Grazed from TechWorld.  Author: Sophie Curtis.

Businesses worldwide need to re-think their use of cloud computing, in light of recent revelations around the PRISM and Tempora surveillance programmes, according to independent privacy advocate Caspar Bowden.

Speaking at a House of Commons debate, chaired by Labour MP Tom Watson, Bowden said that the UK is in an “extremely exposed” position, because of its relationship with the US National Security Agency (NSA)…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Michael Endler.

On Thursday, Microsoft clarified the importance of Azure to its transitioning identity. If developers buy into the vision, Microsoft could use the popularity of mobile platforms, including iOS and Android, to become a cloud powerhouse.   During Thursday’s keynote at Microsoft’s Build conference, the company announced several new services for Windows Azure, its cloud computing platform. Microsoft hopes the offerings will inspire developers to make Azure the cloud infrastructure of choice, even for apps that run on non-Windows platforms.

Microsoft also touted not only the growing number of companies that use the platform but also how Azure supports many of the company’s homegrown products, such as Office 365.  Consistent with the Wednesday keynote led by CEO Steve Ballmer, Thursday’s session emphasized that Microsoft is a company in the midst of rapid transition, much of it fueled by the rise of mobile devices…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Salman Ul Haq.

QoS of Cloud service providers has always been evolving and improving over time and is one of the primary discussion points in almost every gathering of Cloud service providers and practitioners. With the shift to Cloud computing around the world, researchers are keen to dig out the active and potential issues of quality of service that can affect the overall performance of a Cloud.

Quality of service standards like Service Level Agreements (SLA) are of immense importance in the multifarious communication protocols of Cloud computing as they facilitate the end users, brokers and service providers to communicate across different Cloud based channels with ease and elevated productivity. QoS aware Clouds are being regarded as the need of the hour because of their augmented usability. Quality of service is the most decisive factor in the Cloud computing as it can build or tarnish the image of the service providers…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author: Jane McCallion.

Business software vendor Sage has opted for Windows Azure to deliver its Sage 200 Online cloud service.  Aimed specifically at medium-size businesses, this is the second accountancy Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering from the Newcastle-based vendor after Sage One, which was launched in 2011.

However, while Sage One was built on the Amazon Web Services platform, the company has instead plumped for Windows Azure to host Sage 200 Online.  Stuart Lynn, CIO at Sage, told journalists at a media event to mark the launch that Azure had been an obvious choice when deciding to take Sage 200 to the cloud…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Leena Rao.

Replicon, the developer of a cloud time tracking and expense management application, has raised $20 million Series A funding led by The Social + Capital Partnership and Emergence Capital Partners. This is actually the first time in the company’s 17-year history of raising money from institutional investors.

Co-founders Raj Narayanaswamy and Lakshmi Raj have largely bootstrapped the SaaS company on their own since its inception in 1996. Replicon’s products allow you to track project time and expenses, client billing, employee work schedules, and employee time and attendance. The company was originally founded in Canada but moved to Silicon Valley three years ago…

Grazed from The Economist.  Author: Editorial Staff.

FOR years they loathed one another, rarely missing an opportunity to pick a fight. Their rows, full of sarcasm and sniping, occasionally hit the headlines. Then they started meeting discreetly every now and again—and ultimately realised just how badly they needed each other. Now, to the surprise of many, they have told the world about how they were really made to be together after all.

This is the backdrop to events that have caused a stir this week in the world of corporate computing. On June 24th Oracle and Microsoft announced plans to work closely together in the “cloud”—the business of delivering software and services over the internet. The following day Oracle unveiled another partnership, this time with Salesforce.com, a pioneer of cloud-based services such as hosting businesses’ marketing and customer-relations systems…

Grazed from Virtualization Review.  Author: Jeffrey Schwartz.

Stratus, a provider of hardware and software for mission-critical, high-availability computing, will deliver a solution designed to enable fault-tolerant operations in OpenStack clouds.

The company has watched the evolution of cloud computing and has come to the conclusion that the open source OpenStack effort has the strongest support behind it, said Dave LeClair, Stratus’ senior directory of strategy. "OpenStack is gaining a lot of momentum in the public and private cloud space," LeClair explained. "The OpenStack community is expanding rapidly."…