Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Teena Hammond.

The word “cloud” is being used with ever-growing frequency, but exactly who is using it and are the results satisfactory? To find out the current IT mindset on cloud/Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), TechRepublic did an informal, online survey in early March, asking IT leaders if they’d moved to the cloud, and if so, what business drivers led that decision. The survey delved into whether public, private or hybrid cloud solutions were chosen, and the benefits of choosing one versus the other. Download the full IaaS Research: Leaders Share Cloud Strategies for the 21st Century Data Center report. Topics covered in the survey include:

• Vendors used for current cloud services
• Vendors being considered for future cloud services
• Reasons for going to the cloud
• Does the cloud meet expectations
• Why some companies aren’t adopting the cloud
• Current cloud status
• Public, private or hybrid?

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Jeremy Kirk.

Amazon.com has added a file-syncing feature to its online storage product, Cloud Drive, putting the service on par with competitors such as Dropbox and Google’s Drive. The syncing feature will allow users to view an up-to-date file across several devices. Cloud Drive is a desktop application for Windows and Mac, and Amazon.com also has a version designed for Android, just for photos. Amazon.com also offers a Web-based upload panel if users don’t want to download the desktop application.

Online storage applications are a very competitive market segment. The services allow users to spread the same version of a file across several computers and prevent the loss of a file in case a computer is lost or stolen or breaks. But it is also an area where technical glitches and performance issues are a concern…

Grazed from PR NewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

SingleHop, a global leader in highly automated cloud computing and infrastructure-as-a-service, announced today the availability of its VMware Enterprise Private Cloud, which offers a private cloud environment powered by the VMware vSphere Enterprise Plus platform. The product is a secure single-tenant pool of computing resources, custom-built for every client, and connected with a highly scalable SAN storage solution. The end result is a private computing platform with the flexibility and scalability of the cloud with industrial-strength security capabilities.

The Enterprise Private Cloud utilizes SingleHop’s tried and tested automated infrastructure platform in accordance with VMware’s enterprise-class cloud computing technology. Some of the features of this blend include:..

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

People have always feared that cloud computing is inherently lacking in security because of the distribution methods used, allowing it to be more public than necessary. But research and reports indicate that it is not less secure than enterprise computing as they actually both suffer from the same types of attack. And it does not matter if you are a small organization or a large one you will still be the target of cyber-attacks as most of them are opportunistic in nature.

While organizations and businesses are the target of online attacks, the real entryways for these attacks are unsecured personal computers. These form the backbone of the cyber-criminal’s arsenal. Hijacked computers referred to as zombies or bots are being used to make brute force attacks on different networks both within the cloud infrastructure and on-premise infrastructure. No one is actually safe, whatever kind of infrastructure that they are using. Others might be more privy to attacks due to the nature of their service like banks or the possible wealth of information that they bring, like government networks and industry leaders in technology research…

Grazed from IBM. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Avnet Technology Solutions, the global IT solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), has selected IBM SmartCloud as the foundation for Avnet Cloud Solutions, a portfolio of cloud offerings for small and midsize businesses in India. With IBM SmartCloud, Avnet offers compute and storage capabilities in a utility model and structures customized solutions such as disaster recovery and managed services.

Avnet has a strong presence in India, where it is expanding its portfolio of services to include customized cloud solutions for small and midsize businesses across various industries, including retail, logistics, manufacturing, banking and financial services, public sector and education, among others. Cloud computing holds tremendous potential for a significant number of small and midsize Indian enterprises with limited IT resources. IBM SmartCloud will enable Avnet partners to offer their customers access to enterprise-level IT at affordable price points without additional investment in infrastructure, security, back-up, upgrades and maintenance. This partnership will help those customers derive benefits by adopting a robust cloud architecture and service model, leapfrogging the traditional investment in enterprise IT…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

John Engates is the chief technology officer at Rackspace, and even he had trouble wrapping his mind around the way his company runs its most important of technologies. Rackspace, you see, runs its cloud software on its cloud software. At first blush, this seems like some sort of cruel joke. Cloud software isn’t the easiest concept to grasp — even when you’re running the stuff all by itself. And it doesn’t help that the world’s PR departments have co-opted the cloud moniker and applied it to, well, just about everything.

But in the end, Rackspace’s cloud-on-cloud arrangement makes good sense. This sort of multilayered setup is rather common in the world of computer science, and if you take the time to think through what Rackspace is doing, it may even help you grasp the very real but often elusive ideas that underpin cloud computing — ideas that are remaking the way the world runs software and stores data…

Grazed from AllThingsHD. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Here’s a name I haven’t heard in a while: Anso Labs. Remember this was the cloud computing startup that originated at NASA, where the original ideas for OpenStack, the open source cloud computing platform was born? Anso Labs was acquired by Rackspace a little more than two years ago. It was a small team. But now a lot of the people who ran Anso Labs are back with a new outfit, still devoted to cloud computing, and still devoted to Openstack. It’s called Nebula. And it builds a turnkey computer, that will turn an ordinary rack of servers into a cloud-ready system, running — you guessed it — Openstack.

Based in Mountain View, Nebula claims to have an answer for any company that’s ever wanted to build its own private cloud system and not rely on outside vendors like Amazon or Hewlett-Packard, or Rackspace to run it for them. It’s called the Nebula One. And Nebula CEO and founder Chris Kemp said the setup is pretty simple: Plug the servers into the Nebula One, then you “turn it on and it boots up cloud.” All of the provisioning, and management that a service provider would normally charge you for, has been created on a hardware device…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Navatar Group (@navatargroup), a premier cloud provider for financial services, today announced that Evolution Capital Partners (@evolution_cp), a Cleveland based small business private equity firm, has successfully adopted Navatar Private Equity CRM to manage their opportunity pipeline and deploy their funds most effectively.

Evolution Capital Partners invests growth capital nationwide in Second Stage Companies, providing the necessary resources to successfully navigate the critical transition through No Man’s Land. "Our approach to investing involves a deliberate and defined process," said Jeffrey Kadlic, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Evolution Capital Partners. "The Navatar platform allows us to efficiently manage this process which supports our core values and ultimately allows us to better serve our investors and growth companies."…

Grazed from Orlando Sentinel.  Author: Richard Burnett.

High-technology giant Intel Corp. is bringing its Silicon Valley heft to a partnership with the Army’s Orlando simulation-research lab to create computerized war games capable of handling hundreds of participants at once, company and military officials said this week.  The goal of the project — the first deal of its kind for Intel in Central Florida — is to create a computing network powerful enough to deliver interactive training simulations to large groups of players around the world, from infantry troops and senior commanders to combat ships and fighter-jet squadrons.

Using Web-based software applications, commonly known as "cloud computing," the new system would eclipse not only the military’s current remote-training systems but also commercial "massive multi-player" websites such as Second Life, an online "virtual world."…

Grazed from Deseret News.  Author: Josh Linton.

Technology plays a vital role in the ongoing success of any organization. Because technology can be difficult to understand and implement, it sometimes becomes a low priority and is often overlooked.  There is currently a lot of noise and discussion about "the cloud," or cloud computing. Questions arise like, “Are you in the cloud?”

One of the reasons the cloud is difficult to understand is that it means different things to different people, all dependent on who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. There is no real structure to it and each use of the cloud holds its own definition and value.   There are three basic groups that utilize and need the cloud. By understanding these three groups, you can decide how to make the cloud work for you…