Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Cisco is not a cloud service provider, but it has an expanding suite of products under the label "Cisco Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1." With it, Cisco is building out a private cloud across seven major data centers in hopes that its experience will serve as a model for customers to build out their own private clouds. Intelligent Automation for Cloud 3.1 derives both from Cisco’s own data center experience and from acquisitions such as Tidal Software in 2009 with its IT automation products, and newScale in 2011 with its service catalogue, self-service portal and process orchestrator.

When it started its data center conversions in 2009, Cisco moved decisively into virtualization and found that server consolidation leads to many other changes. IT operations managers wrote scripts that automated steps in the virtual server creation process. Some integrated Cisco software with open source code. Others generated scripts for provisioning a simple database server…

Grazed from DesignNews. Author: Cabe Atwell.

Cloud computing is simply computers somewhere else, dolling out software or hardware recourses over the Internet or local network. The inherent risks all still exist, but not on site. Despite this, the cloud has become quite popular with businesses and institutions as a way of storing and accessing data and information on demand.

Some of these institutions, including large US law firms, are slowly and reluctantly implementing the use of these services, but have fears that sensitive information could potentially be compromised (hacked) by exploiting their relatively weak security measures. Using these services, such as IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service), StaaS (storage-as-a-service), and PaaS (platform-as-a-service), can be both beneficial and potentially risky for those involved in the US justice system…

Grazed from Backup-Technology. Author: Editorial Staff.

Does the UK lag behind in usage and adoption of cloud computing? Are UK businesses more sceptical of cloud computing than other nations? A recent survey released by Redwood Software would suggest just that. The survey into the use of cloud computing by large US and UK firms (1,000 employees and above), conducted by Vanson Bourne, looked at usage levels of cloud computing and general opinion of cloud computing, e.g. data storage and automation of business processes. In general, the study found that significantly more US businesses are using cloud computing, for example, 58% of US businesses who took part in the survey use the cloud for private data storage compared to 35% in the UK. As well as data storage, 47% of US businesses use cloud computing for capacity management of IT resources compared to just 24% of UK businesses.

Not only is there a significant difference in current usage of cloud computing between the two countries, there is also a disparity in opinion of its benefits. Of the 200 US companies who made up the survey 71% believed cloud computing would “improve agility in supporting business needs”, compared to just 47% of the 100 UK businesses. When asked if they thought that the cloud gave them a “faster return on investment” 57% of US businesses said yes compared to just 36% of UK businesses, while 45% of US businesses believed that cloud computing “reduced labour costs”, compared to 29% of UK businesses…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Editorial Staff.

Data security has been the primary inhibitor preventing enterprises from adopting cloud solutions. Aiming to address this issue, Vaultize recently unveiled a Data Privacy Option (DPO) for enterprises, helping them comply with various data privacy, data residency and data protection regulations –hence further strengthening cloud adoption.

DPO is an innovative concept through which Vaultize lets its enterprise customers retain the full control over encryption keys. With DPO, the encryption keys are never stored on any infrastructure that is not under enterprise control, ensuring that the customer is in complete control of data…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

The U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, an advisory group to Congress, is putting more scrutiny on national security threats posed to American businesses by Chinese cloud computing companies. The group, tasked by Congress to monitor the risks of trade with China, is commissioning a report on the ties of state enterprises to the Chinese cloud computing industry and potential espionage risks from cloud infrastructure situated in the country, according to government officials.

Cloud computing generally refers to the delivery of a variety of computing resources – from Web-based services to storage space — over the Internet. The commission is interested in “how information stored by Chinese cloud computing services might be susceptible to theft or exploitation, or how cloud computing infrastructure might be used to launch or enable cyberattacks,” according to a solicitation for proposals that closed earlier this month. The group is looking into how many people in the U.S. are using cloud infrastructure owned or operated by Chinese entities, as well as “Chinese-developed, owned, or operated cloud infrastructure outside of China.” The report is likely to be available to Congress by the middle of the year, according to the officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss it…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.

