Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.

It’s that time of year again. You know what I mean, the weather is starting to get warmer, people are starting to venture out and most importantly, the spring conference circuit is in full bloom. Yet underneath this façade is an unspeakable truth. That of the annual PR migration, where flocks of unoriginal, formulaic press releases hit bloggers inboxes.

In my ever so brief review of this years crop, I’ve come to a stark realization. Most cloud computing startups are doomed. They are doomed for a number of reasons, but never the less, they are doomed. Here’s why:…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Patrick Thibodeau.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has moved to agile development and is shifting to cloud platforms in an effort to improve its IT operations. At a hearing before the House Committee on Homeland Security on Tuesday, a DHS IT official gave lawmakers an overview of agile development methodologies, one of the tools that the department is using to fix its IT project management.

Agile came up after U.S. Rep Ron Barber (D-Ariz.), a former staffer in Rep. Gabrielle Gifford’s office who won that seat after Giffords resigned, asked what DHS was doing to ensure that its IT systems met user needs. Margaret Graves, DHS deputy CIO, said the department is using agile methodologies to create user stories to help shape the systems. In agile development, user stories can be short and informal descriptions of some of the functions users would like to see…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Justin Fielder.

If I was to suggest businesses move IT services to the cloud to improve security, there’s a strong possibility I would be laughed out of town. Despite businesses clearly seeing the benefits of migrating to the cloud, research shows that, for 61% of European CIOs, security is still the biggest concern when considering such a move. For many network professionals, there is a clear comfort factor which derives from having a virtual boundary fence built around their network, within which sits corporate data and applications. 45% of IT professionals surveyed by CIO.com in the US said their biggest cloud security concern is a lack of perimeter defences and/or control of the corporate network.

When we drill down further into the inhibitors to cloud migration, the concerns very specifically relate to the storage of data and its privacy. Historically CIOs have found peace-of- mind by keeping data on the “inside”, protected by firewalls, intrusion detection/protection systems and a myriad of other technologies designed to keep you and your data safe from the outside world…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

Google on Wednesday launched its note-taking app, Google Keep, two days after pre-release screenshots of the app surfaced. Katherine Kuan, software engineer at Google, said in a blog post that Google Keep was created to ensure that notes are where you need them when you need them. "With Keep you can quickly jot ideas down when you think of them and even include checklists and photos to keep track of what’s important to you," she said. "Your notes are safely stored in Google Drive and synced to all your devices so you can always have them at hand."

It’s not just for jotting or taking pictures. Google Keep can record audio notes, which it stores in Google Drive’s new Keep directory. It can also share notes to services like Google+, Gmail, other email services and Twitter. The Web version of Google Keep doesn’t provide any sharing mechanism; it’s more of a note gallery or file directory…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Angira Agrawal.

Indian companies wishing to adopt cloud computing services have much to cheer now. One wonders why and the reasons are – with the increased maturity and the number of global cloud service providers now entering India, Indian companies now have multiple options to shop for the most suitable cloud services, whenever they want and however they want.

That brings us to the question – is there a growing trend among companies, or departments of larger companies to buy select products and services off the cloud (well, literally!) the e-Commerce way? The answer is YES. Having said that, the essence of e-Commerce seems to have touched upon every aspect of online shopping be it for ‘consumer’ goods or services or ‘business’ goods or services…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

Microsoft has announced some key details of how it will introduce Dynamics ERP (enterprise resource planning) software products to the cloud computing model, from initial release dates to the precise role of partners.

Dynamics NAV 2013 and GP 2013, both of which cater to smaller and midsized companies, will be available on Microsoft’s Azure cloud service through partners in June, Microsoft announced this week at the Convergence conference in New Orleans. Microsoft also affirmed that the next major version of AX, its enterprise-focused product, will be available on Azure…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Hadoop and Big Data specialist MapR Technologies will be expanding its global presence a lot quicker thanks to a new round of funding that has put $30 million in the company’s coffers. The funding was led by new investor Mayfield Fund, but also includes existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA and Redpoint Ventures. In total, MapR has raised $59 million in funding.

The new funding will be used for accelerating MapR’s global expansion and continued research development. With this latest round of funding, MapR’s first goal will be expansion into the Asia-Pacific region to serve what it described as a "growing customer base in the region." The company has already expanded into Europe, opening offices in 2012 in London and Munich…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

The BSA has put together a report which ranks the top 20 countries worldwide in terms of cloud readiness, and it may not be a surprise as to which nation is at the summit… Japan is the highest ranked cloud computing nation worldwide, according to research published by BSA: Software Alliance. In its 2013 BSA Global Cloud Computing Scorecard, the Alliance aims to “provide a platform for discussion between policymakers and providers of cloud offerings, with a view toward developing an internationally harmonised regime of laws and regulations relevant to cloud computing.”

In other words, the raw figures perhaps are not the be all and end all. But the overall statistics, taking into account such areas as data privacy, security and ICT readiness among others, still make interesting reading. Japan is the most cloud-oriented nation by some distance according to the study, scoring 84.1 overall. The rest of the top five were very closely matched, with Australia (79.9) and the United States (79.7) ahead of Germany (79.1) and Singapore (78.5), who climbed five places compared to last year’s study…

Grazed from Signal. Author: George Seffers.

The U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA) began working on its Yourcloud solution about two years ago and expects to have the cloud computing solution in place by year’s end. You can read more about this in "U.S. Nuclear Agency Enhances Cybersecurity With Cloud Computing?."

One of the surprises along the way to cloud was that NNSA is not alone in the problems it needs to solve, according to Travis Howerton, NNSA chief technology officer. "When we first started putting this together, I would have thought that we were more unique than we are, but when I traveled around talking to other chief information officers and other leaders in government agencies, or even in the commercial sector, everybody’s struggling with the same set of issues," Howerton observes…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Alistair Croll.

There isn’t a simple answer to the above question. First of all, cloud computing is hidden behind a fog of abstraction. Whereas IT organizations could once instrument every element of an application, today’s applications are like Descartes’ brain in a jar — we’re never quite sure if they’re real or virtual.

Second, many cloud service providers’ goals aren’t aligned with those of their customers. Service providers want to maximize revenue and profit and want the freedom to do what they will with the underlying infrastructure. That’s how they make the most of what they have and stay in business. Without that freedom, they lose economies of scale and skill. By contrast, customers want special treatment and instrumentation all the way down the stack…