Cloud Computing in Texas, Chief Innovation Officers and Cyberthreats
Grazed from Governing. Author: Tod Newcombe.
In a sign of government’s growing confidence in cloud computing, Texas has announced plans to move 100,000 state workers onto Microsoft’s cloud. The deal is the “largest statewide cloud deployment” in the U.S., according to Microsoft. The contract will give workers access to Office 365, which includes email and collaboration tools and is in compliance with the FBI’s Criminal Justice Information Services as well as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act security standards.
The program’s ability to meet stringent standards was one of the main reasons Texas chose Microsoft’s cloud computing service, according to Todd Kimbriel, director of e-government for the Texas Department of Information Resources. Another reason Texas is embracing cloud computing is to hold down technology costs. “We’re paying about a 75 percent discount now compared to what we were paying a competitor four years ago,” Kimbriel said…
Today Appcore, a company that offers complete cloud computing infrastructure (read: hardware and software) to clients including mobile network providers, data centers, and enterprises, has announced a $6 million Series B round today. The company, which is headquartered in Des Moines but has offices in Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore, says it will use the funding to fuel additional R&D, and to help continue its rapid expansion in fast-growing Asian markets.
Ever since the Amazon cloud and its competitors took shape beginning in 2006, it has been an open question: Would the enterprise’s use of cloud technology grow up from inside the data center, then proceed to a similar environment outside? Or would the public cloud architecture prevail and be imposed on commercial data centers?
Brazilian telecommunications operator Oi has partnered with Go2neXt, a Brazilian integrator of cloud computing environments, to assist the corporate market with the use of cloud computing services. The operator has been exploring this segment since last year, when it launched its Smart Cloud platform. Under the agreement, Go2neXt will be responsible for providing advice to Oi clients who wish to adopt cloud services. The service provider will assist Oi customers with the transition from the traditional IT environment to the Oi cloud platform.
CloudLock has launched the Community Trust Rating service as part of its Cloud Information Security Suite. The cloud IT security company unveiled the new cloud security offering at RSA Conference 2013. The trust assessment system was designed to use collective intelligence of enterprises that use Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Apps and builds on CloudLock’s Apps Firewall for Google Apps product. The purpose of the system is to help enterprises evaluate third-party applications in determining which apps should be granted access to employee data.
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.
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.”