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…

Grazed from FierceEnterpriseCommunications. Author: Fred Donovan.

Chief information officers (CIOs) are expected to cut spending on computer and communications equipment while increasing investment in software, especially for software-as-a-service (SaaS) apps, analytics and mobile apps, Forrester Research is predicting.

Enterprise spending on telecom services is predicted to grow more slowly than the tech market overall, which Forrester predicts will increase 6.2 percent this year and 6.8 percent next year, according to a blog by Andrew Bartels, vice president and principal analyst serving CIOs at Forrester…

Grazed fron InfoWorld. AuthorL Eric Knorr.

When I interviewed Paul Maritz near the end of his term as CEO of VMware, he offered this frank assessment of the company: "Unless we think ahead, we will be seen as the closing chapter of the client-server generation instead of the opening chapter of the next generation." That "opening chapter," or at least one version of it, was introduced last week with the official launch of Pivotal, a new venture led by Maritz, spun out of EMC/VMware, and boosted by a $105 million investment from GE.

Pivotal is a funny kind of startup, with 1,250 employees hailing from a grab bag of EMC and VMware acquisitions, including Cetas, Cloud Foundry, GemFire, GreenPlum, and SpringSource, as well as Pivotal Labs, a high-end Web and mobile development house. In "less than six months," that motley crew is scheduled to release Pivotal One, an enterprise PaaS (platform as a service) providing big data analytics — and eventually hooked up to "the Internet of things."…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

Telefónica Digital and Push Technology are to offer fast and scalable mobile and web data distribution from the cloud to any device through a strategic partnership. Push Technology’s smart data distribution technology Diffusion, combined with Telefónica Digital’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering, allows customers to "address the challenges of bandwidth, infrastructure and redundant data to reduce costs and increase revenue", said the partners.

Sean Bowen, CEO of Push Technology, said: “Cloud service providers are operating a utility model to promote the benefits of lower CAPEX and scale. The problem is these cloud service providers are not addressing the challenges of the internet – bandwidth and network availability – so regardless of the services in-house, the delivery can become a quality of service nightmare."…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Secure-24, a leading provider of cloud computing, application outsourcing and enterprise hosting services, now offers a new Backup-as-a-Service (BaaS) solution for enterprises that need reliable, secure ITIL based data protection processes for their environments.

A team of experts will present Secure-24’s backup-as-a-service in booth 759 during EMC World 2013 on May 6-9 at the Venetian in Las Vegas. Secure-24’s Storage and Backup Services Manager Keith Bankston will be available to answer questions. Bankston will also be speaking in the Partner Buzz Theater on May 8th at 2:00 for a session titled: Leveraging Backup-as-a-Service for Your Business: How to Avoid Costly Information Loss…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to Nancy Gohring at IT World, the OpenStack Foundation is starting to call out incompatible clouds. "Get ready for the OpenStack Foundation to start cracking down on service providers that call their clouds OpenStack but aren’t actually interoperable," she wrote, "The first companies that may be in the foundation’s crosshairs: HP and Rackspace."

Rackspace is an early innovator with OpenStack, and Hewlett-Packard could be the largest OpenStack provider by the end of the year. It’s interesting they’re the first to be accused of compatibility issues. HP and Rackspace have both fired back with responses to the compatibility allegations:…