Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

The world of private cloud computing for the enterprise saw a significant development this week with the release of the latest version of ownCloud Enterprise Edition. Major updates to the file syncing and storage platform, which is built on open source code, include security enhancements, usability improvements and new management features, among other changes.

ownCloud Enterprise Edition, which is developed by ownCloud, is based on the open source ownCloud project. It’s one of a growing number of platforms that allow enterprises to create private clouds that run exclusively on in-house infrastructure. That can help to circumvent some of the security and compliance challenges associated with competitors such as Dropbox, as well as reduce costs…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Thomas J. Trappler.

Can anyone access the data that you trust to the safekeeping of a cloud-computing vendor? It’s a good question, made all the more relevant by the revelations regarding the National Security Agency’s Prism program. So how can you best address these issues in your contract with your cloud vendor?

With cloud computing, data access is inevitably a shared responsibility between the customer and the cloud vendor. Those shared responsibilities need to be addressed in the contract, and most cloud vendors’ standard contracts leave something to be desired…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

CloudVelocity came out of stealth mode Tuesday to introduce One Hybrid Cloud, a system that packages up a workload in a way that matches the production system, then migrates it to Amazon’s EC2.  That might sound like what a lot of other parties are already doing, but CloudVelocity closely maps the existing application and its related servers — including the database server — and then creates duplicates in the cloud using the same IP addresses.

It sets up Elastic Block Storage and networking as close to the original resources as possible and even out foxes Amazon’s EC2 into provisioning the application with the operating system that it’s sent, rather than the one Amazon wants to install by default. "When we put it in the cloud, we try to make sure it will have the same performance" as the on-premises system, CloudVelocity CTO Anand Tyengar said in an interview…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jon Gold.

The popularization of cloud computing and ubiquitous access to high-speed Internet connectivity mean that the days of the specialized branch office IT appliance are numbered, according to industry sources. Instead of providing apps and services directly to branch offices using dedicated hardware at both ends of the connection, virtualized networks can emulate that functionality across the public Internet.

Before he became F5 Networks’ director of enterprise marketing architectures, Alan Murphy worked for a small startup in Seattle. The company’s branch office, in Austin, Texas, was directly connected across the 2,000+ miles between the two cities by a dedicated link. “100% of that traffic from Austin came back to Seattle before it ever went on the Internet,” he says…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Neil Cavanaugh.

Is moving to the cloud as simple as they say? Probably not. Organizations that host large, integrated systems in their own data centres will no doubt be approached by their application vendors for migration to the silver lining of the cloud. I was recently involved with appraising the feasibility of moving one of the largest Oracle eBusiness suite installations in the UK to “on-demand.” This experience gave me some insights into the complexities behind such a move.

Existing investment
In order to run very large applications with thousands of users, a substantial investment would have been made in existing infrastructure. This includes resilient server infrastructure, disk space, and software licenses.
You’ll need to spend some time considering what happens to this equipment if you migrate an application into the cloud, particularly as there may be other applications sharing processing power, shared disk resources and expensive database licenses…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Keving McLaughlin.

VMware has sold its Zimbra suite of open source SaaS productivity apps to Telligent, a Dallas-based enterprise social software vendor. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Telligent is getting Zimbra’s core team of employees, as well as its product IP and customer and partner relationships. After the deal closes, Telligent will rebrand itself as Zimbra.

VMware is focusing on software-defined data center, hybrid cloud and end-user computing, and Zimbra is its latest move to sell off a unit that doesn’t fit with its strategy. However, VMware is painting the Zimbra sale as something other than a move to shed assets…

Grazed from Jaxenter. Author: Mike Soby.

Recently, James Urquhart brought up a fascinating debate about contextual versus composable PaaS, which has created an equally interesting, broader debate for application deployment in general. Contextual PaaS provides an integrated deployment framework with no ability to add custom components and requires applications to be written to that platform. Composable PaaS on the other hand allows for greater flexibility, as components can be plugged in to support diverse applications.

While we believe composable PaaS delivers value and caters to a wide variety of applications, cloud services provide almost infinite flexibility for application development, which begs the question: are composable PaaS or modular cloud services a better way to develop applications?…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Adam Bender.

The Australian Computer Society released a draft discussion paper this week that asks cloud vendors and users how they can help small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and not for profits (NFPs) become more confident in using the cloud.

“Despite the clear and compelling value of the cloud, SMEs and NFPs in particular appear reticent to integrate the cloud into their businesses and operations,” the ACS said in the paper. “The evidence suggests that this is due to a combination of a lack of understanding of what the cloud actually is, and secondly a lack of confidence in using cloud services due to concerns around issues such as privacy and security.”…

Grazed from WebProNews. Author: Mike Tuttle.

Cloud computing is a disruptive force in the business of gaming. Not only is it revolutionizing how gamers purchase and play games, but redefining how developers and publishers run their businesses. The gaming community disagrees over what cloud can mean for the future of their industry, but nearly all agree it is becoming increasingly important.

In a newly published whitepaper by Video Games Intelligence, Chris Petrovic, former head of Gamestop, says, “One of the challenges facing our industry is to settle on a definition of ‘cloud’– and then what it means for particular businesses.”…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is used in many different ways these days, but not everyone is completely on board the cloud train quite yet. For those holdouts who just aren’t sure whether or not they’re really benefiting from the cloud, a close look at the technology shows that you can improve almost any IT department with a bit of cloud computing. You don’t have to go as far as setting up a platform or complete infrastructure on the cloud, as even a small amount of cloud applications could provide you with cost and time saving features.

Flexibility

The main advantage of the cloud computing world is its flexibility but initially this can seem confusing as you can have private clouds, public clouds, or a mix of both. A private cloud is your own virtualized environment, while a public cloud is one that another company provides for you. Companies may opt to do a mix of both, with their own proprietary applications in their private cloud, and additional applications in the public cloud. This allows the business to use their own developed software in a cloud that they personally handle the security of, while getting the cost saving benefits of the public cloud by avoiding upfront equipment costs and other overhead…