Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Rackspace lowered cloud storage prices for volume customers Friday, and it will lower prices on its network bandwidth and content delivery services in a bid to compete more strongly with Amazon Web Services and Microsoft’s Windows Azure services. Rackspace reduced pricing 33%, from $0.18 to $0.12 per GB, for moving data and content over its Rackspace Cloud network and the Rackspace content delivery network (CDN).

Enterprises and online information services use CDNs to pre-distribute key content to Internet servers around the world, owned by CDNs such as Akamai or Edgecast, so that response times to users seeking that content will come from a server close to them. When content is downloaded from a server in the same region as the user, response times can be cut by a third or half. Among cloud service providers, Rackspace CDN competes with Amazon’s CloudFront and Microsoft’s Windows Azure CDN…

Grazed from CliQr Technologies. Author: PR Announcement.

CliQr Technologies, the leader in enabling businesses to move, manage and secure applications on any private, public or hybrid cloud, today announced its advisory board. The six advisory board members will shape the company’s direction and strategy in an innovative cloud computing industry.

"We’re pleased to announce these highly qualified appointed members to our advisory board because of the unique background and knowledge they each bring to the table," said Gaurav Manglik, CEO and co-founder of CliQr Technologies. "With years of expertise in their respected fields, each member will make a positive and insightful impact to CliQr. We are equally honored that despite the numerous opportunities associated with cloud management solution providers, these individuals saw the value and innovative nature of the CliQr platform and its ability to take the cloud to the next level."…

Grazed from NationMultimedia. Author: Asina Pornwasin.

Cloud computing is expected to be the next big move in the Infor-mation and Communications Technology (ICT) industry in Thailand and across the Asian region. It is expected that the global market for cloud computing will grow at a compounded annual rate of 28 per cent. Spending on cloud services will generate nearly 14 million jobs worldwide by 2015 and information technology (IT) innovation created by cloud computing could produce US$1.1 trillion (Bt33 trillion) a year in new business revenues. Cloud computing has been a new and major trend and is expected to be a major game-changer for businesses.

Gartner Inc, a technology research firm, forecasts public cloud services will be worth $109 billion this year, while the European Union expects the cloud to add as much as $206 billion to annual gross domestic product (GDP) between now and 2020. And, at the end of 2016, more than 50 per cent of the top 1,000 global companies will have stored customer-sensitive data in the public cloud…

Grazed from CityAM. Author: Tom Welsh.

According to technology consultancy IDC and IT firm EMC, the global digital universe will expand tenfold between 2012 and 2020, reaching a difficult to comprehend 40 zettabytes. To put this into perspective, in 2009 the internet was estimated to contain just half a zettabyte. Even then, if that quantity of data were printed and bound into books, it would form a stack stretching between the Earth and Pluto ten times.

Some businesses are managing to leverage this trend for the own purposes. Famously, Amazon not only tracks what its customers buy, but what they look at, how they navigate its site, and how much they are influenced by promotions, reviews and page layouts. It has developed algorithms that predict products customers would like to buy. And these algorithms get better and better the more often they are used. Amazon’s trick has been to personalise the mounds of faceless data that gets thrown its way…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Stephen Lawson.

Nokia Siemens Networks will expand the role of cellular base stations with a new platform that will store and deliver some application data locally, while tapping into information about subscribers and traffic to improve the process. The company announced the system, called Liquid Applications, at an event in Barcelona on the eve of Mobile World Congress. Liquid Applications can improve consumers’ mobile experience but cutting delays as well as delivering more relevant content, CEO Rajeev Suri said.

Caching data in base stations is not a new idea, but NSN says it is going beyond that with Liquid Applications. The platform uses both cloud computing and processing in base stations, moving tasks around based on current conditions and the subscriber’s location and needs, said Marc Rouanne, head of mobile broadband at NSN. "That’s why it’s liquid. It moves and it learns," Rouanne said…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Stephen Rosenbush.

Royal Dutch Shell plc, the largest company in the world by revenue, could afford to build all the data centers that it desires. But like many other major corporations, it has enthusiastically embraced cloud computing, which has been introduced at multiple layers of its information technology, from routine applications to the very core of the energy giant’s global IT infrastructure.

Large organizations are adopting cloud technology for many of the same reasons smaller organizations have been attracted to the idea of renting rather than owning computing resources — greater flexibility and cost savings, resiliency in the event of natural disasters, and the ability to try new technologies without having to commit to them. And while they acknowledge concerns about cybersecurity, they believe they can safely pursue their cloud strategies while taking appropriate precautions. “For every application, we look at whether the cloud can be used, and at that moment we look at all aspects, including security. When all criteria are met we will launch on the cloud and therefore we believe that the cloud is secure enough for a number of scenarios,” said Johan Krebber, Shell group IT architect and lead architect for the Projects and Technology Business…

The ever-evolving world of cloud-computing technology continually revolutionizes IT (information technology) in new and exciting ways. The innovative creativity has clearly transformed how my business works at managing data and confidential information for businesses. Along with its many benefits, it eliminates the need of a physical environment, and instead, uses the virtual world full of virtualized servers to perform all of its duties.

Moving to the Cloud Is Easy

My business quickly realized how easy it was to move to the cloud. With the ability to turn over all work to the cloud, we were able to downsize our IT departments and reduce our workforce, while still producing the same work, more efficiently. When businesses migrate to the cloud, they are sometimes required to change the business’ operating system to accommodate security restrictions. In the end, it provides better flexibility, and improves security.

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

When I deal with enterprises these days, the prevailing question is no longer if they’ll use public clouds but what to move first.  The answer depends on many aspects of your own enterprise, including systemic problems you may have with data, processes, or complete applications. Moreover, the value you place on specific systems is a major factor. Finally, there are security, governance, and compliance issues enterprises must handle.

To be clear, I’m talking about moving data, processes, or a complete system, not standing up a new system in the cloud. Migrating from existing on-premise platforms to a cloud-based platform is much more difficult and risky, but it can provide the most value. It’s important to wisely pick your first project for migration. Here are my guidelines for doing so:…

Grazed from PCWorld.  Author: John Ribeiro.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform faced a worldwide outage in its storage services from Friday afternoon because of an expired SSL (secure sockets layer) certificate.  The company also reported problems with its Xbox Music and Video Store services.  The service problems come on a day the company said it was recently a victim of a cyberattack similar to ones that targeted Apple and Facebook.

"Beginning Friday, February 22 at 12:44 PM PST, Storage experienced a worldwide outage impacting HTTPS operations (SSL traffic) due to an expired certificate," Microsoft said on its Windows Azure service dashboard. HTTP traffic was not impacted, the company said. It said it executed steps to update the SSL certificate and expected HTTPS traffic to notice gradual recovery in many sub-regions…