Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jeffrey Burt.

Andrew Feldman, corporate vice president and general manager of Advanced Micro Devices’ Server Business Unit, likes to show a couple of photos to illustrate how rapid and widespread the adoption of mobile devices and cloud computing has been.

The first photo shows the crowd at the papal inauguration of Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Except for the random cell phone here and there, there is essentially no evidence of a mobile device in the crowd. Fast forward to 2013 and the inauguration of Pope Francis and practically every person is holding up a smartphone or tablet, the bright bluish-white of the screens decorating the top of the crowd. All those mobile devices are pulling down data and running apps that are housed in servers and accessed via the cloud, putting tremendous pressure on data center infrastructures…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Jo Maitland.

It’s well-known that cloud computing is a disruptive force bearing down on enterprise IT — but not in the same way for everyone. In fact, the latest GigaOM research survey shows that those in senior IT management often have a very different take on cloud computing than that of the people working for them.

This report looks at the June survey of 302 IT decision makers at companies with over 500 employees. We partnered with venture capital firm North Bridge to examine cloud adoption trends across a broader spectrum of cloud users. Those results are found here…

Grazed from StreamingMedia. Author: Claudia Kienzle.

The media marketplace is changing rapidly, with many content creators streaming media to a growing spectrum of online, social media, and mobile outlets. There’s a wide variance in video quality, file sizes, and compression codecs; the sheer volume of media assets are simply exploding, leaving media professionals struggling to maintain a competitive edge. As these pressures collide with other technology trends — such as widespread internet connectivity, ever-increasing bandwidth, and powerful data centers — the thunderclap has given way to the cooling rains of video cloud computing services.

By moving their video workload to the cloud, media entrepreneurs can hit the ground running and pay as they go for processing-intensive services such as encoding, transcoding, asset management, and storage. End users might pay per transaction, monthly subscription, or an annual fee. With a solid internet connection and web browser, the workplace can be the nearest cafe or virtually anywhere in the world with colleagues collaborating via the cloud…

Grazed from PC Advisor. Author: Phoebe Magdirila.

Cloud computing, that much touted game-changing technology for the enterprise, has been the focus of many IT forums and seminars in recent years. And interest in it continues to grow as a number of companies are now claiming that it has helped them improve their efficiency while allowing them to save on costs. But despite the hype that surrounds it — which has made cloud computing the biggest buzz word in the tech arena today — there are issues that have yet to be settled and clarified with regards its true worth.

Having a nose for the next big technology or killer app is, of course, a requirement for CIOs and IT managers wishing to go up the competitive ladder. And while cloud computing is being hyped as one of those technologies that can do wonders for a business, many are still reluctant to jump on the bandwagon…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Being first mover has its advantages. Among public cloud services, Amazon still boasts the vast majority of IaaS customers and the richest array of features (see InfoWorld’s public cloud megaguide for details).  But is Amazon the place for production enterprise workloads? The idea of putting the family jewels in the public cloud tends to make enterprise IT managers squirm. Generally speaking, those workloads stay in the data center.

VMware thinks it can change that with a hybrid cloud strategy, where on-premises VMware infrastructure melds with public IaaS to yield one seamless cloud. Bill Fathers, senior vice president and general manager for hybrid cloud, sketched out this approach to InfoWorld last week…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Chris Patterson.

The world of desktop computing is ripe for change as traditional computing infrastructures no longer have the flexibility and capabilities to handle the demands of today’s mobile work force. IT departments are burdened with the complexity and cost of maintaining and securing mobile devices, and are beginning to implement BYOD policies to help manage these challenges. According to a recent survey conducted by NaviSite, 80 percent of respondents agree that BYOD is the “new normal,” yet surprisingly, only 45 percent have a formal BYOD policy in their workplace.

While this discrepancy is a culmination of factors, the greatest deterrent to adopting a BYOD policy is security; 68 percent of respondents said they were very concerned or extremely concerned when thinking about securing enterprise data on employee mobile devices…

Grazed from BBB. Author: Katie Bourgoyne.

We have become increasingly dependent on lightening quick technology, so of course we’d expect nothing less when it comes to storing our data. As if sent from tech heaven, the cloud has become the answer to this demand. If you have access to the Internet, Cloud Computing wirelessly syncs your information, files, videos, pictures, etc. For many, this is a “say-no-more” convenience and will be their trusted method of data storage. But for others, this cloud concept is concerning, and leads to questions about who else has access to our personal files. Mashable suggests that for those of you who are worried about privacy and tracking, you need to decrease the amount of personal data and files you have stored online. Here are 6 steps you can take to “de-cloud” yourself:

• Use your computer’s hard drive instead of cloud storage. To help eliminate the risk of third party data access, save files to your personal hard drive rather than the cloud. Cloud-based services like Dropbox or Google Drive are great for efficiency and don’t take up much disk space, but they are more susceptible for to tracking. Mashable also suggests disk encryption, “A disk encryption password protects all of your hard drive’s data; even if it were physically removed, only those with the correct passwords could access or copy files. Both Mac and Windows have built-in disk encryption tools.”…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, today announced it has been named a 2013 Emerging Technology vendor by UBM Tech Channel’s CRN Magazine. The annual list highlights hot tech startups making an impact on the channel and a strong impression on the tech industry as a whole. These up-and-coming technology vendors have recently introduced a new product or technology that is not only innovative but generates the high margins solution providers require in today’s competitive marketplace.

The CloudBees Platform as a Service (PaaS) continues to stand out in the industry as the only Java PaaS that is in production and is supporting the entire development and deployment of thousands of production applications today. CloudBees’ recent acquisition of FoxWeave advances the company’s PaaS leadership, bringing native data migration and synchronization services to the CloudBees Platform and simplifying the way developers compose services and weave them together with PaaS-hosted application logic…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud-storage and cloud-backup services are so popular today that it can be difficult to decide which provider is right for you. Do you just want to backup data or do you also want to sync files across different devices? Will you need more storage space than the 5GB or 10GB that are typically offered for free? What about security?

Nextadvisor.com, which bill itself as an “independent research” site for consumers, took a close look at a number of popular cloud providers and came up with a helpful comparison chart that lists eight options. (Four of the eight providers are listed in the chart below.) It’s a good idea to keep the following points in mind when considering cloud-service providers:…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

VMware’s dominant share of the cloud platform market among top Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) providers is eroding mainly as a result of gains by open source OpenStack and CloudStack platforms. According to Strategy Analytics Business Cloud Strategies (BCS) service report, "Business Cloud Platforms Powering Top IaaS Service Providers: Open Source Software Alternatives are Driving Change," VMware powers one-third of all services revenue from the top IaaS cloud providers with $100+M in revenue as of 2012, more than any other platform including Amazon Web Services (AWS). However, VMware’s share has been trending downward over the past several years as cloud service providers consider open source and commercial alternatives from Microsoft, OnApp, 8×8 and others when choosing to buy rather than build their own cloud platforms.

"Flexibility and agility are critical elements of cloud computing not only for customers but for service providers as well. With cloud market opportunities still looking hazy regarding what services to offer and how significant public and private cloud solutions will be for their businesses, cloud service providers are looking to choose the cloud platform that will keep their options open and deliver the biggest return on investments," commented Mark Levitt, Director of Business Cloud Strategies research at Strategy Analytics…