Grazed from AssociationsNow. Author: Anita Ferrer.

A new survey shows that business executives are questioning whether the advantages of cloud computing outweigh the uncertainties it brings. You’ve heard about the vaunted benefits of cloud computing, including improved efficiency, reduced costs, and better results. But a recent survey shows growing uncertainty among executives about security, integration, and return on investment.

The survey of IT professionals, conducted by The Open Group, determined that measuring return on investment (ROI) is seen as increasingly difficult. Organizations that reported having measurement mechanisms in place decreased from 30 percent in 2011 to a little more than 19 percent last year. Cost, quality, and speed were the most popular ROI metrics…

Grazed from GreenerIdeal. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing, or the practice of using remote servers to store data and software, is changing the way the world does business. The cloud can be accessed from anywhere where there’s an internet connection, and therefore allows business data to be stored and continuously updated in one, central location. This guide to cloud computing explains the technology in further detail.

But what has this got to do with green business practices? Well, Microsoft has invested in a study that found “small and medium-sized businesses can reduce the impact of their activities on the environment by taking advantage of cloud technologies.” However, others disagree, and the National Data Center Energy Efficiency Information Program’s factsheet states that in 2006, Data Centers used 61 billion kWh of electricity (equivalent to 1.5% of all U.S. energy consumption) and that the amount of energy consumed by data centers is set to continue to grow by 12% per year…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

Amazon Web Services has introduced OpsWorks, a cloud-based platform powered by the Chef framework, which will give enterprises more integrated tools for managing the complete application life cycle. Enterprises have started asking for more sophisticated tools to manage their AWS resources and automate application deployments because their cloud-based infrastructures are becoming bigger and more complex, Amazon said on Monday.

AWS OpsWorks is available now as a beta and is targeted at DevOps users who want better management and automation tools to help them customize and control their environments. It can be used for resource provisioning, configuration management, application deployment, software updates, monitoring, and access control at no extra cost through the AWS Management Console, SDKs, and Command Line Interface, according to Amazon…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Many business and IT leaders get consumed in many questions: Should we go with private cloud? Public cloud? Hybrid model? What about our legacy systems? Where do we find the skills to make cloud happen? But there is another, even more important question that needs to be pondered before asking these questions, however. What are we actually trying to accomplish? In the headlong rush to cloud, not enough people are asking this question.

That’s the view of Dan Kusnetzky, founder of Kusnetzky Group and former IDC analyst, in a recent webcast at VIRTu Alley (sponsored by Dell). Too many organizations are jumping into cloud for cloud’s sake, and not thoroughly evaluating where the business value may be, he cautions…

Grazed from The Huffington Post. Author: Marcel Hildalgo.

The fundamental question that pushed Alan Turing, the pioneer of computer science, was can machines do what we can do? Turing was said to have come up with everything that computers do today. His concerns were not whether machines could think but if they had the intellectual capacities equal to a human mind. If he were here now how would he assess the advances in the development of computer technology, especially cloud computing? Would Turing think that machine intelligence has come pretty close to human intelligence? The idea is certainly entertaining. And people like Amy Poehler, in a recent Best Buy commercial, had us all laughing when she spiritedly asked the questions: "Where is the cloud?" and "Are we in the cloud now?" The average person cannot ignore that computers have become smarter in ways that continue to amaze us.

A different question is: are computers becoming independent of the user? In other words, will the virtual machine at some point in time completely control the user or even exempt the user? Perhaps a consoling thought articulated by Turing came when he said that an equation, which cannot be solved by a machine, proves the value for human thinking. But the need for smarter computing has opened a gateway to technology that can sometimes feel like the line between human thinking and machine thinking is remarkably thin…

CopperEgg, Corp., a leading cloud monitoring and analytics company, today announced new, breakthrough visibility and analytics to help customers for the first time see both deep and wide inside and across their hybrid infrastructure – including enterprises and public, hybrid, or private cloud environments. CopperEgg SaaS-based cloud monitoring now offers expanded cloud analytics and forensics that include Dynamic Cloud Heatmaps, Custom Power Dashboards, and Native Mobile Access across iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.

“Hybrid visibility and unified monitoring are critical to our day-to-day operations,” said Tim Meade, President and CEO of Millicorp. “CopperEgg allows us to ensure the quality and availability of our services and see across all of our hosted data centers and Amazon AWS systems in a single view. The custom dashboards and real-time heatmap help us track the health of our entire business at a single glance and have been essential in delivering the highest quality of service to our customers.”

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Cosentry, the region’s leading provider of secure cloud computing and data center services, has announced an industry first with the release of their new Ion Cloud Services. This industry breakaway technology allows clients to automatically provision enterprise class, secure virtual private data centers with Cosentry’s Vblock supported infrastructure.

“There are a number of industry offers that might appear similar at first glance” Said Dustin Trager, Director of Cloud Services for Cosentry. “But behind the flashy provisioning software, they don’t actually have a solid infrastructure or a true automatic zero-touch configuration. With Ion Cloud Services you get both, in addition to an orchestration layer that makes provisioning your Virtual Private Data Center take minutes, not hours. We know that this service is going to make waves in the industry, but it’s what our clients have been requesting.”…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Rackspace(R) Hosting RAX -2.51% is cementing its position as the open cloud company by working with Digital Realty Trust to bring a bigger UK datacentre facility online to serve an expanding European customer base. "We have hired an additional 300 UK ‘Rackers’ in 2012 and increased our total server count by more than 10,000 over that same past year period," said Taylor Rhodes, Managing Director, International at Rackspace. "Our customers are aligning their IT functions to take advantage of the open cloud and I am resolutely pleased to be able to move forward with an expanded datacentre. The age of the open cloud has arrived and our market success and subsequent expansion is testimony to that fact."

This energy-efficient datacentre expansion facilitates Rackspace Hosting’s leadership position as an open cloud company, delivering open technologies worldwide. January 2013 saw an agreement signed to build up to 10-megawatts of UK datacenter space with a strategic construction plan designed to bring a total of five "data halls" online in stages…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Emma Johnson.

The recent years where computers were on hype made way for faster and more productive operations; further when they became a household and a business necessity. They were a different kind of a giant leap for mankind indeed. Daily activities such as checking on your children to reviewing your business’ monthly sales were made convenient with the onset of software that are centralized on easing our most demanding tasks.

However, before you can marvel at their convenience, you first have to accomplish the overwhelming mission of handling the technical aspects of these devices that only experts can really manage. Realizing this hardship that users experience, innovations were pushed through, and the fruit was a breakthrough called Cloud computing…