Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Matthew Ramsey.

Major changes in cloud computing have occurred in recent months. Enterprises have seen a barrage of new service offerings, ranging from cloud service brokerages to ground-breaking storage services from the big players. Services like Microsoft SkyDrive are great for automating key processes. Who doesn’t benefit from comprehensive storage and backup solutions? The dominance of the app market has spread into the cloud arena to address these needs.

While game and sports apps dominate consumer markets, the enterprise has a seemingly endless array of productivity apps to choose from. CloudLock, a leading cloud security vendor, compiled a list of the most often used cloud apps based on Google results. At the top of the list are applications used for communications and collaboration, storage, and document sharing. These will all have an impact on changes in how your organization is run in 2013. They also contribute to the phenomenon of assembling numerous cloud services into one cohesive process…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.

If OpenStack is the embodiment of the community cloud model, then VMware vCloud Suite is an example of a focused, single-vendor cloud. The goal of vCloud is to create a data center that’s completely virtual — all resources, all locations. And while vCloud is neither free, open source, hypervisor-agnostic nor backed by a consortium of vendors, it could be a good choice for companies that see the benefit in commercial software’s documentation, centralized support and focused development and enhancement.

VMware vCloud Suite creates a virtual data center defined by software, and it is close to a completely transparent resource pool. It also aims to link the cloud to productivity and business agility value at all levels, unlike the positioning for most cloud computing services, which tends to focus on the public cloud or on a simple extension to virtualization. The cloud platform builds on the wide success of VMware Inc.’s virtualization products — vSphere and vMotion…

Grazed from Convey Computer. Author: PR Announcement.

Convey Computer today announced that Nimbix, a leader in accelerated high-performance cloud computing, has partnered with Convey to expand its Convey hybrid-core (HC) infrastructure, as part of “The Accelerated Genomics Cloud” (TAGC) promotion, which provides free runtime for qualified applicants. The Convey HC-2ex platform will be used in research projects for customers who take advantage of the promotion.

A total of $25,000 worth of cloud processing time will be awarded to genomics researchers to boost their bioinformatics analysis. Top award recipients will receive $1,000 of runtime each, which is enough to map up to 3 Tbases of reads, providing the ability to analyze, for example, a dozen human genomes at significant coverage. Remaining qualified applicants will receive $500 of runtime…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing has the power to change the way students learn and the way staff teach, especially in rapidly transforming regions such as Central and Eastern Europe. To prepare students for a world based on technology, education institutions across the region are adopting Microsoft Office 365 to serve a variety of their cloud computing needs.

Goals met through their focus on technology include:

• Improved communication. Office 365 enables students and staff to communicate across timezones and countries with the click of a mouse. As more and more young people become accustomed to real-time communication and “always on” technologies, Central and Eastern European schools are using Microsoft Lync Online to enrich their learning environments and student outcomes…

Grazed from ProofPoint. Author: Editorial Staff.

Every day, new types of malware and other risks emerge with the rapidly evolving IT environment, threatening data protection and forcing enterprises to consider new technologies for detection and prevention. More experts are pointing to the benefits of software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, which can help resolve some of these newer threats.

In an interview with Computer Weekly, Shlomo Kramer, founder of Imperva, revealed that many organizations have maintained the same budgets for security even though the threat landscape has changed. "Most of the security spend is still allocated to network firewalls and antivirus (AV) systems, but attacks are no longer broad, notoriety-seeking and naïve; they are very targeted, sophisticated and well-funded," he stated…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Pete Babb.

"We’ve all heard of public, private, and hybrid clouds, but what happens when you connect a giant data center on a closed network and sell your cloud services exclusively to a select group of businesses with shared needs?" asks Ken Jennings (yes, the former "Jeopardy" champ). The answer is the "community cloud," which is not quite a hybrid cloud, but more of a specialized cloud available strictly for member businesses.

The NYSE (New York Stock Exchange) Technologies has built one of the first such community clouds — targeted at the financial sector, obviously — called the Capital Markets Community Platform, which provides all member companies with the horsepower needed for the billions of transactions per day they make, but its appeal is more than just raw computing capability…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Rajesh Rege.

Expected to be an inflection point for cloud computing, 2013 holds a great potential for innovation driven by a surge in demand for reliable, secure, high speed and resilient mobile and broadband networks and infrastructure. According to the Cisco Global Cloud Index, global cloud computing traffic will increase 12-fold from 130 exabytes to reach a total of 1.6 zettabytes annually by 2015.

Cloud is the fastest growing component of data center traffic, growing to more than 33 per cent of the total by 2015. A research by GigaOM expects the cloud market to grow to $158.8 billion in 2014. The opportunities will lie in both existing cloud architectures and emerging new architectures as organizations take advantage of differing deployment models…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

As reported by my friend and Forbes writer Joe McKendrick, "A new survey finds that roughly one out of four organizations are heavily into cloud computing, and they are providing lessons from which everyone else can benefit." The lessons come from having two or three years of real experience, enough time to see the real benefits and issues.

Keep in mind the study is sponsored by RightScale, a cloud vendor, and it was done in a way to discover the positive, not the negative. It’s as if Dunkin’ Donuts sponsored a study on breakfast foods. You wouldn’t expect to find results related to obesity or diabetes…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Logicalis, Rackspace and Savvis were among the big MSPs and cloud services providers (CSPs) on hand at CA World last week in Las Vegas. Each of those companies said CA Technologies plays a critical role in their revenue-generating platforms. So what will it take for CA Technologies to thrive against potential rivals like VMware, SolarWinds and OpenStack? Here are some educated guesses.

First the good news: CA World attracted roughly 5,000 partners and customers. That’s a solid showing, especially since CA Technologies has been in transition mode over the past few years. Still best-known for its enterprise IT management tools, the company:…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Joshua Gliddon.

Salesforce.com, which introduced the idea of cloud computing to many organisations, has leapt past SAP as the leading CRM vendor, a report from Gartner has found. While SAP enjoyed 12.9 percent of the CRM market, Salesforce jumped past with 14.9 percent. Revenues for Salesforce.com in the CRM space were $US2.5 billion, marginally ahead of SAP’s $US2.3 billion.

Worldwide, total CRM revenue totalled $US18 billion, a rise of 12.5 percent on the previous year’s figure of $US16 billion. Third place in the CRM stakes was Oracle, with sales of just over $US2 billion, Microsoft with sales of $US1.1 billion, and IBM an also-ran, with sales in the region of $US650 million…