Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

I hate talking about topics of the week, such as the debate around Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, telling her staffers to stop working from home. First, in my opinion, CEOs are allowed to make such statements to their employees, and you can’t judge unless you work there or own stock. Second, it probably won’t help Yahoo one bit. However, what is relevant about this issue is the use of cloud computing by a remote workforce. What are those synergies? That’s worth discussing.

The work-at-home movement drives a great deal of interest in cloud computing. Public cloud platforms are typically better at providing IT services over the open Internet than enterprise IT is capable of doing. Thus, the public cloud can better serve a workforce that’s as likely to work at the local Starbucks as the corner conference room because they can push processing, storage, and enterprise applications to a middle tier between the company and the user. In other words, connectivity, security, capacity management, and resiliency become somebody else’s problem…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that its cloud services and software will be based on an open cloud architecture. This move will ensure innovation in cloud computing is not hampered by locking businesses into proprietary islands of unsecured and difficult-to-manage offerings. Without industry-wide open standards for cloud computing, businesses will not be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities associated with interconnected data, such as mobile computing and big data.

As the first step, the company today unveiled a new cloud offering based on open cloud standards, including OpenStack, that significantly speeds and simplifies managing an enterprise-grade cloud. For the first time, businesses have a core set of open source-based technologies to build enterprise-class cloud services that can be ported across hybrid cloud environments…

Grazed from UTD. Author: Editorial Staff.

Dr. Lawrence Chung, associate professor of computer science at UT Dallas, could not predict with 100 percent certainty that his cloud computing project would be recipient of a-first-of-its-kind award from Google, but he kept his hopes high. “Our research at UT Dallas is world-class,” he said. “We do cutting-edge research.”

Indeed, his SilverLining team of researchers and students from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science was one of seven worldwide recipients of the first-ever Google App Engine Research Award for innovative academic and scientific research expected to benefit society. “We are proud of this achievement by Dr. Chung’s team,” said Dr. Gopal Gupta, head of the Department of Computer Science and holder of the Erik Jonsson Chair…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Editorial Stafff.

Most oil and gas companies are already evaluating the risks and benefits of the cloud, and some have taken major steps towards virtualising their internal infrastructures. But the majority have yet to implement the full-scale automation or self-service provisioning that can help to harness the full benefits of the cloud.

As this trend gains momentum and scale, Accenture believes that cloud computing will combine with mobile technology and powerful analytics to change the game in the energy industry across five key dimensions…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.

In the “2013 State of the Cloud Report”, CDW found out that about 75% of its respondents have this notion that the personal use of mobile devices and applications by employees influence how businesses take advantage of cloud computing. 68% of the respondents said that organizations have decided to adopt cloud computing because of requests from their employees. Also, cloud adoption savings have increased by as much as 3% from the 10% savings in 2011. CDW surveyed a total of 1,242 IT practitioners.

In the same survey, some 39% of the respondents said that their organizations are currently implementing cloud solutions, an increase of 11% from the 2011 figures. Some 60% of the IT respondents believe that their use of cloud services in their non-work related endeavors have greatly influenced their recommendations to adopt cloud computing at their workplace…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

ServiceMesh has pushed into a more distinct DevOps space with the release of Version 9.0 of its Agility cloud management platform. Agility can now release a new application into production from development, configure it in real time and manage it, regardless of its cloud destination.

Cloud computing may take on greater appeal if it can regularly incorporate these application-centric — as opposed to virtual machine-centric — attributes. DevOps requires a focus on the application lifecycle and its continuous updates, without infighting between development teams and operations…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

This vendor-written tech primer has been edited by Network World to eliminate product promotion, but readers should note it will likely favor the submitter’s approach. In a recent report, analyst Ray Wang proposes a cloud consumer ‘bill of rights.’ Wang’s proposal is important because it highlights significant aspects of the client/vendor relationship in the cloud computing space. This relationship is unique because of the level of both trust and communication that must exist between client and vendor in order for cloud deployments to be successful.

Enterprises that have, or are considering, the move to cloud computing should understand that they are not simply purchasing a specific product or service. Rather, they are entering into a partnership with their cloud provider. An enterprise’s cloud provider becomes an extension of the enterprise IT department. As a result, the vendor should be considered a trusted partner. In order for this to happen, both client and vendor must commit to communication and transparency that is generally foreign to the purchase of on-premise IT solutions…

Grazed from Daily Markets. Author: Editorial Staff.

Software for innovation markets at $73.4 billion in 2012 are anticipated to reach $196.4 billion by 2019. Growth is a result of enterprise need to innovate to grow. It is not enough to maintain a static position in a market, nimble competitors steal market share away if innovation is not pursued. Innovation provides competitive advantage and protection of market position.

IBM concentrates on building end to end systems that are able to adapt of market changes. While this may make the IBM product set seem overly heavy in the short run, in the long run, this is of enormous value to clients as proved by the company market leading position in innovation software…

Grazed from Federal Times.  Author: Aileen Black.

With some kind of major budget cutting around the corner, no matter what happens with sequestration, government organizations need to lower their information technology costs. One option that works: Leverage cloud technology. And don’t stop with “routine” IT processes — the impressive savings come when you leverage cloud to truly support your mission.

The government’s Cloud First strategy requires agencies to evaluate secure cloud computing options before making new investments in IT. The strategy identified $20 billion in potential savings from cloud computing; this represents 25 percent of the total IT budget. For agencies to tap into this cost savings opportunity, they must leverage the cloud for mission efficiency and IT efficiency…

Grazed from CloudComputing Journal.  Author: Elizabeth White.

An exclusive Q&A with Bennett Bauer, Director of Cloud Marketing at DreamHost

"Open source cloud is enabling a vast developer community that is today building applications to solve the points of integration in this growing area," stated Bennett Bauer, Director of Cloud Marketing at DreamHost, in the exclusive Q&A with Cloud Expo Conference Chair Jeremy Geelan. "Pure, built-in-the-cloud applications that resolve the social, mobile, analytics lifecycle through the cloud," Bauer continued, "and applications that are not hamstrung by trying to integrate traditional corporate data and custom functionality are proliferating."

Cloud Computing Journal: The move to cloud isn’t about saving money, it is about saving time. – Agree or disagree?…