Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: David Bills.

This article kicks off a three-part series on designing for dependability. Today I will provide context for the series, and outline the challenges facing all cloud service providers as they strive to provide highly available services. In the second article of the series, David Gauthier, director of data center architecture at Microsoft, will discuss the journey that Microsoft is on in our own data centers, and how software resiliency has become more and more critical in the move to cloud-scale data centers. Finally, in the last piece, I will discuss cultural shift and evolving engineering principles that Microsoft is pursuing to help improve the dependability of the services we offer.

Matching the Reliability to the Demand

As the adoption of cloud computing continues to grow, expectations for utility-grade service availability remain high. Consumers demand access 24 hours a day, seven days a week to their digital lives, and outages can have a significant negative impact on a company’s financial health or brand equity. But the complex nature of cloud computing means that cloud service providers, regardless of whether they sell offerings for infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS), need to be mindful that things will go wrong — because it’s not a case of “if things will go wrong,” it’s strictly a matter of “when.”…

Grazed from Technorati. Author: Andre Bourque.

What is DevOps?

The proliferation of mobile and web applications has had a dramatic impact on how applications are developed, the internal platforms that support that development, and the organizational teams involved. Today’s developers want real-time access to the latest computing and storage resources. At the same time, they need support for minor app updates. On the other hand, IT teams demand scalability, stability and reliability.

Because of this, enterprise organizations have placed more focus on creating new divisions to produce deep cross-departmental integration between IT support, QA, and development teams. These Development-Operations (DevOps) resources serve to help an organization quickly produce software products and services. In a broader sense, the DevOps approach is one that promotes better communication between the two teams…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Verdant Analysis, developer of cloud-based financial modeling and investment analysis software will launch its Verdasis Marketplace on April 23, 2013. The Verdasis technology liberates users from stand-alone terminals and license fees and enables anyone to investigate publicly traded securities quickly and easily. The flexible payment model allows users to buy only what they need or to subscribe for full-access at a low monthly fee. The basic service, available now, is free.

On April 23rd, 2013, Verdant Analysis will begin rolling out the Verdasis Marketplace, a platform to allow users to buy and sell portfolios, analysis models and financial models. The roll-out will begin with portfolios. Verdant Analysis’ basic service lets users build portfolios of U.S. and Canadian publicly traded securities and to analyze them using analysis templates. The templates are built by the user and can contain an unlimited number of financial statement line items…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Despite concerns from skeptics about the security and reliability of cloud when it comes to protecting sensitive data, many cloud computing companies are taking strong steps to mitigate risk and try to prove to potential customers they are doing everything they can to improve security. The latest such announcement comes from Centrify, which provides unified identity services across cloud, data center and mobile. Centrify recently earned a SOC 2 (service organization control) credential, as well as the TRUSTe Certified Privacy Seal.

Security credentials aren’t given out lightly. For the SOC 2 designation, Centrify had to undergo an examination of its internal controls over the security, availability and confidentiality of customer data. The company made through the audit for its Centrify Cloud Service. Similarly, TRUSTe examines service providers’ privacy statements and practices in protecting customer data…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

A tool Intermedia has used since 2010 to migrate more than 300,000 users to its cloud-based hosted Exchange service is now being made available to the company’s channel partners. The Cloud Concierge Onboarding Tool was developed by Intermedia, but has been used exclusively internally. Now the channel has access to it to migrate customers’ Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) Exchange over to Intermedia’s cloud service.

The onboarding tool was designed to enable users to fully control onboarding to Intermedia’s hosted Exchange service, from the creation of accounts to object creation, data migration and cutover. It’s good to see Intermedia now rolling out the tool—which has been in use for more than two years—to its channel partners, making onboarding simpler and easier to manage for its resellers…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Buffaloed by the task of figuring out which cloud provider offers the best deal? A free service called PlanForCloud.com will do it for you, incorporating 12,000 different pricing possibilities offered by six different cloud vendors. Just plug in the resources you plan to use and compare the results.

Launched in February 2012, PlanForCloud.com was acquired by RightScale in June. RightScale maintains it as a free service and updates it with the frequent price changes that occur in the cloud market. For example, PlanForCloud has captured 29 prices reductions in cloud services over the past 14 months. Amazon alone during that period announced eight core service price reductions — for servers, storage or network bandwidth — and 11 reductions on add-on services such as database, caching and messaging…

Grazed from DataCenter Knowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Today’s IT environment is being built around direct efficiencies. This means better resource utilization, improved monitoring, and the consolidation of enterprise systems. Many organizations are building a business around an efficient and well-controlled IT environment. The idea is to create an IT as a service model where administrators can allow for self-provisioned services and automation to help control administrative overhead.

This is where technologies around the converged infrastructure can really help. Intelligent storage systems can help an organization cut costs and control very vital resources. In HP’s whitepaper, we learn how utility storage creates a unified platform for efficiency and growth. Directly modeled for the needs of virtualization and cloud computing, HP’s converged storage infrastructure leads to three very direct benefits:…

Grazed from IBTimes. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Network Centric Operations Industry Consortium (NCOIC) has awarded $350,000 to the Cycle One team led by NJVC and members including Boeing, The Aerospace Corporation and Open Geospatial Consortium. Together they will create a cloud infrastructure to support a concept proposed by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA): namely, can cloud computing deliver services to non-traditional NGA users?

The project is designed to demonstrate the interoperability and movement of data in an open-cloud-based demonstration. NGA will provide unclassified data that supports a scenario depicting the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. NCOIC’s foundational model is based on a series of successful lab interoperability demonstrations, also based on Haiti, it conducted four times during 2010…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

Even though, cloud computing has become exceedingly common, the fact remains that people seem to have differing opinions when it comes to its definition. The issue is not the lack of definition or the lack of an agreed coherent one, but rather the lack of apparent direction. Cloud computing is an extremely large topic, but it is being used in very specific ways. In the same vein that makes it hard for people to stay on the same page when talking about general computing without agreeing to something specific, people need to be specific when they talk about cloud computing. This is because it encompasses infrastructure, architecture, deployment, applications, development, automation, operations, management, optimization and a dozen other topics that are equally beneficial and all would be a valid topic when referring to cloud computing.

Because of this inherent confusion with regards to conversation structuring, Yung Chou, a Technology Evangelist of the Microsoft US Developer and Platform Evangelism Team, devised an easy to remember principle that we can all agree on and use as a proper base when discussing cloud computing. The principle is called the “5-3- 2 Principle” and refers to the five essential characteristics of cloud computing, the three cloud service delivery methods, and the two deployment models which when put together properly describes what cloud computing is…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

In a bid to improve data security, Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched AWS CloudHSM, which uses a separate appliance to protect cryptographic keys used for encryption. There are already a variety of alternatives for protecting sensitive data on Amazon’s cloud. But for some applications and data that are subject to contractual or regulatory mandates for managing cryptographic keys, additional protections may be necessary. Here is where the CloudHSM (Hardware Security Module) fits in, according to Amazon.

Until now, organizations’ only options were to keep data locally or to deploy equipment in-house to protect encrypted data in the cloud, which has a negative impact on application performance, it said. The service is powered by a Luna SA appliance from SafeNet that has a tamper-resistant enclosure. An enterprise can store its keys on the unit and use them to encrypt and decrypt data, while having full control, according to Amazon. Potential applications include database encryption, authentication and authorization, document signing, and transaction processing…