Grazed from TechRepublic. Author: Mary Shacklett.

IT governance is linked to security and data protection standards—but it is more than that. Governance includes aligning IT with business strategies, optimizing operational and system workflows and processes, and the insertion of an IT control structure for IT assets that meets the needs of auditors and regulators.

As more companies move to cloud-based solutions like SaaS (software as a service), regulators and auditors are also sharpening their requirements. “What we are seeing is an increased number of our corporate clients asking us for our own IT audits, which they, in turn, insert into their enterprise audit papers that they show auditors and regulators,” said one SaaS manager…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Neil McEvoy.

The issue of deploying and managing a cloud across international borders is highlighted by the Edward Snowden incident, which revealed extensive government surveillance through the PRISM initiative — heightening paranoia that any data hosted in the cloud is increasingly at risk of this type of snooping.

However, is this paranoia valid? And if so, what are the best practices for securing your information in an age of cloud across borders? While the world is still in its early days of coping with cloud governance, what is more immediately clear is the role cloud providers and security technologies will play in meeting this evolving challenge…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Ubuntu Juju is making its debut on the Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Azure public cloud platform. According to an Azure blog post by Venkat Gattamneni, Azure is now fully supported by Juju as part of Microsoft’s efforts to commit to being an open and interoperable cloud platform.

That means Ubuntu users now can use Juju to design and deploy application infrastructure simply and easily onto Azure—something that should give Azure a leg up over (or at least bring it in line with) competing cloud platforms. For Ubuntu and the various developers and partners who deal within the open source Linux platform, this expands their footprint to the growing world of Azure, which is arguably in the second or third place in terms of cloud platforms (depending on who you ask or which research you read)…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Rackspace Vice President of Technology Nigel Beighton took the stage Thursday at Structure: Europe to talk about the five most important tools for any company deploying infrastructure in the cloud. Infrastructure-as-a-service is a great thing, he told the crowd, but it’s also full of potential land mines.

How good is the cloud? Well, Beighton explained that an online travel company he worked for during the dot-com boom used to spend about £100,000 every year to scale up for the post-Christmas travel-booking spike. Once that demanded subsided, his team put those extra servers to use playing Doom. Come the next year, they’d do the same thing…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Fusion-io (NYSE: FIO) today announced that the Fusion ION Data Accelerator all-flash shared storage solution now features integrated support for Oracle Enterprise Manager cloud computing management software and Oracle VM Server virtualization software. ION Data Accelerator software delivers powerful shared storage performance using industry standard server platforms and Fusion ioMemory to provide real-world acceleration for enterprise applications from leaders like Oracle, expediting business-critical information across cloud computing, virtualization, data warehousing, online transactions and business intelligence.

"At Oracle OpenWorld 2013, the focus is on simplifying IT to enable business transformation," said Jeff Treuhaft, Fusion-io Executive Vice President of Products. "As an easily integrated solution for sharing powerful all-flash performance across enterprise applications like those from Oracle, Fusion ION Data Accelerator is an ideal way for enterprises to improve business responsiveness with application performance that gets noticed. The integration of Oracle Enterprise Manager and Oracle VM support now makes it even more transparent for IT teams to manage the performance provided by ION Data Accelerator throughout an enterprise’s infrastructure."…

Grazed from CFOWorld. Author: Kenneth Corbin.

As federal agencies gear up for a series of major IT transitions, a majority of government network managers say that their systems lack the capacity that will be required to meet the additional load that cloud computing, big data and other looming initiatives will entail.

In a new survey by the government IT group MeriTalk, underwritten by the networking vendor Brocade, 59 percent of the technology workers polled said that those initiatives, if deployed today, would reach or exceed their agency’s network capacity…

Grazed from MediaCaster. Author: PR Announcement.

The Canadian Innovation Exchange (CIX) announced that Wael Mohamed of Trend Micro will be giving a feature interview at this year’s event in November. CIX is a showcase of Canadian companies working in digital media and information and communication technology; it also features interactive sessions led by some of the top business leaders, investors and entrepreneurs in information and communication technology and digital media. The event culminates in a tech competition to name the CIX Top 20 companies in Canada.

The Trend Micro/Mohamed interview is the first announcement of the 2013 CIX program. As Executive Vice President at Trend Micro, Mohamed is responsible for the corporate strategy for the global cloud and virtualization Security Company, and for its field operations in 35 countries…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Cloud infrastructure-as-a-service provider (IaaS) CloudSigma has released hybrid cloud hosting today for customers at its cloud locations, including Switch SuperNAP in Las Vegas; Interxion in Zurich, Switzerland; and Equinix.

The colocated space at each of these locations as well as private patching to the company’s public cloud provides customers with the security and elasticity required for sensitive data and demanding workloads, the company said in a statement…

Grazed from TechRepublic. Author: Nick Heath.

The practice of renting virtualised pools of servers and storage over the net is known as infrastructure as a service (IaaS), and is the most popular class of cloud service available today. But most businesses are only making limited use of IaaS, with the majority restricting their use to spinning up application development and test environments or to rapidly provisioning extra server capacity during periods of heavy demand.

The reasons for this limited adoption are many: concerns about security of data and systems controlled by a third party, worries over the reliability of systems run by a cloud provider and served over the internet, and the premium paid for getting a vendor to provide infrastructure over running it in-house…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Corent Technology, the first IBM Technology Provider Partner certified as "Ready for IBM SmartCloud," today announced the publication of a new whitepaper that examines how an innovative Private SaaS platform enables enterprises to take even greater advantage of the efficiencies of the cloud.

"Private SaaS: The Next Big Wave of Innovation for the Enterprise" outlines the significant economic gains and utility of Private SaaS within an enterprise and its "extended enterprise" that includes vendors, customers and supporting partners…