Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.

I was just reading an interesting post over at Information Age which outlines Accenture ACN +3.14%’s ambitious plan to position itself as the IT industry’s “cloud broker.” The strategy is part of a broader plan that sees the consulting company investing upwards of $400 million in new cloud computing capabilities. According to the story, the Accenture Cloud Platform will be part of what the company describes as a plan to grow its more than 6,700 cloud focused experts and related cloud services.

The term cloud broker seems to be thrown around a lot lately. TechTarget defines it as “a third-party individual or business that acts as an intermediary between the purchaser of a cloud computing service and the sellers of that service. The broker’s role may simply be to save the purchaser time by researching services from different vendors and providing the customer with information about how to use cloud computing to support business goals. In such a scenario, the broker works with the customer to understand work processes, provisioning needs, budgeting and data management requirements. After the research has been completed, the broker presents the customer with a short list of recommended cloud providers and the customer contacts the vendor(s) of choice to arrange service.”…

Grazed from Windows IT Pro. Author: BK Winstead.

Whether your organization is jumping full force into cloud computing or hanging back and assessing options carefully before deciding if the cloud can benefit your organization, there’s no question that IT shops are being changed by the industry’s drive toward cloud delivery. However, it’s equally clear that not every change is for the best. The challenge for IT pros is to find the cloud computing models that can aid your organization without sacrificing data security, organizational efficiency, and business productivity.

Dark Clouds

You’ve probably heard all the standard complaints against the cloud: can’t guarantee security; can’t access data or applications if the service or your connection goes down; no visibility into where your data is stored. Of course, these problems are real, and not something you can just gloss over. Yes, you do need to consider your back up plans, your legal obligations, and everything else very carefully—just as you do for your on-premises deployments…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Pete Manca.

We all know cloud is the future of IT, but there are still a few unanswered questions. For instance, with all the high-profile cloud outages, is the cloud really ready for mission critical applications? This common question arises because inevitably, we wonder if the cloud is more or less reliable and secure than our own data centers.

In a recent survey from North Bridge Venture Partners on cloud computing trends, 50 percent of respondents said they were confident cloud solutions were viable for mission critical business applications. Only three percent of those surveyed believed cloud was too risky, which improved from 14 percent the year prior. It’s clear many companies are transitioning to the cloud, and as more make the move, more applications are being transitioned as well…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

AnyPresence, a leading enterprise mobile development platform, today announced it was named one of the Top 100 Coolest Cloud Computing Vendors of 2013 by CRN Magazine, a leading IT channel publication. AnyPresence was honored along side Cloudera, Heroku, Nimbula and other cloud computing innovators.

In the recent edition of CRN Magazine, editors highlighted how AnyPresence’s cloud-based mobile platform for enterprises aims to cut costs and make it easier to develop and deploy mobile applications. The publication also acknowledges the key benefits of the AnyPresence solution, including the ability to generate customizable mobile backend servers (MBaaS), mobile SDKs, and user interface starter kits for native iOS, native Android, and HTML5 mobile apps, with a unique no platform lock-in guarantee…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Marshall.

VMware is one of the latest household technology brands to throw its weight behind OpenStack, the open source cloud operating system that launched more than two and half years ago to enable any organization with the opportunity to gain quick entry into the cloud computing market.

Of course, VMware’s contribution to the OpenStack community hasn’t always been seen in a positive light. The virtualization giant’s joining of the OpenStack Foundation was initially met with skepticism since the company hasn’t always fully embraced the project. And even more recently, there was an interesting twist of marketing FUD centered on an announcement that PayPal — and perhaps even its parent company eBay — was ditching VMware in favor of moving to an OpenStack environment…

Grazed from InformationAge. Author: Pete Swabey.

At first, it seemed as though cloud computing might pose an existential threat to the IT outsourcing industry. If customers can rent IT capabilities over the Internet without setting up their own infrastructure, why would they need outsourced IT skills?

In truth, there is a lot of extra work associated with using cloud computing. In 2009, Gartner analyst Darryl Plummer spotted the need for a so- called “cloud broker”, a function – internal or external – that makes it easier for a business to adopt public cloud services by certifying approved cloud providers, taking care of integration, managing user identity across services, and more besides…

Grazed from PRNewswire. Author: PR Announcement.

BT is accelerating its push into cloud computing all round the world by launching BT Cloud Compute, an enhanced service that allows CIOs far greater control in terms of designing, building, buying and operating a cloud solution that is tailored to their specific needs. CIOs can keep pace with the changing demands of their customers and confidently build powerful ‘pay as you go’ cloud solutions that they can use from anywhere in the world with consistent levels of quality, security and service from BT.

From the boom economies of Latin America and the financial hubs of Europe to the huge developing markets of Asia and the fast-moving retail sectors of the US, BT’s smartest, fastest customers are transforming their businesses by creating or changing their service in response to new demands. BT research has shown that customers using BT Cloud Compute make an average saving of 40 per cent against traditional ways of working. By using BT’s advanced Cloud orchestration of infrastructure, network, applications and services, customers can align costs directly to their business needs…

Grazed from CloudTimes.org. Author: Erik Grueter.

Cloud computing is set for a number of big shakeups this year. The big story is in the effect these changes will have on smaller businesses. Public clouds that can be accessed cheaply and without a big IT overhead are likely to be chosen by small, developer friendly companies. Big data is also more accessible than ever thanks to new analytics and data mining technologies.

Several new cloud security trends are also emerging. The cloud will enable small companies to access powerful application security technologies through new subscription models. As we will see, this innovation couldn’t have come at a better time, because the cloud isn’t just benefiting the good guys…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Rich Miller.

What do you get when you combine Google Glass and Robert Scoble taking a shower? A blogospheric buzzstorm, as evidenced this past weekend. But behind the raves and ribbing about Scoble and his enthusiasm for Google Glass lurked an intriguing question: will Glass lead to frictionless sharing that alters the way data is stored, uploaded and distributed?

Scoble, a technology evangelist and blogger for cloud computing specialist Rackspace Hosting, argues that it will. “Google Glass is going to need a new kind of cloud computing and Google won’t be able to satisfy all the demand,” Scoble wrote in a widely-linked Google+ post. ”If Google Glass is as big a deal as I think it will be, humans will generate much more data than they do today…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Michael A. Davies.

It’s not often that IT teams charged with new projects and initiatives say, "Let’s look at how the feds are doing things." The U.S. government’s IT systems are seen as slow, archaic and overly complex — think the Veterans Affairs Department’s huge claims backlog and the sorry state of the National Instant Criminal Background Check System, which handles only 6% of requests electronically. But thanks to the "Cloud First" and open data sharing initiatives that former federal CIO Vivek Kundra mandated, the government is an innovator when it comes to cloud computing and data security.

The benefits of that work aren’t limited to government agencies. Businesses can take advantage of it, too, particularly with regard to security issues. Our 2013 InformationWeek State of Cloud Computing Survey of nearly 450 business technology professionals at companies with 50 or more employees shows there’s a real need to address security concerns…