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…

Grazed from BCS. Author: Editorial Staff.

With IT interface and technology changing at breakneck speed, many business leaders are struggling to keep up with the latest developments and maintain their protection levels against cyber criminals who are now able to exploit an increasing number of avenues for attack.

It therefore comes as little surprise that digital security was listed as one of the top concerns for British business leaders in a recent study conducted by ACCA, the global body for professional accountants…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

VMware has sold SlideRocket, fewer than two years after its acquisition, to ClearSlide, a San Francisco firm that provides a company’s sales force with a sales engagement platform.
SlideRocket’s online and interactive slide presentation service, a kind of PowerPoint on steroids, is expected to be used to augment the ClearSlide platform. The move marks the end of a brief era in which VMware spoke confidently of a future in which virtualized and online applications — some of which VMware planned to originate — displaced those of the personal computing era. Microsoft Office only grew more entrenched during the time.

Prior to offloading SlideRocket, Javier Soltero, VMware’s earliest and most outspoken spokesman for that short-lived era, had moved on to greener pastures. Soltero was CEO of the Hyperic cloud monitoring service, acquired by VMware with SpringSource, and is now entrepreneur in residence at Redpoint Ventures in Menlo Park, Calif…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Maribel Lopez.

Cloud computing and mobile are two technology trends that are transforming how businesses operate and how consumers live. The first generation of cloud computing focused on cost optimization. Lopez Research believes the second wave of cloud computing will help businesses save money while operating more efficiently. Cloud computing will change where data and applications live and how they operate. To get a sense of the disruption and the opportunity that cloud computing provides, I interviewed John Considine, the Chief Technology Officer of Verizon’s Terremark division. Previously Considine worked for CloudSwitch that was acquired by Verizon.

Considine said cloud computing is disrupting the entire value chain from the technology to the types of buyers. “Cloud computing companies, such as CloudSwitch, started by simplifying the cloud for enterprises by focusing on cloud security, advanced computing and workload portability.” Workload portability is how an enterprise moves workloads to and from the cloud. He noted that in the early days, companies used cloud computing as a way to get services while bypassing IT…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

For enterprises, customer relationship management (CRM) is moving ahead of enterprise resource planning (ERP) as the main priority for application software investment. That was just one of the takeaways from Gartner’s latest report, “User Survey Analysis: Cloud and CRM Nexus Will Drive Enterprise Software Spending in 2013 and 2014”, published last month. Other key factors emerging from the report include the clear differences between emerging and emergent markets in terms of cloud models.

Mature regions are more likely to go public, accepting the security risks and reliability rewards of the public cloud. Emerging markets, by contrast, are more likely to use a private cloud. “This could be due in part to an immature telecommunications infrastructure in some emerging countries, while data security is a persistent concern related to public cloud services among our clients in developing-region countries,” said Hai Hong Swineheart, Gartner research analyst in a statement…