Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Brandon Bulter.

Chinese telecom giant Huawei today announced FusionCloud, an OpenStack-powered cloud aimed mostly at carrier providers.  Huawei joined OpenStack in October with subdued fanfare compared to other companies that have joined the open source cloud computing project. OpenStack was started by Rackspace and NASA in 2010 and has since grown to include dozens of major vendors, including IBM, Dell, HP, VMware and others, but Huawei is by far OpenStack’s largest teclo-focused company.

Huawei’s FusionCloud, unveiled at the Mobile World Congress show in Barcelona, has a variety of components including FusionSphere, an operating system for running cloud deployments, as well as FusionCable, a complementary converged infrastructure component that incorporates compute, storage and networking…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Liz McMillan.

Saas, IaaS, PaaS. Cloud computing is growing at a breathtaking speed and is the fastest-growing means by which technology companies offer their products today. Regardless of the industry, cloud computing is revolutionizing the way companies manage their applications and data processing, while simultaneously being one of the least understood. However, before companies go flying in the clouds, they need to be aware of the significant legal risks and implications associated with cloud computing.

In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Dan Pepper, managing member of Pepper Law Group, examines how cloud computing can be adopted and the dangers avoided on a practical level…

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Xath Cruz.

Authors everywhere should be paying homage to Gutenberg, the man who created the printing press late in the mid 15^th century. Without him and his invention, books would be non-existent and there would be no “authors” in the true sense of the word; no Stephen King, Ayn Rand or Isaac Aasimov churning out page upon page of stories.

Maybe this is putting a little bit too much emphasis on the author. While they do take care of the conception of the material, it is the publishers and the publishing companies that are tasked with manufacturing, reproducing and ultimately selling their works…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Lindsey Nelson.

Now quite often you hear me ranting about the benefits of cloud computing, and although I’m still a firm believer it will continue to transform the way business is done, I know something that sounds too good to be true typically is.   I did a little research, and I found a couple common cloud computing concerns and a way to talk you out of your doubt.

Sensitive Data and Security

Much to your dismay, there’s a security benefit to putting your information in the cloud. The traditional security hole fixes take weeks, with costly downtime and more often than not issues just start to pile up. Especially if you’re a global company, you’ve probably got more than one to fix. However, with the cloud you it’s one band-aid for everybody…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babcock.

By compressing data and eliminating duplicate copies, an Amazon Web Services customer can decrease by as much as 50% the cost of moving data out of the cloud, say spokesmen for Silver Peak Systems, which on Thursday started offering a virtual appliance to do just that.

It can be critical for some public cloud users to reduce the amount of data exported from the cloud. Several vendors, including Amazon, charge nothing for the bandwidth to upload data. But they charge by the GB when it comes to downloading. AWS, for example, charges $0.12 per GB after the first free GB to move data out of S3 to a destination on the Internet, a charge that can quickly mount up. Ten terabytes would lead to a charge of $1,200, and truly big data would rack up multiples of that figure. That gives many cloud users second thoughts as they contemplate the cost of moving data out of the cloud, a possibly intended consequence of that pricing approach…

Grazed from CloudCow – Contributed.   Author: Dick Csaplar, Senior Research Analyst, Aberdeen Group.

In January 2013, Aberdeen surveyed 123 organizations to learn how they use the Public Cloud as part of their IT infrastructure as well as the use of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). This Blog will focus on Software-as-a-Service as a platform for enterprise applications and the growing importance it plays as an application deployment method. Companies now have an alternative to purchasing a software license when they decide to use a commercially available application. Aberdeen research shows wide use of Cloud-based SaaS applications in many different parts of today’s enterprises. The full report can be found here.

Cloud SaaS Offerings

Most software vendors now offer a SaaS deployment of their application. Users are likely familiar with SalesForce.com, Google Apps, and Microsoft Office 365 as the most widely used of these applications, however there are now SaaS offerings for almost every aspect of business management. The technology can be used for departmental apps (such as customer relationship management (CRM), product lifecycle management (PLM), and business intelligence (BI) or by function (email, database, and ecommerce)…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

A new study sponsored by CDW shows what may seem obvious: Home users of cloud-based services are more likely to promote work use of cloud computing. The interesting part is that these self-motivated customers have done a better job of selling cloud computing than the marketing departments with their billions of dollars.

CDW’s "2013 State of the Cloud" report surveyed 1,242 tech professionals and concluded that the personal use of cloud services is a big factor in corporate cloud adoption. In the report, 73 percent of respondents claimed that, in their company, employees’ use of personal cloud services has "significantly influenced" the decision to move aspects of enterprise IT to the public cloud. The survey included employees who worked within as well as outside of IT…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

In a world where digital connectivity and online presence are a significant part of life and businesses alike, a disaster that disables online services is undoubtedly going to ruin some people’s day, to say the least. Hurricane Katrina and others like it around the world have proven that no data center or server facility is safe from natural disasters and other freak accidents. The effects of such events can at least be mitigated with cloud computing services and technology, making disaster mitigation and recovery easier.

Imagine if a bank losses all its customer’s data including all digital backups because of some calamity, it certainly is a disaster for everyone, the bank most especially. However, not to worry for there are backups in the form of paper, age old reliable paper; well, one can just imagine the banks clerks trudging through tons of paper and slaving in front of computers as they quickly try to get everything into electronic form while their cheeks slowly turn gaunt and their eyes white. It is a highly unlikely event with today’s standards for backing up data, but still a possible worst case scenario…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: David Linthicum.

While the rise of cloud computing frightens some in IT, many see the technology as an opportunity to accelerate their careers and their bank accounts. And IT pros have good reason to be optimistic. In a 2012 survey conducted within a 90-day period by Wanted Analytics, more than 2,400 companies said they are seeking candidates with cloud computing skills. Moreover, hiring demand increased by 61% from 2011 to 2012 for IT people with cloud knowledge. Analyst firm IDC also released a report last year that indicated public and private spending in cloud computing will increase exponentially over the next few years, resulting in an available jobs boost of nearly 14 million positions worldwide.

There is an explosion in both the use of cloud computing and the demand for people to assist in the mass migration to cloud. Indeed, there are about 50 to 70 jobs chasing truly qualified candidates at this point in time, according to technical recruiters. And there are two categories of cloud computing careers that seem to be emerging in the space: positions seeking IT pros with specific cloud skills and positions looking for IT admins with cloud architecture know-how…