Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Today, Cloud Connect Chicago, produced by UBM Tech, announces a new conference program built around the most competitive enterprise cloud stacks including OpenStack, CloudStack and Amazon Web Services. As the premier technology event for the cloud community, featuring the latest technologies, strategies and innovations, Cloud Connect will return to Chicago October 21—23 in a new downtown location, McCormick Place. For more information or to register visit: http://www.cloudconnectevent.com/chicago/.

For many organizations, cloud computing has become an integral part of IT, but they continue to face critical technology decisions as competing platforms push for market leadership. As such, this year’s program for Cloud Connect Chicago pits major industry players against each other with five conference tracks, each to represent a divergent cloud software strategy: Amazon Web Services & Eucalyptus, CloudStack, OpenStack, Platform-as-a-Service and Virtualization & Private Cloud. As the unique architectures have both benefits and limitations, speakers affiliated with the different tracks will address key technology considerations and business impact across the leading use cases…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Juan Carlos Perez.

Dropping the veil of secrecy over Office 365 uptime, Microsoft has released availability data for each of the past four quarters and is celebrating the results. Between July 2012 and June 2013, the overall quarterly uptime for the cloud-hosted email and collaboration suite hit 99.98 percent, 99.97 percent, 99.94 percent and 99.97 percent, Microsoft said on Thursday in a blog post.

Those percentages are calculated based on the number of minutes in each calendar month and the number of minutes in which the Business, Government and Education editions of Office 365 were available worldwide. "Individual customers may experience higher or lower uptime percentages compared to the global uptime numbers depending on location and usage patterns," the blog post reads…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Matt Prigge.

Recently, a colleague pointed me toward cloud backup provider Backupify. At first, I yawned and almost didn’t read further. However, something caught my eye: Backupify isn’t your run-of-the-mill cloud backup service. Instead of protecting your on-premises data with a backup in the cloud as so many providers do, it backs up data hosted in other cloud services such as Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, and Salesforce.com, then stores those point-in-time backups in Amazon.com’s cloud. It’s still cloud backup, but with an important twist.

Although I haven’t tried Backupify’s services myself and can’t pass judgment on whether it’s any good, I can say that this take on cloud backups is unique. Backupify doesn’t make the usual claim that you should back up these services because they might lose your data. Instead, Backupify pitches its service based on the fact that you might lose your data (say, through accidental deletion) or a hacker might do it for you…

Grazed from PistonCloud. Author: PR Announcement.

Over the last year, Piston has been training users on the setup, administration and management of OpenStack from our home city of San Francisco. This two-day course has been a great way for us to share our expertise and hear about how companies are using OpenStack inside their organizations, but holding it here in San Francisco meant that access was limited to those with the time and budget to travel.

I’m happy to announce that Piston’s training program is now available online, and our first course, “OpenStack 101,” is scheduled for August 28th. We’re accepting registrations now. This three-hour interactive instructor-led course will cover everything from the basics of cloud computing to a comprehensive look at the components of OpenStack. Students will have hands-on access to OpenStack clouds powered by our software, Piston OpenStack…

Grazed from Talkin Cloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

The Cloud Alliance for Google Apps welcomed three new members yesterday to its exclusive club of independent cloud software providers that build and deploy applications with the Google (GOOG) Apps platform. Zendesk, Esna and UberConference joined founding members BetterCloud, Insightly, RunMyProcess, Smartsheet, and Spanning, as well as Harvest, Lucidchart, ShuttleCloud and Yesware, who joined the Alliance in June 2012, to offer benefits and various support resources for customers.

According to the network, these additional providers were chosen based on customer feedback, depth of integration with the Google Apps suite and market-leading potential in their respective fields, customer service software, unified communications and teleconferencing…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Jeff John Roberts.

Google is ramping up its campaign to protect the cloud from the sort of nuisance patent lawsuits that have engulfed the smartphone and app-developer industries. On Thursday, the company designated 79 more patents to be part of its “Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge,” which amounts to a non-aggression pact under which anyone can use the technology described in the patents — anyone, that is, who doesn’t use patents to attack Google first.

The news, announced in a blog post, is significant because the patents relate to essential elements of “big data,” which is one the most important fields in technology right now. Google hopes the newly added patents, which it acquired from IBM and CA Technologies, expand the areas of cloud software in which developers can innovate without fear of being sued…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Editorial Staff.

Increasingly, developers are looking for ways to build applications easily. They want to focus on the product, and don’t want to worry about the underlying infrastructure — the tedious junk like deploying servers, databases, and operating systems.

Engine Yard is one of the leading companies offering a so-called Platform as a Service (PaaS) that enables this to happen. And we’re delighted to announce that Engine Yard CEO John Dillon will speak at CloudBeat 2013 in S.F. on Sept. 9-Sept. 10. You can buy your tickets here. Engine Yard showed momentum very early, announcing it hit $28 million in revenue shortly after launching its platform two years ago, although it has since been secretive about its revenue…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Deploying private cloud environments through Hewlett-Packard’s (HPQ) Cloud Service Automation became easier this week with the release of Moab Cloud Optimizer version 3.2. The product, from Adaptive Computing, helps optimize private cloud deployments on the HP platform.

Ken Won, director of product marketing, Software, at HP, described Moab Cloud Optimizer as a tool to "enable HP customers to fine tune their cloud automation to meet both service level and utilization goals." It works by allowing users to set "policies" to tweak HP Cloud Service Automation’s behavior, and then monitor its performance…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Chris Saran.

Businesses are being deterred from taking up cloud services due to a lack of security skills. A Quocirca study for CA Technologies found IT security spending was higher among companies that said they were enthusiastic about cloud computing services.

Bob Tarzey, analyst and director, Quocirca, said: “Cloud services [focus] the need for IT security.” The survey highlighted security and IT readiness among companies that had a negative attitude towards cloud computing. Almost two-thirds of these companies believed they lacked the skills and 72% said they lacked the resources required to secure their cloud services…

Grazed from ProfitBricks. Author: PR Announcement.

ProfitBricks, the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) company that completely reengineered the delivery of cloud computing, ranks among the world’s Top 100 Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), according to Nine Lives Media’s third-annual Talkin’ Cloud 100 report. ProfitBricks ranked 75th on the overall Talkin’ Cloud 100 list and first on the list of 25 Fastest Growing CSPs.

ProfitBricks recently shook up the cloud computing world when it slashed its cloud computing pricing by 50 percent, even as it showed performance levels twice that of the major competitors. In all, Talkin’ Cloud’s Top 100 CSPs generated more than $15.7 billion in combined cloud services revenues in 2012, up nearly 37 percent, according to the report, which is available now by visiting http://www.talkincloud.com/tc100…