Grazed from Forbes. Author: Michael Goodenough.

We all have a lot of “stuff” in our homes, garages and even cars. We run out of places to put our items so oftentimes that means either downsizing what we have or finding new places store it. Computer data is no different. If we run out of space on a personal computer, tablet or server, we often delete old files or transfer data to a storage network.

Primary and Secondary Traditional Storage

Traditional storage is generally broken up into Primary and Secondary storage. Primary storage includes storage area networks (SAN), direct-attached disks (DAS) and network-attached storage (NAS). Primary storage is generally accessed on a random basis, and it acts as support for active applications. Secondary storage is your backup storage, designed to protect your data. Three major types of secondary storage include optical disk, tape media and virtual tape libraries (VTL)…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Spandas Lui.

We can stop pointing fingers at datacentres for chewing up power because the biggest culprit of energy consumption in the cloud computing ecosystem is the equipment that facilitates wireless access to the cloud, according to the Centre for Energy-Efficient Telecommunications (CEET). CEET is a joint-venture between the University of Melbourne, communications vendor Alcatel-Lucent, and the Victorian State government.

The proliferation of cloud computing has meant more datacentres are being built to supply cloud services. Datacentres, particularly older models, are often cited as energy inefficient although through new design principles, they are gradually becoming more power efficient…

Grazed from Business Today. Author: Editorial Staff.

HP has announced the availability of its ProLiant Moonshot line of servers , which it says can cut power consumption by up to 89 per cent as compared to its existing servers. These systems are based on 64-bit Intel Atom S1200 processor family. HP Moonshot servers are designed and tailored for specific workloads to deliver optimum performance.

The servers share management, power, cooling, networking, and storage. "With nearly 10 billion devices connected to the internet and predictions for exponential growth, we’ve reached a point where the space, power, and cost demands of traditional technology are no longer sustainable," said Meg Whitman, President and CEO of HP…

Grazed from TechWorld. Author: John E. Dunn.

Promising Scottish security startup Inquisitive Systems has been handed £500,000 ($750,000) by angel investors to boost development of its innovative ZoneFox system designed to protect firms from the threat of having sensitive IP assets stolen by hackers. Spun out in 2010 from Edinburgh’s Napier University, the latest round has come from the Archangel syndicate, building on top of previous tranches from Scottish Enterprise, which invested £100,000, and £60,000 from seed investors.

The faith being shown by investors appears to be based on the belief that with targeted attacks, Advanced Persistent Threats (APTs), and economic digital warfare now established threats, ZoneFox is a technology that has matured at precisely the right moment…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

Aryaka, a company which offers wide area network optimisation in the cloud, has collated together several pieces of research emphasising the importance of cloud in a modern enterprise. Pooling together studies from the likes of CIO Insight, Forrester and IDC, Aryaka has examined cloud strategies at different points of the enterprise, predominantly assessing the UK market.

Among the statistics cited in the infographic include an interesting summation of the top cloudy growth areas. According to the 1300 people surveyed, IaaS (infrastructure as a service) is predicted as the key growth area in cloud computing by 41% of respondents, followed by management and security (27%) and PaaS (platform as a service (26.6%)…

Grazed from TheStreet.  Author: Chris Lau.

Consumers may be more familiar with cloud service offerings. This includes Google Drive, offered by Google (GOOG), SkyDrive by Microsoft (MSFT), Box.com, and DropBox.  Some of the other big players investors might want to start with are grouped below. 

Networking

1. Cisco Systems, Inc. (CSCO): The networking giant grew through acquisitions. The company is turning its focus on SDN. UBS argued that innovation in hardware will happen through SDN. Performance, latency, and resiliency are elements that will improve…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Paul Kapustka.

It’s easy to forget that sometimes even in a highly specialized audience — like the one here following enterprise mobility — there are divisions in opinion and in how a common technology, like cloud computing, is viewed. At last week’s Cloud Connect event in Santa Clara, I heard several speakers call this divide out in compelling fashion, and it made me wonder if culture is part of the reason cloud computing still faces challenges in corporate deployments.

Mark Hinkle, senior director for Open Source Solutions at Citrix, called out one clear division in a panel on cloud deployments. When viewing cloud services, Hinkle said, end users will typically gravitate toward a solution that provides fast and easy results. But for enterprise IT, he noted, "the stakes are much higher" for cloud deployments. "There are more things that come into play."…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Editorial Staff.

Accenture has launched a new Accenture Cloud Platform and has pledged to invest more than $400 million in cloud capabilities to help clients implement digital technologies to drive greater flexibility, innovation and growth.

As more and more clients are going digital, the Accenture Cloud Platform provides services and solutions designed to help organizations integrate and manage the hybrid cloud environments that span across multiple vendor platforms and are critical to providing flexibility and supporting emerging technologies. Accenture officials said the move is to help clients get the most business value from cloud computing and is in anticipation of the shift in demand toward the public cloud…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

When it comes to cloud computing, security rises to the top of the worry list, but is worth the risk. A new survey shows that most IT decision makers believe both that the cloud is a proven technology and that security is a top challenge in implementing it correctly. Midsize firms understand the need for the best security when it comes to their own cloud deployments and they demand the best solutions to remain competitive.

Importance and Security

ComputerWeekly recently featured a report on a survey by managed services IT firm Claranet about cloud services which revealed that cloud security is an important consideration among CIOs in the UK. The survey, which took into consideration the opinions of 250 IT pros, showed that ninety percent of them believe the cloud is an important, proven technology that gives companies much growth potential. However, the IT pros had concerns about client and corporate information getting into the wrong hands. Almost half of those polled had concerns about security breaches…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: J. Nicholas Hoover.

The Defense Information Systems Agency plans to award a $45 million cloud computing contract for an intelligence and surveillance information storage cloud that could eventually require four exabytes of storage, according to a procurement document posted online.

The document, a sole source justification, says that DISA will award the contract to systems integrator Alliance Technology Group, which claims expertise in federal government private cloud computing and has done business with NASA and the Navy, among other federal agencies. According to the document, Alliance will provide DISA’s Enterprise Services arm, which provides IT services to the rest of the military, with "state-of-the-art global storage capabilities."…