Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Amazon Web Services launched a beta service called Trusted Advisor to help customers configure their workloads during its Re:Invent Show last November. This week the company made it available for a 30-day free trial.

Given the complexity of the Amazon services and server instances, Trusted Advisor is sorely needed to help customers, especially newcomers, navigate through the tangle of details. Several other vendors also provide a service similar to Trusted Advisor, and some, such as Cloudyn, CloudCheckr, Uptime Software and Cloud Cruiser, offer more features. But since AWS remains the fountainhead of best practices information, Trusted Advisor is likely to gain authority…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Let’s face it: it’s not easy to figure out the various costs aspects of cloud. Obviously, there are the low monthly charges that are appealing, or savings from consolidation. But for companies with well-run IT operations, the benefits of moving to cloud may be negligible. In calculating cloud financials, too many organizations "overlook or underestimate cloud’s true, core costs at the enterprise workload level," states a new report from Saugatuck Technology.

First, a well-run IT environment may not see much in the way of savings. Organizations that already have highly optimized IT environments should not assume that a move to cloud will deliver significant infrastructure savings, the report, authored by Saugatuck analysts Charles Burns and Bruce Guptill, cautions. "On an optimized in-house infrastructure, costs for running a workload in a public cloud could actually be greater than the costs for running the workload in-house."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

As the name implies, High Performance Computing (HPC) is something that is paving different ways to increase performance of the public and private cloud. It explains the various mechanisms to get the best out of your cloud in minimum resources. You can obtain larger profits by pitching in a little effort, and cash flows with the help of HPC. According to the latest research results, the High Performance Cloud is getting exceedingly popular day by day in IT world and it is expected that it would gain more and more popularity in coming years. The studies suggest that more than $20 billion have invested in this field in previous years and as per IDC, and the adaptability of HPC is increasing at the rate of 7.6% annually.

According to Jason Stowe – CEO of Cycle Computing, one of the main reasons behind the popularity of High Performance Computing is the convenient accessibility of cloud resources as well as their low price range. The HPC and cloud technology, if utilized in a better and intellectual way can give a real boost to one’s organization in a proficient manner…

Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Editorial Staff.

The public sector has not been immune to the appeal of cloud computing, with governments keen to accelerate adoption of cloud services. However, while the private and commercial sector has taken to cloud computing more readily, there still exists a somewhat sporadic adoption across the public sector.

Introducing a cloud first policy can be an effective way to endorse and encourage the sector to embrace the benefits that cloud computing can bring. Factors that need to be addressed to promote acceptance and bring about simplified adoption include cultural barriers, based around fear, uncertainty, and a lack of information. Governments are taking steps to facilitate implementation and reduce barriers. There is no one favoured approach because the widespread adoption of public cloud for service delivery is not yet at a mature level…

Grazed from Phys.org. Author: Editorial Staff.

Computer scientists at the University of California, San Diego, and Google have developed a novel approach that allows the massive infrastructure powering cloud computing to run more efficiently. The new approach can make these warehouse-scale computers run as much as 15 to 20 percent more efficiently. This novel model has already been applied at Google. Researchers presented their findings at the IEEE International Symposium on High Performance Computer Architecture conference Feb. 23 to 27 in China.

Computer scientists looked at a range of Google web services, including Gmail and search. They used a unique approach to develop their model. Their first step was to gather live data from Google’s warehouse-scale computers as they were running in real time. Their second step was to conduct experiments with data in a controlled environment on an isolated server. The two-step approach was key, said Lingjia Tang and Jason Mars, faculty members in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Jacobs School of Engineering at UC San Diego. "These problems can seem easy to solve when looking at just one server," said Mars. "But solutions do not scale up when you’re looking at hundreds of thousands of servers."…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Japan, Australia and the United States currently are the countries with the most supportive legal environments cloud computing, a new study shows. The study, covering the technology environments of 24 nations, finds mixed progress.

The study, released by BSA-The Software Alliance, an industry group, finds that while many of the world’s biggest IT markets have stalled or slid backwards, others are embracing laws and regulations conducive to cloud innovation. The second annual “scorecard” also finds that policy fragmentation persists, as some countries, aiming to promote local cloud markets, adopt laws and regulations that inhibit cross-border data flows or skew international competition…

Grazed from InternetEvolution. Author: Todd Watson.

If you’ve followed the headlines recently, you can’t help but notice the constant barrage of news concerning security break-ins at some of the most public cloud sites on the planet: Facebook, Google, Evernote… the list goes on and on. Yet in spite of the looming cloud security concerns, enterprises and organizations continue to ramp up their investments in both public and private cloud infrastructure as a cost-effective, dynamic way to scale up their IT capacity.

At the IBM Cloud Security roundtable here at IBM Pulse 2013 yesterday in Las Vegas, several IBM security experts came together to discuss some of the challenges, best practices, and solutions to protect against threats and provide security-rich cloud computing environments. At the IBM Cloud Security press roundtable, several IBM Security experts expounded on the issues and challenges organizations are facing as they work to better secure their cloud computing environments…

Grazed from Yahoo News. Author: Doug Palmer.

Brazil, Russia, India and China still lag far behind developed countries in policies considered critical for the future of cloud computing, but each made some progress over the past year, a U.S. industry group said on Thursday. The Business Software Alliance, which represents U.S. industry heavyweights such as Microsoft Corp, said the BRIC nations all came in at the bottom half of 24 countries surveyed in its second annual cloud computing report.

Brazil moved from final position to 22nd with a tally of 44.1 out of a possible 100 points. China, India and Russia each also rose two slots with scores of 51.5, 53.1 and 59.1, respectively.
Cloud computing refers to providing software, storage, computing power and other services to customers from remote data centers over the Web. Demand for cloud-based software is rising rapidly because the approach allows companies to start using new programs faster and at lower cost than traditional products that are installed at a customer’s own data center…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Bob Lewis.

Imagine all technology, hardware and software, is free: routers, servers, operating systems, development environments, wide-area networks, firewalls, desktops, laptops, tablets, applications, lions, tigers, and bears — all of it. Now look at your company’s enterprise technical architecture and ask yourself what you’d do differently because of it. My bet: Not much. Sure, a fresh, dispassionate look at your enterprise technical architecture would probably lead you to regret decisions you’ve made or to make some changes now. What I’m saying is that you wouldn’t have those regrets or make those changes because you no longer have to pay for anything anymore.

That’s because looking back at how decisions were made about every component of every technology your company has deployed will show the issues that matter most: features and functionality, quality of construction, manageability, performance, scalability, the vendor’s reputation and reliability, the component’s marketplace viability, and concerns about restrictive license terms and conditions. Price? That’s something you negotiated afterward…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Jeff Vance.

When we requested suggestions for cloud startups to evaluate in order to come up with the CIO.com Top 10 list, we received more than 150 nominations. After reviewing the nominations and getting your input, we narrowed the list down to the 10 most promising.

The Top 10 mixes track record with potential. Some startups, such as Aryaka Networks and HyTrust, are more established and have long lists of customers wins. The list also includes more recent startups that are included more for their potential than their current status in the market. Several of these newer companies are helping determine just how the cloud computing market will evolve. They include dinCloud, Nebula and SaaS Markets…