Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Jason Miller.

The National Weather Service recently migrated its high performance computing to a new capability in a private cloud. Instead of running its own hardware and software, NWS moved to a managed service from IBM under a $19 million-a-year contract. "We have more than doubled our capacity from 90 terabytes to about 213 terabytes a second.

This is potentially a game-changer what we are looking at to be able to provide better services," said Iftikhar Jamil, the associate chief information officer for weather at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "We want to be able to do complex computations at a much faster rate, and this is the capability that will provide more accuracy, higher fidelity and in a faster processing time so people will see the results faster."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Chris Grasso.

It was only a matter of time before businesses turned to alternative methods of storing and processing data. At the rate businesses were expanding, it wasn’t worth storing the data physically and running all of the processes locally. Enter cloud computing. Cloud computing is essentially utilizing the Internet to manage, store, and process data instead of hosting it locally. Many businesses are turning toward cloud computing, and here are a few reasons why.

Expanding Storage Potential

With an increase in business comes more data. That data has to be stored somewhere. Instead of regularly buying new hard drives and external hard drives, many businesses have turned to cloud services. Cloud services are constantly expanding, and some offer a large amount of space at a premium price…

Grazed from NEC. Author: PR Announcement.

NEC Corporation today announced the launch of sales activities for a new cloud-based service, the "NEC Cloud IaaS," to begin in October 2013. This service will support a wide range of customer demands, while ensuring performance, reliability and cost effectiveness. The service is expected to launch in April 2014 and to operate from the "NEC Kanagawa Data Center" scheduled to open in January 2014.

The NEC Cloud IaaS provides ICT resources as a service, including servers and storage, while featuring two service models that consist of the "NEC Cloud Iaas (Standard)," featuring highly valued functions at a low cost, and the "NEC Cloud IaaS (High Availability)," featuring high performance and high reliability.

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

As cloud computing continues to rise in popularity, IT professionals are becoming more concerned with the costs associated with it. A cloud study revealed that while cloud may be a top investment for firms this year, almost 80 percent of CIOs are concerned about the hidden expenses. The results of the study are particularly interesting for midsize firms where IT budgets and cost are important.

Hidden Fees

Research In Action from Compuware Corporation conducted the study to take a closer look at the information infrastructure projects that companies around the world are taking on. Cloud is a leader; however, IT professionals pointed out that costs such as subscription fees, system setup and staff training are often hidden by cloud providers. Additionally, the study pointed out that 35 percent of CIOs believe that costs could increase if there are any cloud implementation problems that require new solutions to be found. The Cloud Times article that featured these results also pointed out that power shortages, heavy traffic and security issues are other factors that could potentially cause costs to hike…

Grazed from TechWorld. Author: Paul Lidsky.

Cloud computing discussions abound these days, but there is a growing gap between executives and IT when it comes to assessing cloud’s potential. Based on our experience working with enterprise and mid-size organizations on a variety of cloud models, we take a look at cloud thinking from both sides of the table. We also offer a few pointers on how best to close this divide and focus the organization on the ultimate prize: a successful cloud deployment that reaps healthy returns for the company and its employees at every level of the organization.

Executives expect fast returns

Most of today’s executives have read positive cloud case studies. They may have heard how well public cloud services operate, especially in the areas of CRM, sales, human resources and finance. And naturally they wonder if they could realize the same results. If they hesitate and don’t leverage cloud services soon enough, will a competitor gain market share?…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Patrick Thibodeau.

Frank Baitman, the CIO of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), was at the Amazon Web Services conference here praising the company’s services. His talk was on the verge of becoming a long infomercial, when he stepped back and changed direction. Baitman has reason to speak well of Amazon. As the big government system integrators slept, Amazon rushed in with its cloud model and began selling its services to federal agencies. The HHS and Amazon worked together in a real sense.

The agency helped Amazon get an all-important security certification best known by its acronym, FedRAMP, while Amazon moved the agency’s health data to the cloud. Amazon was the first large cloud vendor to get the FedRAMP security certification…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Outsell (www.outsell.com), a digital marketing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company that is transforming the way automotive brands engage with consumers, announced today the release of Outsell Social in its Digital Engagement Platform.

Outsell’s easy-to-use Digital Engagement Platform allows automobile manufacturers, agencies, marketing associations and individual dealers to share in the development of brand-consistent, analytics-driven marketing programs that drive superior sales results via personalized communications orchestrated across email, SMS, mobile, chat — and now, social…

Grazed from ScientificComputing. Author: Editorial Staff.

For small and midsize organizations, the outsourcing of demanding computational tasks to the cloud — huge banks of computers accessible over the Internet — can be much more cost-effective than buying their own hardware. But it also poses a security risk: A malicious hacker could rent space on a cloud server and use it to launch programs that hijack legitimate applications, interfering with their execution.

In August, at the International Cryptology Conference, researchers from MIT and Israel’s Technion and Tel Aviv University presented a new system that can quickly verify that a program running on the cloud is executing properly. That amounts to a guarantee that no malicious code is interfering with the program’s execution…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthor Cole.

It’s almost impossible these days to view any development in the IT industry outside the lens of cloud computing. Just about every facet of data technology is geared toward either getting on the cloud or enhancing the experience for those already there. For the vendor community in particular, the cloud has become an obsession—the prevailing wisdom being that those who are not building cloud-ready solutions right now are doomed to the worst fate in technologydom: obsolescence.

The New York Times’ Quentin Hardy summed it up pretty well this week, pointing to Dell’s privatization strategy and HP’s perpetual reorganization in light of the shift from personal computers to mobile devices, which themselves are subsumed into the larger cloud ecosystem…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

OGRE Systems, Inc. announced today the formation of OGRE Data Systems, a big data and analytics cloud computing system for the upstream and midstream oil and gas industry, exclusively distributed by TerraPetro, LLC.

OGRE Systems, Inc. is a resource estimation, reserves economic analysis, and management software company that provides powerful Petroleum Reserves Management Systems (PRMS) to national and international oil and gas companies. With OGRE Data Systems, powerful reserves and economics tools are now available directly from any Internet connected tablet or PC at www.ogr3.com. It is packaged with lease specific production data, customizable auto-fitted decline curve analysis tools for forward modeling, and a user-friendly interface…