Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Gary Flood.

Is cloud just a way to outsource low-risk, low-return business processes to save money, or a potentially revolutionary new way of working? That’s the kind of question one might expect of a hard-core cloud convert or cloud services provider. But according to Mark Tonsetic, practice manager in the IT practice at CEB, a member-based global advisory organization, it’s a question that blue chip CIOs are beginning to ask.

And what they are beginning to decide, he claimed, seems pretty radical. "Cloud often presents itself as not that much of a different way of working than on premises," he said. "If it is a change at all, that’s often presented as just a change in the technology, which is often seen as at a lower altitude than business process."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Peter Knight.

As we study the innovators who have helped make cloud computing a reality, it becomes apparent that significant and lasting success in the Cloud field depends as much on entrepreneurial vision as it does technical savvy. Harnessing the technology to get a group of servers, or even server farms to cooperate in a fashion that is capable of handling truly Big Data is a marvel. In the long run, it is probably not half as important as finding a way for the technology to not only generate a profit, but to generate profit for the end users of the technology.

In many ways, this has bee as much about proselytizing as it has been about coding and computing. Two of the strongest voices singing the praises of Cloud Computing for business have been Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Cisco, and Lauren States, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Computing at IBM…

Grazed from Appko. Author: PR Announcement.

Appko (www.appko.com), a Silicon Valley company, is announcing the release of myCloudPod today. myCloudPod is the first end user focused self-service cloud for converged infrastructure from venders like Cisco, HP, IBM, and Dell. Appko’s response to the missing self service in the existing solutions is being showcased at the Avnet + Cisco Symposium in Scottsdale AZ this week.

Appko has been developing cloud solutions for converged infrastructure since 2007. Appko’s experience developing custom solutions for companies the last few years was levered into the design of the new product. myCloudPod is the result of years of innovation in user experience and cloud computing. "User experience is key," says Appko CEO Sean DuLac . "When your users are empowered, everyone wins."…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Robert Grazioli.

The hype and excitement surrounding cloud computing is reaching a fever pitch, yet many businesses are still expressing concerns over cloud security and IT integration issues. How can distrust of the cloud be resolved, and is the cloud worthy of the current hype? There’s a paradox at play here: The cloud is generally agreed to offer significant potential. Yet, some businesses are failing to tap into the huge opportunities offered by cloud computing due to a lack of trust.

In a recent global survey of 360 businesses by Knowledge@Wharton and SAP, 67 percent cite "security breaches and data losses" as their main cloud computing concern. This concern with the cloud is similar to when the personal computer was introduced. Large companies resisted its deployment for a long time due to questions about security, costs and more. Deployment spread only after PCs started being purchased by CEOs, and IT organizations had to figure out a way to integrate them successfully…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Eric Zeman.

Google admitted Monday morning that its cloud-based Google Drive service is experiencing a service disruption. According to a statement made on Google’s service dashboard, "We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive. We will provide more information shortly." Reports of trouble accessing Google Drive spread across social networks such as Twitter Monday. Users from around the globe reported trouble connecting to the service, as well as service crashes.

Google Drive is Google’s cloud-based storage and productivity service. It encompasses Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, in addition to providing document and file storage. Google Drive is accessible from various avenues, including Web browsers, desktop apps and apps for Android and iOS devices. The standalone mobile apps appear to be working more consistently at the moment when compared to the browser-based versions of the service…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: John Omwamba.

The major premise of cloud actionable analytics is having a budget-worthy processor and dedicated staff. The agility of businesses lies in the way they analyze their operations in and out. They have to strategize on ways to improve their productivity while cutting costs. In the past, it took data outsourcing to get a candid view of where the company stood and how it was likely to perform in coming years. This was costly: besides, the equipment was not as minimalist or set for big data projects like they are now. More so, the storage expenditure was not on a pay-as-you go platform as they are now.

This kind of analytics is a significant cloud trend, because, as Gartner predicts, it will help corporate entities presage what is going to happen to them. This is unlike before when a company had to toil using past contexts with a subset of formulae to gain a breakthrough. There are several influences that one can explore regarding actionable analytics on cloud computing and their role in tomorrow’s company:…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

This sentiment was recently expressed in an interview with Motley Fool analyst Tim Byers, who analyzed the zeitgeist coming out of the South-by-Southwest (SXSW) conference and observed that cloud computing and big data were now one in the same phenomena, converging on enterprises of all shapes and sizes.

Byers may have meant that the level of industry interest and innovation in big data parallels that seen in the cloud computing space in recent years. But in many ways, the two are becoming one in the same — cloud resources are needed to support big data storage and projects, and big data is a huge business case for moving to cloud. The innovations and buzz around big data and cloud at SXSW represent a “tipping point,” Byers relates, as it is now apparent that both cloud and big data are huge springboards to innovation…

Grazed from The NGT.  Author: Paul Omorogbe & Seyi Sokoya.

IT’S shaping up as the next big thing — “cloud computing.”  Until recently, we’ve stored our information on hard drives and collaborated with colleagues via attachments and a confusing array of edits, highlights and multiple versions of the same document. In contrast, cloud computing moves all of that information  – emails, documents, presentations, photos, spreadsheets and so on – onto the Internet where it exists in a virtual space which we refer to as ‘the cloud’.

Experts predict the Cloud Computing Market will be worth $150 billion by this year and that by 2014, 60 per cent of server workloads will be spent processing Cloud data.   Most consumers have no idea what Cloud Computing is or how it works. In August 2011, the NPD Group announced research which claimed just 22 per cent of US consumers were familiar with the term, though 76 per cent of respondents reported using some type of Cloud-based service in the past 12 months…

Grazed from Motley Fool.  Author: Tim Beyers.

Big data used to have a specific meaning. Meant to describe cast-offs such as log files, this information was "big" because of the amount of electronic refuse created when processing, say, an e-commerce transaction. Big data used to be an exercise in digital dumpster diving.

Those days are gone. At the annual South by Southwest Interactive conference, "big data" became a proxy for social data compiled by the likes of Facebook and Twitter. A synonym for capturing sentiment, but on a grand scale. Every company had to become a "big data" company, panelists enthused…

Grazed from Business Insider.  Author: Julie Bort.

A bunch of big enterprise companies are lining up to buy a cloud computing company called SoftLayer Technologies, Reuters’ Nadia Damouni reports.  IBM and EMC are reportedly in talks right now to buy the company in a deal that could be worth more than $2 billion. The sales process is being handled by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer is privately held, with the majority of shares owned by GI Partners. It has reportedly turned down other suitors before, like AT&T.  SoftLayer is a cloud-computing and Web-hosting provider with about 25,000 customers, mostly small and mid-sized customers, making it the world’s largest privately held website hoster, Damouni reports…