Grazed from GAO.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed the selection of Amazon Web Services as prime contractor for cloud computing services on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  The award was confirmed over the protests of IBM.

The contract calls for a 270-day period to achieve initial operating capability, a 4-year base ordering period, a 3-year option, and a 2-year option, with a maximum value of $600 million over the base period. The contractor is to provide its existing public cloud (modified where necessary) to be installed on government premises and operated by the provider…

Grazed from The Web Host Industry Review.  Author: Justin Lee.

Web hosting and cloud hosting provider Vault Networks announced on Friday it has launched its new cloud servers product, vnCloud, which marks its first major move into the cloud computing space.  The move comes a few months after Vault Networks doubled the raised floor space it occupies in ColoHouse’s Miami data center, making it the facility’s biggest customer.

“We noticed that the hourly-based pricing structure most of the bigger players were using was, at the end of the day, adding up to a very expensive solution,” said Brian Jankovich, VN’s founder and president. “We knew our clients wanted to start leveraging the power and flexibility of cloud servers, but didn’t want to break the bank to get there. Our model fills that gap.”…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Tom Spring.

Google is bringing new meaning to the word "cloud computing." No Google is not rolling out a new SaaS solution. Instead Google is launching Project Loon that aims to bring Internet access to every corner of the globe via high-altitude balloons. Yes, that’s right it’s called Project Loon, as in "a crazy person" as Merriam-Webster defines the word. But it’s June and this is not an elaborate April Fool’s joke.  

Google’s Project Loon is an ambitious experiment to use a network of high-altitude balloons to bring Internet access to parts of New Zealand that would otherwise not have Web access. It’s a test of Google’s larger ambitions to pioneer efforts to bring the Internet to other parts of the world including Africa where millions do not have access to the Internet…

Grazed from PandoDaily.  Author: Ben Sesser.

Life would be much easier if a great product was the only requirement for a great business. Of course, talk to any vineyard owner or long-time New York Times shareholder and they can attest that this is not the case.  Software as a service companies are no different. As challenging as it is to build great software someone is willing to buy, other pieces must fall into place for success.

In SaaS, three critical pieces that must fall in place to create long-term value are price, customer acquisition cost, and churn. You need a sustainable mix of what customers will pay for your product, how much it costs to acquire customers, and how long you can keep them…

Grazed from Network World.  Author: Linda Musthaler.

When cloud computing was in its infancy, proponents raised interest in the technology by telling companies they could save money by running their applications on infrastructure they didn’t own or operate. In fact, some companies wouldn’t even need their own data center anymore! Amazon, or Rackspace or some other service provider, could provide all the computing capacity a company could ever want. And SaaS providers could deliver ready-to-use enterprise applications that companies could rent by the month.

With a value proposition like that, some companies started to jump on the bandwagon, using cloud computing in all its forms. Software, security, infrastructure, platforms — all delivered as a convenient service.  But the downside involved losing visibility and control over computing. Now, departments and even individuals can engage a cloud service without the approval or even the knowledge of the IT department…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

Microsoft has added much-needed multi-factor authentication to its Windows Azure cloud computing platform, enabling organisations to secure access to any Azure services used by workers, partners and customers.  Available now, Active Authentication enables multi-factor authentication for Windows Azure Active Directory identities, the cloud-based service that provides identity and access capabilities for applications and other resources on Windows Azure itself.

Active Authentication requires users to authenticate themselves at sign in using an app on their mobile device or via an automated phone call or text message. This extra step helps prevent unauthorised access to data and applications in the cloud, Microsoft said…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

You might think that in cyberspace, the servers might as well be anywhere. But even in the era of cloud computing, physical location matters. So where are your IT services truly safe? Cloud computing has taken the world by storm in recent years. More and more companies are transferring their data and applications to external providers, saving infrastructure costs and freeing up IT staff for strategic tasks. And the Internet is making geographical distances irrelevant – opening up a global market for cloud solutions. So as long as the service is attractively priced and available when required, does it really matter where the servers are located?

Offshore can be unsure

Well, yes, it does. There’s a firm consensus among experts that mission-critical enterprise data needs to be stored in a secure data centre, where it is safe from cybercrime and industrial espionage. But the site of the data centre is important too. When it comes to weighing up the risks, the old real-estate adage – location, location, location – is a good rule of thumb…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

European cloud providers think the U.S. spy scandal will result in more enterprises choosing local alternatives over the likes of Amazon Web Services and Rackspace, which, on the other hand, are adamant that they aren’t taking part in programs such as Prism.

The debate over U.S. access to cloud data that the Patriot Act helped fuel has once again become a hot topic in the wake of revelations about surveillance programs such as Prism, under which the U.S. government is said to have access to data on servers supplied by Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple and Skype…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Red Hat is offering companies with a big stake in Linux an alternative to building their private clouds with either VMware or Windows Server. It’s combined its Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) with the open source code modules of OpenStack to produce its own cloud computing platform.

In effect, Red Hat would like its success with an enterprise version of Linux to translate into a second generation of success in private cloud computing. At its Red Hat Summit user group meeting this week in Boston, it announced the combination of RHEL and OpenStack as "Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform."…

Grazed from Huffington Post. Author: Kevin Ducoff.

While plenty of enterprises have now stored their information in the cloud, data silos still loom as a major problem. According to a recent Oracle survey, 54 percent of IT executives have experienced downtime in the past six months after being forced to stop working when cloud applications were not properly integrated with other apps across the enterprise.

Cloud silos emerge when data is stored in separate servers or data centers and can’t interact with other systems. The reduction in efficiency means enterprises may be failing to meet their potential, but a new cloud management tool aims to change that…