Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Robert Smith.

In 2012, cloud computing became a much bigger trend in the business and networking world. IDC have predicted a 130% increase in cloud computing by 2016, meaning an increase to $43 billion. Here are some of the five trends to look out for that are coming in 2013 which are going to help boost cloud computing in the long term;

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With more and more companies beginning to look into cloud computing, the hype is growing every day and more businesses are using it. Colleges are using it more and more to help store lecture data for easy access to the class. Businesses are using it to work from home, pick up easy access to documents and for sharing important company information. One of the big changes expected to appear in 2013 is the subscription model for Cloud computing. The idea is that you will only pay for how much data you need, rather than buying bulk for space that may never be used. It gives you a powerful security measure as well, knowing that your paid-up data is protected and accessible at any given time…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Todd Weiss.

Google’s Compute Engine is moving to Debian as its default operating system after a round of recent enhancements to Debian, including improved 32/64-bit compatibility. "Today we’re adding Debian images for Google Compute Engine," wrote Jimmy Kaplowitz, site reliability engineer and Debian developer for the project in a May 8 post on the Google App Engine Blog. "Debian, in collaboration with us, is providing images for both Debian 7.0 ‘wheezy’ and the previous stable release, Debian 6.0 ‘squeeze.’ This support will make it easy for anyone using Debian today to migrate their workloads onto Compute Engine."

The Debian community just released Debian 7.0 "wheezy," which "brings big improvements, including hardened security, improved 32/64-bit compatibility and addresses a lot of community feedback," wrote Kaplowitz. "For fast performance and to reduce bandwidth costs, Google is hosting a Debian package mirror for use by Google Compute Engine Debian instances. We’ve updated our docs and will support Debian via our usual support options, or you can also check out what Debian offers."…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly.  Author: Archana Venkatraman.

Public cloud rivals Microsoft and Amazon Web Services (AWS) have collaborated to help users manage Windows workloads on AWS cloud more easily, with Microsoft launching the System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) management pack for AWS.

The tool allows organisations running their Microsoft-based workloads at AWS to monitor their AWS resources directly in the Operations Manager console, eliminating the need for complex management consoles.  It can monitor AWS EC2 instances (Windows and Linux), Elastic Block Store (EBS) volumes, Elastic Load Balancing, CloudFormation stacks, Auto Scaling groups and Elastic Beanstalk applications…

Grazed from MSPMentor.  Author: CJ Arlotta.

Moving to the cloud may seem simple on the front end, but it’s a lot more complicated if you are re-architecting your software to become an as-a-service offering.  Corent Technology has announced a software platform to assist with transforming software applications to software as a service (SaaS). What does this platform offer? We’ll reveal the details.

SurPaaS transforms applications to SaaS and can be deployed on any data center or cloud platform, the company said in its announcement. The solution’s capabilities include: self-service on-boarding capabilities and management of tenants, subscription management, SaaS lifecycle management, monitoring, metering, billing integration, business reporting, key performance metrics and dashboards…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Louis Columbus.

Evangelizing development on any cloud computing or enterprise platform is challenging, costly and takes a unique skill set that can educate, persuade, sell and serve developers at the same time.

The companies who excel at this exude technical prowess and as a result earn and keep trust. For Cloud Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) platform providers, getting developers, both at partner companies and at enterprise customers to build applications, is a critical catalyst for future growth…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Symantec and Webalo are partnering up on cloud computing. Here’s the background: How do you convince users that your apps — especially those that put their data in the cloud — are secure? In the past, pinky-swearing that you’ve reviewed all the code and are pretty sure there are no vulnerabilities might have sufficed. But in the age of the cloud, channel partnerships are playing an increased role in promoting security assurance, as a deal announced this week between Symantec and Webalo makes clear.

Webalo, which is based in California and was founded in 2000, develops what it calls an "enterprise mobility" platform. Essentially, the platform streamlines connections to the cloud-based mobile apps on which an enterprise relies, allowing users to connect from a single client and simplifying networking complications. The solution is subscription-based and offered in three different tiers according to the number of mobile users…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Dimension Data appears to be on a cloud computing collission course with Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) Rackspace (NYSE: RAX). The reason: Dimension Data is introducing a tiered storage options capability, which will be part of the company’s public compute-as-a-service (CaaS) offering. The company’s offering is based on the EMC (NYSE: EMC) VNX storage platform, which provides a unified storage platform for virtual applications in the cloud. Options can be selected and provisioned through a web-based user interface or API. To accelerate performance, the company leverages solid state drives (SSD).

"Providing additional options around storage media is an important innovation that enables our clients to leverage the cloud for a variety of applications including high performance databases as well as less demanding applications such as archiving, backup and long term data retention," said Dimension Data Cloud Services General Manager Dave Hanrahan in a prepared statement…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Equinix’s SE3 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Seattle is now sporting the Amazon Web Services Direct Connect service. This will provide Equinix’s Seattle customers with a direct connection to AWS so they can get millisecond latency between SE3 and AWS infrastructure.

In an email to customers, AWS noted that the launch of Direct Connect in Seattle provides local customers with direct connection access to the AWS US West (Oregon) region, which it stated is a frequently requested capability…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Sajjad Masud.

Cloud computing might be commonplace now, but it is still revolutionizing many traditional industries. One of those sectors is the hiring and recruiting space, where cloud computing has made it easier for your company to connect with candidates.

With your recruitment management system in the cloud, you can add and view candidate profiles at any time and from anywhere with an Internet connection. This allows team members to participate in the hiring workflow from anywhere and even recruit on the go using a mobile device. Cloud computing makes finding and organizing information for making critical recruitment decisions easier and faster than ever. Getting the most from your recruitment process now often means leveraging the cloud. Here are a few ways cloud computing can enhance your hiring:…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

SAP had a turbulent start in the cloud computing space. In 2010, it launched Business ByDesign as a SaaS offering to resounding yawns from the cloud computing industry. Vowing to improve, SAP did what all big companies do when they want to move quicker into a market. Innovate? Nope — it bought other companies. The shopping spree included SuccessFactors, a human resource management SaaS provider, and HANA, a sexy in-memory database and analytics engine that also serves as SAP’s big data strategy.

In its move to the Web, SAP’s actions have been a bit confusing. Months ago, SAP placed its All-in-One ERP app on Amazon Web Services as a public cloud SaaS offering — kind of. Now, it is making HANA available from its own cloud, as well as from partner public clouds…