements. Halo currently protects more than 400 production cloud deployments and automates security for more than 10,000 new cloud instances monthly…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Let’s not start using the word "predictable," but organizations are starting to settle into five different categories of cloud personas, according to new data from WideAngle, a division of NTT Com Security (formerly known as Integralis). And the new "The Five Cloud Personas – are you an Embracer or a Controller?" report has some interesting data to share on how companies are embracing not only cloud, but new technologies in general.

WideAngle based its study on a survey of more than 700 IT decision-makers in organizations with more than 500 employees in seven geographies—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Nordic region, Japan and Hong Kong. It examined the habits of organizations across the public and private sector, and came up with five distinct cloud personas, each with well-defined characteristics, said Tom Salkeild, director of professional services at WideAngle, in an interview with Talkin’ Cloud…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Alan Conley.

Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) is often associated with personal services like Dropbox, but internal business units have also been known to sign up for cloud services without IT’s knowledge, raising questions about everything from security to business service expectations.

But if you have a plan in place when it comes to business units accessing external cloud services for projects, IT and the business can get what they want without jeopardizing services or security. Here are the key things to consider:..

Grazed from Infosecurity Magazine. Author: Editorial Staff.

Gaps between the perception of cyber-risk (or cyber-safety) and the reality of a given situation seem to persist despite high-profile discussions of emerging threats. The latest concern revolves around storing data in the cloud or virtualized environment: Research reveals that 80% of companies believe that storing data in that way decreases or simply does not impact their organization’s chance of data loss. Yet, two in five companies leveraging virtual storage experienced data loss from these types of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments in the last year.

This disconnect is of particular concern considering that the survey, from Kroll Ontrack, indicated that virtual storage has certainly crossed the chasm into the mainstream: 84% of corporations are using it, and nearly one-third of respondents have 75% to 100% of their current environment stored virtually. IT departments like the IaaS model because it reduces capital expenditures on in-house servers and maintenance, and allows them to move to an opex-based model that is usually more cost-efficient and offers less administrative overhead…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Patience Wait.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the U.S. intelligence community, has entered into strategic partnerships with two cloud-oriented software developers, one specializing in data harvesting and presentation and the other offering remote mobile application testing.

Seattle-based Socrata offers a software platform that allows analysts to turn raw data from many different kinds of sources into useful information and output the results in the form of dashboards, application programming interfaces, apps and visualizations. The company focuses exclusively on ways to improve access to government data for citizens, employees and developers through its GovStat, API Foundry and open-data portal products. Socrata counts a number of governmental entities among its clients, including the World Bank, Medicare, Data.gov, the states of Oregon and Maryland, and Chicago, San Francisco and New York City…