Cloud computing has truly evolved from providing computing or storage resources to a more industry-specific community. Today, there are cloud instances to cater to each compliance and security requirements of a particular industry. Verizon has its cloud service which complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act for the healthcare industry. Metal Lynx targets traders of precious metals. There are private clouds which are housed offsite and managed by a 3rd party provider.

With the myriads of cloud applications now available in the market, it makes sense to question if these cloud computing services do offer great cost savings. Although it may seem difficult to evaluate the financial viability of each cloud service, there are cloud providers today who offer cloud costing and modeling tools in order to help the cloud customers ascertain the true cost of such services…

Grazed from BusinessNews Daily. Author: Greg Grocholski.

Cloud computing has caught on with companies of every size, but it’s especially appealing to resource-strapped small businesses and start-ups. The attraction is obvious — it typically requires no capital expenditures and no team of in-house IT experts, and you pay for only what you consume. Cloud is here to stay, but there are several trends in 2013 that growing businesses should be aware of. The good news is they all can be navigated for companies that want to reap the benefits of business in the clouds this year.

Growing interest in private or hybrid cloud solutions prompted by security concerns

In a recent survey by ISACA, a nonprofit association of 100,000 IT professionals, fully two-thirds (66 percent) of small or midsize companies feel that the risk of cloud computing outweighs the benefit. Only 10 percent use the public cloud for mission-critical IT applications, vs. nearly triple that number who use private clouds for the applications they count on to run their business. That preference for private or hybrid clouds is expected to increase in 2013…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Bulking up on tools for managing hybrid clouds, Red Hat plans to fold the software it acquired last month in the ManageIQ purchase into its own CloudForms software. The combined package will offer a more comprehensive set of management software needed to run virtual applications across public and internal clouds, according to Red Hat.

"We’re integrating the operational management capabilities of ManageIQ to the existing capabilities of CloudForms," said Bryan Che, general manager of Red Hat’s cloud business unit, in a webcast. Red Hat hopes the combination will provide a "compelling offering to our customers as they [make] the transition to open hybrid clouds." Red Hat acquired ManageIQ for $104 million in December, adding ManageIQ’s software to a growing stable of products for running cloud deployments on premise, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and a distribution of OpenStack to be released later this year…

Grazed from UTDallas.edu. Author: Editorial Staff.

When his head isn’t in the clouds, what does one of Microsoft’s top inventors do to blow off steam? Christian Belady MA’90 slides into a bright yellow tricked-out Porsche and hits the racetrack. Belady says it’s not about speed. It’s about how you take the turns, especially the first one. It’s like life, where every decision you make today impacts every decision you make in the future. “It may be perceived as a dangerous thing, but that’s what I do, and it’s what clears my mind and energizes me,” he explained.

Belady is the general manager of Data Center Services for Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. Translation? He helps build, manage and breathe life into the entire world of cloud computing at Microsoft. With the prevalence of commercial products like Microsoft’s Office 365, and a plethora of cloud services like competitors’ Dropbox and iCloud, Belady has his two-minute elevator speech down…

Grazed from PCAdvisor. Author: Matt Egan.

Cloud computing could form an important part of your technological life, but you have to know what you’re looking for. Here are some tips on what to look for in a cloud storage service. In conversation with an older relative the other day I was astounded when they casually dropped in the following question: "I see you weren’t at CES this year. Was that because it is on the way down, with no Apple and no Microsoft?" Reader, my flabber was gasted. Firstly, that my relative had any idea of what I do and why I have on occasion spent time in Nevada, but also that he was sufficiently aware of CES to have formed an opinion on a technology trade event.

For the record, Apple hasn’t been to CES in decades, and Microsoft’s absence may be best for both parties. There was no killer product or product type at CES 2013, but the fact that non-tech fans are even aware of its existence shows both the enduring power of that show, and just how mainstream technology now is. Check out our Best new products of CES 2013 story…