Grazed from DataCenter Dynamics. Author: Barry Lewington.

The IT market is continuing to change at lightning speed as technology evolves and global economic challenges force organizations to review IT service delivery strategies. It used to be so easy – we owned our data center with our carefully selected IT stored within it, everything local and under one roof. But as technology has evolved, so has our view of the delivery of IT infrastructure services, and the message that goes with this is not always clear.

Today, business managers are asking their IT professionals about the marketing promise of cloud computing and alternate sourcing. And as current global external pressures have a major influence on business decisions, senior management is continuing to focus its attention on areas of high cost, with IT near the top in all cases…

Grazed from ReadWriteWeb. Author: Matt Asay.

VMware has a firm if fading grip on the server virtualization market, but according to IDC analyst Al Gillen, virtualizaton serves as a convenient on-ramp to private cloud, which in turn leads to the public cloud. Is VMware paving IT’s path to Amazon, Microsoft Azure, Rackspace and other public cloud providers? Not exactly.

Virtualization: Still Relevant, Mostly VMware

According to Gillen, who spoke at the Open Business Conference (OSBC) in San Francisco earlier this week, VMware continues to dominate the virtualization market, with just under 60% market share. VMware’s installed base, coupled with CIO resistance to change, mean that VMware’s hold on virtualization should persist for years. That’s the good news…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Scott Good.

Regulatory compliance for the healthcare industry is a hot-button issue. The overriding compliance requirements that this industry faces are dictated by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), enacted by Congress in 1996. HIPAA was designed to protect the privacy of patients’ medical records and restrict who has access to them.

The latest HIPAA standards surrounding the security and privacy of patient data makes many in the healthcare industry understandably cautious about adopting new technologies. In the past, healthcare companies preferred to keep any electronic data concerning business operations and patient care behind a secure firewall. Now, HIPAA omnibus and the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) requirements stipulate everyone in the healthcare industry begin migrating patient records and other data to cloud computing. Essentially, by 2015, all medical professionals with access to patient records must utilize electronic medical and health records (EMR and EHR), or face penalties…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Isabelle Groc.

Just a few blocks away from ActiveState’s office in downtown Vancouver, Mozilla web operations engineer Chris Turra is working hard to fulfill his organization’s mission to keep the web open. Working with his California-based colleague Brandon Burton, Turra is implementing Stackato private Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) technology at Mozilla to help his (now-teenage) organization deploy web applications at scale.

Born and raised in Abbotsford, British Columbia, Canada, Turra is passionate about technology and coffee. He packs his own beans when he travels, and he is an expert when it comes to the nuances of espresso-making. Today he spills the beans about the Mozilla PaaS flavor and talks about the ingredients for achieving success with a PaaS…

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Zenith Infotech Ltd announced Thursday that it is adding new cities to its latest seminar series, "Bring Your Own IaaS to Life." The workshops, which help service providers understand and capitalize on the cloud landscape, have generated significant interest among providers looking to offer Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) for SMB clients. Zenith expects to hold over 90 seminars around the country by the end of June.

"Companies like Rackspace(R), SoftLayer(R) and Terremark(R) have built tremendously valuable IaaS businesses. This workshop shows IT providers how to build their own cloud offering–be it private, public or hybrid–to add value to their businesses, rather than just reselling services," explains Akash Saraf, CEO of Zenith Infotech…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Matt Prigge.

It’s safe to say that few IT pros enjoy maintaining compliance with software licensing agreements. Some of us put in enough effort to ensure that we’ll emerge from an audit relatively unscathed, but few delve into the details to know precisely what we can and can’t do with the software we’ve purchased — er, licensed. In fact, I’d hazard a guess that not one person reading this has actually read the license agreements for all the software they run.

However, as the cloud becomes more popular and more of us start to use it, we may need to all get used to reading the fine print. Although the problems are more apparent in larger enterprise-class software suites, the license agreements for a wide range of software today actually prohibit their use on hardware that isn’t owned by the licensee — effectively ruling out use in the cloud…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Marissa Trejada.

When it comes to cloud computing, security is a necessity. According to new research, that very need will help the cloud market grow over the next few years. Midsize firms are in the position to implement new security offerings as they turn to the cloud for increased productivity.

Proper Implementation

In the next three years, Gartner predicts the cloud security market will top $4.2 billion. The findings, featured in IT Pro , point out that demand will grow because more and more firms will be looking for affordable security solutions to properly implement cloud services. The article also mentions that, earlier in the year, Gartner predicted the cloud will account for 10 percent of IT security enterprise product capabilities within the next two years…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

OpenStack clouds and network management capabilities are converging. An example: Brocade has released a VCS fabric plugin, providing on-demand fabric provisioning capabilities to OpenStack-based clouds. Launched as a component to OpenStack Grizzly, the plugin was designed to expand on the native attributes of Brocade’s VCS Fabric technology.

According to Brocade, the benefits of VCS on OpenStack are related to its technology’s network automation, efficiency and elasticity combined with the ease of provisioning provided on OpenStack. The goal is enable customers to deploy network capacity and services in cloud-based data centers more quickly than with legacy network architectures and provisioning tools…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

iSoftStone Holdings Limited ("iSoftStone," NYSE: ISS), a leading China-based IT services and solutions provider, and International Business Machines ("IBM"), the largest IT and business solutions provider today announced a collaboration to build www.xb-cloud.cn ("XB-CLOUD"), a Cloud Service Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises ("SMEs") in Northwest China. The two companies, together with Industry and IT Committee of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Municipal Government, and China Mobile Gansu also recently officially established the Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province. These initiatives aim at facilitating SMEs’ daily operations through efficient use of cloud computing and promote Lanzhou as a model of the Northwest China in using advance technology to drive industries’ growth.

The establishment of XB-CLOUD and Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province is an extension of the Cloud Computing Service Center for SMEs in Northwest China co-launched by Lanzhou Municipal Government, China Mobile Gansu and IBM last year. The Cloud Computing Service Center has been built in China Mobile Gansu’s Xigu premises, and the initial phase of cloud computing services platform and application development are completed…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.

The lyrics of the iconic Eagle’s 1977 song are beginning to take on new meaning as a growing group of cloud computing users realize that leaving is not necessarily as easy as checking –in at the various cloud computing providers.

In many ways cloud computing is like a hotel. Both provide the ease and convenience to scale and a temporary home for your apps. Both provide all the comforts of home without the need to do any of the preparation, management and up-keep. In many ways, it’s the ideal computing environment. That is, until you want to leave…