Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Catherine Shu.

Open-Xchange, a maker of Web-based communication, collaboration and office productivity open-source software, has received $20 million in funding from United Internet, former Deutsche Bank COO Hermann-Josef Lamberti and existing shareholders. Part of the proceeds will be used for a secondary transaction. This investment round is notable because it’s the first time Open-Xchange has announced new funding since 2008, when it raised a $9 million Series B.

The company has delivered Open-Xchange in the form as software-as-a-service (SaaS) for six years, making them pioneers in that area, and it’s now poised to take advantage of the shift toward cloud office systems, which Gartner estimates will rise from 50 million users today to 695 million by 2022. The company plans to use the funds to invest in software development, professional services and international business development, as well as marketing and sales…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Robert Westervelt.

IT security teams should be on the lookout for business units that may be spinning up servers using a public cloud provider for big data analytics projects because it introduces a variety of security risks, according to a security auditor who frequently reviews the software and infrastructure supporting such projects.

It is fairly common for businesses to use Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) Elastic Compute Cloud, Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Windows Azure or the myriad of other cloud infrastructure providers for big data analytics projects, which require the computing power to conduct large-scale data analysis. While they help capture, manage and analyze terabytes or more of structured and unstructured data, they introduce the potential for data loss, account or service hijacking, or abuse if systems aren’t protected and overseen with due diligence, said David Barton, principal and practice leader of the technology assurance group at Atlanta-based UHY Advisors, a business consulting firm…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cetrom Information Technology, Inc. (Cetrom), a cloud computing pioneer and leader in custom cloud management for global SMBs, announced it will exhibit its cloud computing services to association leaders during the Center for Association Leadership’s (ASAE) Annual Meeting & Expo Aug. 3-6, 2013, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. Cetrom’s staff of cloud experts will be available at booth 813 to discuss the benefits of its customizable Cloud Computing Solutions, highlighting the mobility, flexibility, security, uptime and cost effectiveness for associations.

The ASAE Annual Meeting & Expo showcases the latest in current trends, goals and solutions presented by leaders in the industry who help association professionals stay ahead of the competition and deliver better services to their members. Cetrom staff will be available throughout the event to discuss how the company’s Cloud Computing for associations can save money by reducing large capital expenses, eliminating software licensing and outsourcing day-to-day maintenance. Cetrom’s 99.9 percent uptime guarantee also ensures associations can deliver top service to their members no matter where they are in the world…

Dimension Data, the $5.8 billion global ICT solutions and services provider, today announced that independent testing carried out in May 2013 by The Tolly Group reveals that Dimension Data’s Public Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) cloud servers showed consistently high performance across CPU, memory, storage and networking measures. The report shows dramatic differences between providers and highlights the importance of performance in determining the true cost of a cloud computing solution.

"Our blue chip customers require strong SLAs and backups and expect their systems to be up and running when they need them most," said Puneet Pandit, president and CEO of Glassbeam. "They generate large volumes of data and rely on scalability on demand. Dimension Data has provided us with the enterprise-class cloud performance our clients demand."

Puppet Labs, the leading provider of IT automation software for system administrators, today announced its acquisition of Cloudsmith, a provider of development tools for rapidly building and testing infrastructure automation. The acquisition of Cloudsmith accelerates Puppet Labs’ mission of making it easier to manage the flow of changes in complex IT environments.

According to technology research firm Gartner, automation is one of the top initiatives for enterprise IT in 2013. Cloudsmith provides tools for system administrators and developers that make it easier to automate management of IT resources through intuitive GUIs and SaaS applications. Combined with Puppet Labs’ flagship product, Puppet Enterprise, customers experience increased productivity and accelerated time to automation. Puppet Labs plans to tightly integrate Cloudsmith’s products with Puppet Enterprise to further build on these benefits.

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Alex Williams.

Google Apple Engine (GAE) released a new versionn of its cloud platform today, offering dedicated memcache that allows developers to purchase in-memory data caching for their apps at a cost of 12 cents per gigabyte per hour. The new service is in addition to new features in GAE 1.8.2 such as better Git support and more PHP integrations.

According to a Google blog post, the new dedicated memcache feature allows the user to cache more data and drive up cache hit rates, which can also reduce Datastore costs and make applications faster. Data is always processed faster when it is close to the application. When the data is in-memory, there are no calls back to the server to retrieve the data. It’s right there ready to be served to the customer using the app…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Editorial Staff.

CloudBees, Inc., the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, announced the general availability of the CloudBees Eclipse Toolkit 2.0. The new version is a major upgrade of the CloudBees plugin that helps developers create and develop software faster by bringing the full power of the CloudBees PaaS to Eclipse.

The CloudBees Eclipse Toolkit now provides direct access to the CloudBees ClickStart application templates, accessed directly from within the Eclipse environment. ClickStarts sets up the entire development-to-deployment environment for an application in one click…

Grazed from The Fiscal Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

The U.S. federal government is expected to greatly accelerate its spending on cloud computing solutions starting in fiscal year 2014, which begins October 1, 2013. In its report, "Perspective: Growth and Slight Contraction – Government Cloud Spending by U.S. Federal Agency," published July 15, market research firm IDC Government Insights points out that the overall U.S. government cloud services market will reach $9 billion in fiscal year 2017.

Cloud computing is a broad and often ambiguous term, usually referring to the infrastructure of systems available to users from a remote location (data center) over the Internet, as opposed to in-house computing services…