Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Bart Perkins.

Moving to the cloud may reduce infrastructure costs and headaches, but clouds have their shortcomings. When they rain, millions can quickly become drenched. In the past year, Amazon, Microsoft, Google and other providers experienced problems, from minor disruptions to major outages. A June 2012 headline captured the fallout: "Modern life halted as Netflix, Pinterest, Instagram go down."

The service interruptions experienced by those companies and others disappointed countless consumers, but it was worse than a disappointment for the businesses themselves. They had come to depend heavily on cloud reliability; when the cloud services they had put their trust in failed, it was as if they had ceased to exist. All the outages were temporary, of course, but revenues were lost during the downtime, and afterwards customers wrote blog posts expressing everything from disappointment to anger, with some proclaiming that they would take their business elsewhere. Organizations that depend on cloud services need to manage four areas to help ensure that their dependence isn’t a liability:…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Peter Wayner.

For the past few months, I’ve been poking around the various commercial clouds, buying new machines, trying software, and running benchmarks. Well, not exactly buying machines — just renting them for a few hours and plunking down a few pennies on the barrelhead. Along the way, I noticed it wasn’t working out the way I expected. The machines aren’t as interchangeable or as cheap as they seem. Moving to the cloud isn’t as simple or as carefree as it’s made to be. In other words, the machines weren’t living up to their hype. Anyone who’s been chugging the Kool-Aid and dreaming that the word "cloud" is a synonym for "perfection" or "pain-free" is going to be sorely disappointed.

This isn’t to say there’s no truth to what the cloud companies proclaim, but there are plenty of tricky details that aren’t immediately obvious. At their core, the machines aren’t miracle workers, just the next generation of what we’ve been using for years. The improvements are incremental, not revolutionary. If we dial back our hopes and approach the machines with moderated expectations, they’re quite nice. To keep our expectations in check, here is a list of what to really expect from the cloud…

Grazed from BrightMove. Author: Traci Kingery.

Chances are high that your industry, company, or perhaps more specifically, your role, has been altered over the years by cloud computing. The rate by which these changes continue to happen is increasing at an alarming rate as more corporations seek cost saving solutions and tools to increase productivity and effectiveness. Your organization has most likely transitioned, or begun to transition, toward cloud computing strategies and more specifically utilization as it relates to Human Resources and Recruitment. Assuming a basic understanding of what the cloud is, let’s breakdown some of the advantages and disadvantages for those that are still unfamiliar or possibly resistant.

As already mentioned, there are several reasons companies decide to evolve through the use of cloud computing. I once heard an analogy, though very simply put, gave a basic explanation of the cloud and why it is necessary for business. If the electricity used to power your home is representative of the internet, then the cloud is the original power source for that electricity. You may not know exactly where it’s coming from, but you have a basic understanding of how it gets there and the necessity of it (I said it was basic)…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Plenty has been said or written on cloud computing in recent years — pro, con and somewhere in between. Periodically throughout the rise of cloud computing, there have been some real gems put out there, aptly describing what’s on people’s minds — and maybe what was needed to be said. Oracle CEO Larry Ellison’s famous “fashion-driven” analogy back in 2008 is the stuff of legend, and makes this list, compiled below. Here are some memorable quotes and apropos quotes about cloud that that have surfaced over the years:

1) “First to mind when asked what ‘the cloud’ is, a majority respond it’s either an actual cloud, the sky, or something related to weather.” – Citrix Cloud Survey Guide (August 2012)

2) “Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don’t.” – Joe Weinman, Senior VP at Telx and author of Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing…

Grazed from BRW.  Author: Marianna Papadakis.

It’s easy to be bamboozled by the chatter about the benefits of cloud solutions for business and what’s available. Deciding on the right mix of cloud versus having your own dedicated infrastructure is even more daunting.

So what exactly is on offer? At one end of the scale you have software-as-a-service, which allows businesses to use a provider’s cloud-based applications, such as web-based email systems. At the other end there is infrastructure-as-a-service, where companies outsource their entire operations, including servers and networks to a provider on a pay-per-usage basis…

Grazed from AME.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In today’s IT environment, more devices, a deluge of data, decreasing costs to transfer data, and server virtualization have triggered a transformation in the data center which will no doubt lead to multiple data center advancements during the next five years.  Earlier exclusively deployed by large enterprises, it is now common in the Middle East to see small and medium organizations with their own data centers. No longer are data operations handled from a server room and a switch closet.

Sufian Dweik, Regional Manager, MEMA at Brocade Communications, says that last year, network managers in the Middle East witnessed the growing popularity of Ethernet fabrics. The trends that were the driving force behind this are set to remain valid though 2013 as well. A sampling of analyst numbers reveals the true significance of these trends. According to IMS Research, 22 billion devices will be connected to the Internet by 2020…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Byron Deeter.

A few years ago, most people couldn’t tell you what the cloud was. They certainly couldn’t foresee a market in which the sexy, highly anticipated consumer Internet IPOs would be flops while the seemingly nerdy sectors of cloud and enterprise computing would end up driving returns within the technology markets. For entrepreneurs and investors in cloud computing, market valuations are skyrocketing as acquisition activity heats up, the IPO markets are open, and venture dollars are finally flooding into the segment. Simply put, for participants in the cloud computing market, our time has finally come.

Businesses are moving toward cloud-based operations in a permanent way, and the fundamental business metrics of the category leaders are enjoying staggering growth as a result. A few minutes of scrolling through a few pages here gives a clear sense of the scope and potential of the market…

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Xath Cruz.

Israel has always had a great reputation as one of the best hubs of software innovation in the world, and so it is not a surprise that Israeli companies are also some of the early entrants into the cloud computing space. The cloud computing scene in Israel is made up of traditional fields of expertise in the global IT industry, such as security, web applications, HR management, IT management, telecoms applications, business intelligence, and other types of enterprise application domains.

In the past, Israel’s large software companies have been targets for acquisition by leading IT and software vendors. This resulted in many of said companies already making their mark even during the days when cloud technology was still in its infancy. What’s even better is that many of the cloud-related Israeli companies have been acquired at high company valuations. This is further bolstered by many of the acquired companies moving on to provide SaaS solutions in tandem with conventional on-premises offerings…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Caroline Craig.

Nothing is certain in this world except death and taxes — and lots of cloud outages.  The week started badly for Google Drive users as the cloud-based service for storing documents, videos, and Google Docs was down for several hours Monday. Users vented on social networks over their frustration, with one user tweeting, "Google Drive now back up like a limp horse struggling to move." Google moved quickly to acknowledge the issue on its Apps Status Dashboard but did not say what caused the problem or how many were affected.

On Wednesday, it was LinkedIn’s turn to roll over and play dead. Users hoping to reach out and connect via the social media network were greeted with a 503 error "Service Unavailable" message. The website suffered intermittent service disruptions throughout the morning, knocked out for about 45 minutes, got back up for 30 minutes, then experienced a second service disruption. To date, there’s been no word from LinkedIn on why the outage occurred…

Grazed from Motley Fool.  Author: Tim Beyers.

When it comes to storing most of our online entertainment, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG  ) and its Drive file system isn’t top dog. Neither is Microsoft‘s (NASDAQ: MSFT  ) SkyDrive or Amazon.com‘s (NASDAQ: AMZN  ) Cloud Drive. The winner? Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL  ) , says a new report from Strategy Analytics.

The survey asked respondents which digital locker services they use to store music or video. iCloud and iTunes topped the list with 27% using Apple’s services. Surprisingly, Dropbox ranked second, two percentage points ahead of Cloud Drive…