Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Thomas J. Trappler.

From time to time, organizations are asked to provide access to data for legal reasons. Those requests can be more complicated when the data is in the cloud. But a new report sheds some light on one critical aspect of such requests. One risk with cloud computing is that the customer has less control over who can access its data. When customer data is stored on and processed by the cloud vendor’s data center instead of in-house, what’s to stop a third party, such as the government, from going directly to the cloud vendor to obtain access to that data without the customer’s permission or knowledge? And if that happens, will the cloud vendor’s priority be to protect its customer’s rights and data or to protect itself?

With the April 30, 2013, release of its third "Who Has Your Back?" report, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has tried to answer these questions. The report reflects that, as with most things in the cloud, vendors vary widely on how they handle third-party requests for access to data. For the 2013 report, the EFF used six criteria to assess cloud vendors, and awarded a star for good performance in each category. The six criteria are:…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Bob Evans.

While cloud computing’s popularity as a powerful and transformational business tool is soaring, some companies have been frustrated with cloud apps procured from multiple vendors requiring extensive integration that has dragged out time to value, stunted innovation initiatives, and reinforced the very silos those cloud apps were intended to break down, a new survey has found.

Called Cloud for Business Managers: the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, the report reveals that a fragmented approach to cloud apps has led many companies into their very own troughs of disillusionment, in which the hoped-for increased business agility, nimbleness, and optimized decision-making continue to remain beyond their reach…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

8KMiles, a leading global cloud computing company, today announced the acquisition of FuGen Solutions for $7.5 million to expand and build on its cloud and big data security services and solutions to better serve and meet large enterprises and government agencies’ growing security and compliance needs.

The purchase includes the acquisition of FuGen Solutions’ market leading patented Cloud Identity Broker and Multi-domain Identity Services Platform (MISP™), an on-demand partner onboarding platform that extends the capabilities of existing Identity Management (IDM), SSO solutions and legacy services to allow enterprise customers and their partners to establish, scale and manage their federated access, certification and SSO, and web services via the cloud. The platform is complementary to 8KMiles’ existing cloud architecture, serving as an added layer of security, while streamlining authentication and enabling secure single sign-on access across multiple cloud-based business systems…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

It should come as no surprise that two of the biggest sponsors for the forthcoming Technology in Government conference and exhibition are specialist providers of mobile device management and security technologies. Mobility will feature prominently in the conference program, as will the other major industry developments that are occupying chief information officers in government and industry alike: big data, cloud computing, security and the seemingly unstoppable rise of social media.

The enthusiastic uptake of smartphones and tablets by the Australian public has put huge pressure on corporate IT departments to allow these devices to be used in the corporate environment and BYOD – bring your own device – has gone from being barely tolerated to generally accepted, in part because the technologies for securing and managing them have improved…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Paul Korzeniowski.

The emergence of cloud computing has given InfiniBand a boost in acceptance. Touted as the high-performance networking option of choice at its inception at the turn of the millennium, InfiniBand struggled to gain wide acceptance in the enterprise — but it did find niche acceptance. The networking option has established itself as the interconnect of choice in many high-performance computing applications, replacing propriety technologies, such as Quadrics and Myrinet.

The need for similar capacity has emerged in the cloud market. Typically, cloud data centers consolidate server, storage and network functions in central locations. As system configurations become denser, the need for higher bandwidth network connections — especially from server-to-server and server-to-storage — becomes clearer…

Grazed from Mashable. Author: Matt Petronzio.

With thousands of film and TV titles available, Netflix is a cloud computing giant — and it needs to be, since it makes up one-third of North American Internet traffic during peak hours. Imagine, then, if it were your job to push Netflix into the cloud, working every day to make the service more accessible and efficient for more than 36 million subscribers in 40 countries.

This dream job belongs to Adrian Cockcroft, director of architecture for Netflix’s Cloud Systems team. As chief cloud architect, Cockcroft works with development managers and engineers across the company to ensure that Netflix is using the cloud to its fullest potential…

Grazed from ExecutiveGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

The National Security Agency has started developing a cloud computing platform intended to help secure the government’s network infrastructure, FedScoop reported Friday. David Stegon writes NSA has reached out to the country’s open source community by allowing developers to collaborate in shoring up the cloud infrastructure’s code for the cloud infrastructure.

NSA aims to use the agency for mobile devices and to manage security, according to the report. Army Gen. Keith Alexander, head of NSA and Cyber Command, told a Northern Virginia Technology Council event in Tysons Corner, Va. Friday that modern cloud technologies could help defend the government’s network from cyber attacks, Fedscoop reports. Alexander said cloud technology could adapt to cyber threats without human intervention and help protect the Defense Department’s more than 15,000 domains, according to the report.

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Editorial Staff.

In the past several years, as cloud computing has become one of the top IT priorities, we can agree that, for the most part, we’ve overcome the primary concerns associated with the technology – security, reliability and performance. With these concerns at least partly alleviated, it’s important to now look at how to quickly locate your data in the cloud. While the cloud is a revolutionary delivery platform for its scalability, flexibility and freedom to place a company’s most powerful IT assets in the hands of any user, there’s one capability that your cloud may complicated: access to relevant knowledge.

The move to the cloud, plus the continuity of enterprise systems, plus social media, plus growth in unstructured content, equals fragmentation and an inability to find relevant knowledge. Beyond the challenge of a highly heterogeneous environment, the reality is that cloud environments, combined with an increased number of data channels, pose one of the biggest knowledge gaps facing companies today. Cloud-based systems house critical information, and with the amount of data doubling every 12 months, it’s another place where knowledge may be lost. Cloud-based systems contribute to an already crowded chaos of applications, databases and online resources…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Hundreds of enterprise IT experts from around the world will come together in San Francisco on June 17 and 18 when the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) will host Forecast 2013, ODCA’s premier cloud computing and big data event. Forecast is where the ODCA Board of Directors, which includes IT leaders from BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, Disney Technology Solutions and Services, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., National Australia Bank (NAB), NTT Data, T-Systems, Terremark and UBS will gather with ODCA members and industry to collaborate on moving enterprise ready cloud implementations based on ODCA usage models forward. Forecast is taking place at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square.

"Enterprises worldwide are leveraging ODCA usage models as the foundation for cloud implementations that are open, interoperable and secure," said Marvin Wheeler, executive director, Open Data Center Alliance. "Forecast is ODCA’s once-a-year event where attendees learn about best practices for building and deploying enterprise ready cloud implementations, share cloud and big data success stories, and get the latest information on ODCA usage models. We look forward to welcoming the global cloud and big data communities to San Francisco on June 17 and 18."…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

The cloud is forcing enterprises and vendors alike to reconsider what business they are in. And for many enterprises, the growth of private cloud capabilities puts them only a step away from becoming cloud solutions providers themselves. For confirmation of this, just ask the tech vendors themselves. In the latest annual report on the future of the software and services industry from the Software & Information Industry Association, there are the predictable levels of boundless optimism and market-speak that you expect from tech vendor executives.

But there is also an acknowledgement that cloud computing, in all its various forms, is shifting the dynamic between providers and consumers of technology services and solutions. In fact, there’s an undercurrent of thought that it’s not clear anymore who a “provider” and who a “consumer” may be. The report, based on contributions from 37 top executives at software and cloud companies, surfaced some interesting observations:…