Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Joe Donovan.

Tax laws are always a few beats behind technology. Interstate telephone calls were taxed based on the billing address of the phone customer and the location at the end of some copper wire of sending and receiving equipment. Now one end of a call may be on a subway line, the other in an airplane traveling from Boston to Paris. Who gets to tax it?

The latest conundrum: Both business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions are moving to the cloud, and some startups are putting all of their IT infrastructure in provider sites. How, in an integrated 50-state economy, are tax concepts supposed to deal with this in a way that’s practical and doesn’t become an unfair burden for any entity? Of course, all computing takes place on servers that are physically located somewhere. Maybe you hire a cloud provider to store company records. You may not know where those records are at any given moment…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Poor HP (HPQ). The technology giant is experiencing trouble, as indicated by CEO Meg Whitman only a couple of days ago during a Q3 2013 earnings call. As Talkin’ Cloud noted in its coverage, HP failed to provide any evidence of cloud computing momentum during the quarter, and the company even scaled back its revenue expectations for the 2014 fiscal year.

However, the company is placing big bets on cloud computing and is hoping to drive that future success through its channel partners. Cassandra Mooshian, an industry analyst with Technology Business Research (TBR), noted that HP Enterprises Services is continuing to struggle and will likely weaken even more through the rest of 2013 and into 2014. But cloud—and partner success in cloud—may be the bright spot that could turn the struggling business unit around…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Sourya Biswas.

The private cloud has become a popular option for enterprises who desire the numerous advantages of cloud computing but do not want to relinquish the control that public cloud adoption will force. However, private cloud implementations come with their own set of challenges.

Private cloud, as an approach to IT operations, calls for organizations to transform their data centers, including the network. Using strategic points of control to aggregate and dynamically provision IT resources can help organizations meet network-related challenges and move past the hype to successfully build, deploy, and secure private clouds…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The International Association of Cloud & Managed Service Providers (MSPAlliance®), today announced it would be addressing the issues of data privacy and security related to public cloud computing at its MSPWorld Fall Conference, to be held October 6-8 in San Jose, California.

In response to recent government surveillance programs implicating public cloud computing vendors, and including reports that the cloud, hosting, and outsourcing providers could lose up to $180 billion in lost business as a result of these surveillance programs, MSPAlliance believes there are practical and effective strategies IT service providers can implement in order to safeguard against these unnecessary losses…

Grazed from InfoSecurity. Author: Editorial Staff.

The United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) has pumped nearly $20 million into three cybersecurity initiatives, to support collaborative, multi-university research and education activities that will help protect the nation’s critical infrastructure.

"Cybersecurity is one of the most significant economic and national security challenges facing our nation today," said Farnam Jahanian, the NSF’s assistant director for computer and information science and engineering (CISE), in a statement. "NSF’s investments in foundational research will transform our capacity to secure personal privacy, financial assets, and national interests. These new Frontier awards will enable innovative approaches to cybersecurity, with potential benefits to all sectors of our economy."…

Iveda Solutions, the pioneer in cloud video hosting technology, today announced the launch of VEMO™, the Company’s new cloud-based, in-vehicle video surveillance system with Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite navigation technology.

"There are many in-vehicle surveillance systems in the market today," commented David Ly, president and chief executive officer of Iveda Solutions, Inc. "The VEMO system is unique because it is fully integrated with cellular capability to stream live video to the cloud and enabled for use with IvedaOnBoard™, the Company’s mobile streaming video hosting service. Live and recorded video from law enforcement and other vehicles is hosted in the cloud and centrally managed. Videos may be viewed on a single ‘dashboard’ that includes a GPS map-based user interface for tracking the current location of vehicles using VEMO."

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Jane MaCallion.

HP CEO Meg Whitman claims cloud, big data and application modernisation are central to the firm’s turnaround strategy, despite its third quarter results suggesting its cloud business is underperforming. In a call with analysts, transcribed by Seeking Alpha, Whitman stepped back from earlier statements that the company could return to revenue growth in 2014 following the disclosure of its Q3 results.

The company’s software division was one of the few that demonstrated year-on-year revenue growth, and Whitman said she was “especially pleased with the continued performance in [HP’s] strategic areas of cloud, security and big data”…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Richard M. Walker.

After years of stumbling along in fits and starts, the Army’s migration to an enterprise-wide email system is nearly complete. Most Army users can now access their email securely from anywhere in the world at any time. Officials said Wednesday that more than 1.4 million Army users have migrated onto the unclassified NIPRNet and 115,000 users onto the classified SIPRNet, completing "the bulk" of the Army’s move to the system, called DOD Enterprise Email (DEE).

The Army’s adoption of the system is the first phase of a Defense Department-wide move to a private cloud hosted by the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Enterprise Computing Centers. Under Department of Defense (DOD) goals, the system will eventually support 4.5 million users across the department…