Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Kamran Maqbool.

Cloud computing is becoming a successful option for a growing number of organisations, effectively freeing resources and promoting flexible collaboration. If you are considering the switch to cloud computing but are put off by concerns over security, there may be a way for you to gain assurance. Below we have created a list of the main issues posed by cloud computing, along with some suggestions of simple solutions. Where is Your Data? The thought of your data being stored in a different location to your base of operations is one of the biggest concerns for many potential clients.

What happens when your contract ends, or the provider goes into administration? The way around this is to get to know your provider and the data centres they use. This way you can be sure of the exact locations where your data will be stored, and what protocols are in place for worst-case scenarios. Create a Backup Even when you gain reassurance from a provider, you may still hear a worried voice in the back of your head. It is hard to give up control over information normally safeguarded by your business to a third party…

Grazed from SiliconRepublic. Author: Editorial Staff.

More than three-quarters of IT managers felt that a lack of trust in security was the biggest barrier to adoption of cloud computing technologies in their organisations. The study by IT security service provider SecureData highlighted that although cloud offers many benefits to IT departments there are still huge concerns over how to securely migrate to online services. As a result, over half (59pc) of IT managers thought having a fully outsourced managed security service offering was of importance in order to safely support the roll out and management of cloud technologies.

Furthermore, 67pc of IT managers thought that a Security as a Service (SaaS) provider should be held responsible for any security breaches, highlighting that SaaS providers have a significant responsibility to provide best of breed security…

Grazed from SCMagazine. Author: Dan Raywood.

Kaspersky has confirmed that it will commence winding down its hosted security service this month. In an email to SC Magazine, Kaspersky confirmed its announcement from August 2012 that it was ceasing to sell Kaspersky Hosted Security (KHS), but that all existing customers would be fully supported through to August 2013.

Now it is passing users to partner Spamina after ‘an exhaustive study of the SaaS market’. “Spamina has proven to be extremely successful at providing their customers with industry-leading hosted email and web security services,” it said. “Having integrated Kaspersky Lab’s industry leading engine as a substantial component of our malware detection system, we ensure customers have the same high level of protection they’ve become accustomed to with KHS…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

Over the past 30 years, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become the mainstay application of most companies. These systems sit on mainframes or servers, fussed over by a select bunch of IT people, cosseted and quietly churning through the vital work of keeping the company going. Whether it is supplying all the right information on a just-in-time basis, keeping close control of inventory or just printing out employee time-sheets, the ERP system will be the ultimate controlling mechanism.

The software used always needs to be state of the art and is often so expensive that it can turn CEO’s hair white overnight if it has so much as a glitch: in short, ERP is both mundane and absolutely crucial to any production company’s success…

Grazed from The Vary Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Moving is never fun. That’s true whether the move is between houses, offices or Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Server platforms. But for enterprises migrating from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012, Rackspace (RAX) hopes to make life a little easier with a "Cloud Assessment" tool it unveiled this week to help analyze and plan cloud computing needs on Server 2012.

With the latest service pack for Server 2003 now more than 6 years old, and with Server 2012 having been on the market for more than a year, it’s making less and less sense to continue running Web and cloud applications on a server platform more than a decade old. Enough cloud users are apparently still doing so, however, that Rackspace thinks pushing them toward an upgrade to Server 2012 is worthwhile…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Warwick Ashford.

Buyers of commercial cloud services – especially software as a service (SaaS) – are finding security provisions inadequate, according to a report by research firm Gartner. Contracts need more transparency to improve risk management, analysts said, with SaaS contracts often have ambiguous terms regarding data confidentiality, data integrity and recovery after a data breach.

This leads to dissatisfaction among cloud services users and makes it difficult for service providers to manage risk and defend their risk position to auditors and regulators. Up to 80% of IT procurement professionals will remain dissatisfied with SaaS contract language and protections that relate to security for at least the next two years, Gartner predicts. “We continue to see frustration among cloud services users over the form and degree of transparency they obtain from prospective and current service providers,” said Alexa Bona, vice-president at Gartner…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Martin May.

Data backup, storage and recovery processes are fundamental services in almost every business. Recent changes in the IT environment, notably the arrival of cloud computing technologies, are responsible for significant advances in traditional data management patterns. Representing one of the most important shifts in computing today, cloud technologies provide greater levels of provisioning and automation, while helping organisations become more flexible and responsive to change.

The cloud has also made a significant impact on companies’ ability to better allocate their computing resources in order to improve application performances, boost efficiencies and reduce operating costs. Companies are under increasing pressure to ensure data backups are performed efficiently and sensitive business data is held in a secure storage repository. Recovery has to be effected faultlessly and reliably against elevated benchmarks for speed, accuracy and completeness…

The new pricing model, outlined in detail on ProfitBricks’ website and also detailed in a white paper titled "The Secret World of IaaS Pricing: How to compare apples and oranges among cloud providers," sets cloud pricing on the path for full adoption by the enterprise.

Grazed from BusinessWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Zadara™ Storage, Ltd., announced today that Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) has invested $3 million in Zadara. The two companies will be working together to introduce innovative Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) products using cutting-edge technologies they have each developed. With today’s funding, Zadara has raised a total of $10 million to date, and will use the additional funds to expand the sales, support and engineering teams.

As everything-as-a-service become a mantra and software-defined efficiencies reinvent the data center, IT teams and service providers alike are looking to accelerate deployment of enterprise-class applications in the cloud but in ways that are private, high-performance, elastic, scalable and flexible…

Grazed from InfoSecurity. Author: Editorial Staff.

An audit of NASA’s progress in adopting cloud-computing technologies has revealed that the space agency’s current use of cloud falls short of expectations in IT governance and risk management. While noting that NASA has been a pioneer in cloud computing, "having established its own private cloud-computing data center called Nebula in 2009 at the Ames Research Center (Ames)," the Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit levies four particular criticisms of its current state of cloud adoption.

The first is that governance needs to be strengthened. "We found that the Agency OCIO [office of the chief information officer] was not aware of all the cloud services NASA organizations had acquired or which service providers they used." Furthermore, only 3 of 15 agency CIOs stated that coordinating with the OCIO was necessary before moving into the cloud. In short, governance is poor if not absent…