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…

Grazed from Ferret. Author: Editorial Staff.

Leading innovator and provider of network storage solutions Asustor NAS (ASUSTOR) has launched its brand new AS 2 series network attached storage (NAS) targeted at personal and home users. The AS 2 series comprises of the AS-20XT series (AS-202T/AS-204T) designed to give users the essentials for creating a personal cloud and the AS-20XTE series (AS-202TE/AS-204TE) designed to give users both personal cloud and digital entertainment functionality.

Offering both high quality and functionality at an economical price, the 2 series has been designed not only to meet the needs of consumers but also as a great entry level product for first time NAS users. Allen Yen, Sales Director at ASUSTOR explains the economical 2 series featuring powerful Intel dual core processors for reliable, top-notch performance has been launched to meet the diverse needs of individual and SOHO users. The 2 series provides customers with a great value at an extremely competitive price point, which significantly lowers the barriers to an entry level NAS solution…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Kelly Sheridan.

The Interop New York Conference and Expo, held from Sept. 30 through Oct. 4, will focus on innovations and strategies to help your business make the best use of the technology tools available today. Interop showcases the latest innovative technology products and services and offers enterprise IT managers the opportunity to hear a broad range of viewpoints on how to use those technologies to further business goals.

A stellar lineup of industry experts, analysts and peers will participate in a host of panels and discussions highlighting best practices and exploring alternative approaches. This year Interop is co-located with the Ethernet & SDN Expo. The partnership has made Interop the world’s largest event for both service providers and IT professionals. As service providers and network systems companies debate the future of core computing and networking technologies, IT managers can gain insight on developments in IT networking and computing infrastructure trends…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Frederic Paul.

For years now, advocates have been claiming that cloud computing would follow the path of power utilities, with the vast majority of customers choosing to buy the computing resources they need from some central utility rather than generate it themselves. It has become an article of faith that due to economies of scale, this utility model would always deliver better service for less money than trying to go it alone.

That may still be true for cloud computing, but an article in today’s Wall Street Journal suggests that the analogy is no longer a slam dunk. It’s not because of some fundamental difference in cloud computing, but because as "more companies across the country are producing their own power," the electric utilities may no longer be a model that cloud computing wants to emulate…

Grazed from CloudConnect. Author: Editorial Staff.

When applied to the right environments, Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and DevOps methods make IT and business environments more agile. Combined, they streamline processes and provide predictability of pre-integration and enhanced consistency in development and production environments. But, PaaS and DevOps methods aren’t perfect. Complete freedom can be difficult to achieve due to vendor constraints and there are still serious concerns about PaaS scale and uptime.

To be successful, enterprises must learn to embrace new DevOps methods, know what environments to use PaaS and which not to, and the difference between public and private PaaS strategies. The PaaS Track at Cloud Connect Chicago, led by industry veteran Wendy White, Principal at Surge Marketing Group, answers these key questions pertinent to anyone considering PaaS strategies. Sessions include:…

Grazed from BetaNews. Author: Ian Barker.

Microsoft and AT&T have announced a collaboration to allow enterprise customers to connect to Microsoft’s cloud platform using a private network. The solution will use cloud integration technology to pair VPN with Azure and allow customers to benefit from enterprise grade security with as much as 50 percent lower latency compared to a normal public Internet connection.

"This is a game changer for businesses that have been seeking a more secure way to reap the benefits of cloud services," says Andy Geisse, CEO, AT&T Business Solutions. "By bringing the security and performance of our virtual private network to Windows Azure, we expect to energize enterprise demand for cloud solutions"…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: George Crump.

In my last column we discussed some of the limitations of cloud-based backup and why more cloud providers should provide some form of external, portable storage to overcome those challenges. I used tape technology as an example. The second and potentially larger problem with tapeless cloud backup is the recovery process. Vendors’ claims about the lack of tape value are getting out of hand.

If you lose an entire server, the data deduplication that helps you in backup is not going to save you from an extended period of downtime while this data trickles through the Internet. There is no baseline to compare it to and, even if there was, most software solutions can’t do a deduplicated recovery…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Kathy Kim.

Cisco distributor Comstor strengthened its cloud play with a new partnership. Comstor, the Cisco distribution business of WestCon Group, announced a new cloud distribution partnership with PeakColo Tuesday. The partnership will make PeakColo’s cloud services platform readily available to channel partners.

The PeakColo partnership will allow Comstor resellers to offer white-label, Cisco-powered cloud offerings, said Geoff Fancher, senior vice president of Comstor. "Our goal is to help partners grow and be successful in their businesses, and these offers will help them expand their portfolio to provide white-label, cloud-based offers that are based on Cisco technology," said Fancher. "White-labeling will offer the partner flexibility in how they want to bring the product to market."…

Grazed from Nasdaq. Author: Chris Ciaccia.

Adobe Systems shares surged in early Wednesday trading despite the company missing estimates, as its cloud subscription revenue and subscriptions came in better than forecast. Adobe is transitioning from a software company into a cloud computing company, putting its Creative Cloud software in the cloud. On that front, Adobe beat Wall Street’s estimates soundly, adding 331,000 subscriptions, well ahead of a Briefing.com estimate of 262,000 subscribers.

At the end of the quarter, the San Jose-based Adobe said subscribers topped the 1 million mark. “Our customers are overwhelmingly choosing subscriptions instead of perpetual model licenses which is accelerating our business model transition,” Adobe’s executive vice president and CFO Mark Garrett said in a press release. “During Q3, 41 percent of our revenue was recurring and we exited the quarter with record deferred revenue on our balance sheet…