Grazed from MIT News.  Author: Larry Hardesty.

Cloud computing — outsourcing computational tasks over the Internet — could give home-computer users unprecedented processing power and let small companies launch sophisticated Web services without building massive server farms.

But it also raises privacy concerns. A bank of cloud servers could be running applications for 1,000 customers at once; unbeknownst to the hosting service, one of those applications might have no purpose other than spying on the other 999.  Encryption could make cloud servers more secure. Only when the data is actually being processed would it be decrypted; the results of any computations would be re-encrypted before they’re sent off-chip…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author: Jane McCallion.

Cloud service provider Oracle has launched its new database offering that the company claims will better meet the technology needs of organisations moving to the cloud.  Oracle Database 12c provides a new multitenant architecture built on top of a fast, scalable, reliable and secure database platform. The next-generation database is the first to be designed for the cloud, the company claims.

The platform is particularly suitable for organisations wishing to deploy private database clouds in addition to being of use to Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors, Oracle said.   “The innovations in Oracle Database 12c were developed with our customers’ cloud requirements very much in mind," said Andrew Mendelsohn, senior vice president for database server technologies at Oracle…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Louis Columbus.

NTT Europe recently completed a study that found 56% of CIOs and Senior IT leaders see complexity of their own Information and Communications Technology (ICT) systems as the biggest barrier to their organization’s enterprise-wide adoption of the cloud.  The survey contends that cloud adoption continues to be tactical in nature as a result of the inordinate complexity of existing and legacy ICT platforms.

Completed in April and May of this year in the United Kingdom, the study Growing Pains In The Cloud, 300 CIOs Express Their Views About Barriers To Cloud Adoption (opt in required) was completed by Vanson Bourne and included 300 interviews of CIOs and Senior IT leaders from public and private organizations with 250+ employees…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Mark Clayman.

With so many stories about cloud computing, IT outsourcing, hosting, SaaS solutions and managed services, we should all be well beyond the question of whether organizations should be moving their enterprise applications to the cloud. For those companies that have not yet started to move these applications outside of their own four walls or, worse yet, have yet to develop a plan to do so, a window is ever shrinking on your ability to keep up with your competitors. Why?

Because unless your value proposition to your customers is managing data centers, connectivity, routers, firewalls, servers, storage, backups, operating systems, databases, applications, etc., you’ll always be a step or maybe even two or three behind cloud service providers that do this day in and day out as part of their core business model…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

System Services (SSi), a strategic information technology (IT) and software solutions company, is now SaaS Software, Inc. (SSi). The new name reflects the organization’s progression from IT outsourcing activities to application development, specifically, SaaS and mobile applications. Notably, the move transforms SSi from being a tactical IT resource to a strategic partnership role with its clients in helping them leverage revenue opportunities, gain competitive advantage, and turn their business ideas into reality.

Synonymous with the strategic direction SSi has taken to meet the needs of its clients, the company unveils “Powered by SSi™.” The new positioning demonstrates its commitment to creating business-changing applications that are designed, developed, and supported by the organization’s power, expertise and experience…

Grazed from Ping Zine.  Author: Editorial Staff.

1&1 Internet Inc., www.1and1.com, a global leader among Web hosting providers, today unveiled a new cloud server package that delivers unrestricted cloud-based efficiencies to both businesses and professionals alike.  1&1 Dynamic Cloud Server, available from a total price of only $0.06 per hour,  features dynamically adjustable resources – Processor Cores (vCore), RAM (GB) and Hard Disk Space (GB) – that are configurable upwards and downwards by the user themselves anytime.

The solution offers capacity for a very high performance resource at a very low and accurate hourly price.  1&1 expects the package to be a highly popular option for businesses to take further steps toward Cloud computing, and raise efficiencies in their online projects.  1&1 Dynamic Cloud Server is an enormously flexible and robust virtualized server solution.  The server is particularly effective for companies whose resource requirements change frequently or for a new business that cannot accurately estimate how much computing power will be needed for online projects…

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Saroj Kar.

A group of experts appointed by European Commission will scrutinize how European cloud computing contracts are established. It will also try to develop a standard contract.  The European Commission launched a call for applications to recruit people from the industry, academia and other profiles, to establish a group of experts whose mission is to create a model on transparent cloud contract.

According to Neelie Kroes, Vice-President of the European Commission, one of the big barriers to using cloud computing is a lack of trust. People don’t always understand the terms in their contract: what they’re paying for, and what they can expect. It should be easy to ensure that the terms in contract are reasonable: open, transparent, safe and fair…

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Mike Vizard.

There is no shortage of data that users of mobile computing devices need to access; the problem has been finding a simple way to actually make that happen.  To address that specific issue, Roambi has made its report writer engine that unifies access to multiple types of data available as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) application in the cloud.

According to Co-Founder and President of product innovation Quinton Alsbury, Roambi Business is designed to make data more accessible to mobile computing users regardless of whether that data was originally stored in a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or NoSQL unstructured database…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Ed Bott.

Good night, TechNet.  The online Technet blogs and customer support forums will live on, but Microsoft announced today in a letter to subscribers that it plans to retire its venerable TechNet subscriptions service. New subscriptions will no longer be available after August 31, 2013, and the subscription service will shut down as current subscribers’ contracts end.

Microsoft has offered TechNet subscriptions for most of the modern Windows era, debuting in 1998 as a massive packet of CDs, and evolving into a download option as broadband connections became common.  The services have historically been one of the best deals around for frugal IT professionals and PC enthusiasts. For an annual subscription fee of a few hundred dollars, subscribers get the right to download virtually all of the desktop and server software Microsoft sells, with multiple product keys…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author: Jane McCallion.

CERN openlab has signed a year-long collaboration agreement with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) provider Rackspace to develop a hybrid cloud system to help further the centre’s research into the origins of the universe.  CERN openlab is the framework through which the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) tests and validates new technologies in partnership with private industry.

Speaking to Cloud Pro, Tim Bell, infrastructure manager at CERN, explained: “[The framework allows] CERN and commercial organisations to do combined research.  “This gives us the opportunity to take the extreme computing challenges that come from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and are able to then apply those both to areas of interest to CERN and areas of interest for the company in a research environment.”…