Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Sue Tabbitt.

As more companies move to the cloud to expand their IT capabilities, the effect on storage requirements has been vast, causing companies to increasingly call on external data center services, including colocation options. U.K. Trade & Investment claims that the annual market value of the U.K.’s cloud computing market will grow from £2.4 billion to £6.1 billion by 2014 (equivalent to $9.8 billion), and that by 2015 half of all new IT spending by the public sector will be on public cloud services. This in turn is putting pressure on storage capacity.

In response, the U.K. data center market — the largest in Western Europe — is currently investing in its facilities at a rate of around $3 billion a year, according to various analyst estimates, with only the U.S. investing more. Market watcher DatacenterDynamics has calculated that, at the last count, the U.K. boasted more than 7.6 million square meters (nearly 25 million square feet) of data center space…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Thor Olavsrud.

It should come as no surprise at this point that organizations of all sizes are flocking to the cloud with high hopes of reducing CapEx, making OpEx more predictable, enhancing scalability, making management easier and improving disaster preparedness. In fact, here in the opening weeks of 2013, a new study by Symantec finds that 94 percent of enterprises are at least discussing cloud or cloud services, up from 75 percent a year ago. But Symantec also reports that companies that rush into cloud deployments inevitably encounter a host of hidden costs.

ReRez conducted Symantec’s Avoiding the Hidden Costs of Cloud 2013 Survey from September to October 2012, gathering responses from 3,236 organizations in 29 countries–1,358 of the responses came from smaller and midsize businesses, while 1,878 came from larger enterprises. “This is a broad, robust survey,” says Dave Elliott, senior product marketing manager for Global Cloud Marketing at Symantec. “It was in planning for nine months and took two months to implement. What we found is that organizations have, in fact, actually embraced the cloud. Organizations have said, ‘Yes, the cloud is a real thing. We’re there.'”…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recommends the Cloud Security Readiness Tool (CSRT), a free tool from Microsoft designed to help organizations review and understand their IT maturity level and their readiness to consider adopting or growing cloud services. The tool uses the Cloud Control Matrix (CCM) to consider data security, privacy, and reliability factors as well as key compliance and regulatory standards. The tool is a simple way to adopt Security, Trust, and Assurance Registry (STAR) and CCM principles.

The tool helps organizations evaluate their IT potential and learn how they can adopt cloud services to reduce the overall cost of their operation. Organizations that are considering cloud adoption are faced with common decision difficulties, most of which relates to a lack of understanding about cloud computing. Information from more than 800 organizations that have used the CSRT shows that only a few of them are well prepared for cloud adoption…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Lynn Haber.

Private cloud computing makes sense for some, but not all, organizations. Companies with security and privacy concerns, for example — particularly concerns that relate to sensitive workloads or government regulatory and/or compliance requirements — are candidates for private clouds.

At the same time, there’s an assumption that large organizations with a reasonably sized IT estate, many existing business applications and the need to routinely build new applications are suited for private clouds. For these organizations, private clouds can reduce costs, improve efficiency and enable a higher-quality delivery of services, thanks to automation and repeatability…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Cisco Systems (NASDAQ: CSCO) has invested in Parallels, which develops cloud and SaaS automation software for hosting providers. Financial terms were not disclosed. The Cisco-Parallels relationship will also include joint development, marketing and industry initiatives. But there’s a hidden wrinkle here. It involves distributors and other companies that host cloud services for VARs and MSPs.

If everything goes as planned, data center providers will leverage Cisco’s infrastrastructure and Parallels’ cloud service delivery products in tandem. And Parallels is calling on those data center providers to focus on SMB customers, which Executive Chairman Serguei Beloussov and CEO Birger Steen (pictured) consider to be an underserved market…

Grazed from AllThingsD. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Word has just leaked out of Hewlett-Packard that Zorawar “Biri” Singh, senior vice president and general manager for Cloud Services, is leaving the company. Roger Levy, the group’s vice president for technology and customer relations, will replace him on an interim basis. I haven’t been able to find out if Singh is leaving for another job or if he’s just leaving.

The departure was confirmed by an HP spokesman moments ago, sending the following statement: “HP remains committed to our Converged Cloud portfolio. In particular, HP Cloud Services is critical to HP’s efforts to deliver superior public cloud infrastructure, services and solutions to our customers. Roger Levy, vice president, Technology and Customer Operations of HP Cloud Services, will serve as the interim leader for HP Cloud Services. The company thanks Zorawar ‘Biri’ Singh for his passion and commitment to drive our public cloud vision and wish him well.”…

Grazed from IDG News. Author: Brandon Butler.

Oracle’s latest advancement of its cloud computing strategy is being called out as a "faux cloud" by a consultant and author, and as the latest example of cloud-washing, or the practice of vendors misusing the ubiquitous technology term. This week Oracle announced the availability of a service it previewed last year at Oracle OpenWorld that allows customers to rent Oracle hardware equipment and store it on their own sites for a monthly fee. David Linthicum, CTO and co-founder of cloud and SOA consultancy Blue Mountain Labs, says that’s not cloud computing.

"Oracle labels (it) ‘infrastructure as a service’ but it is not actually a cloud IaaS offering — it’s the usual Oracle data center gear," Linthicum wrote in his blog at Network World sister-site InfoWorld. "Just as Oracle IaaS is not a true cloud offering, neither is Oracle’s new ‘Iaas On Demand’ selection of rental application servers."…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

AMD Monday charged four former managers from its Boxborough, Massachusetts facility including its erstwhile VP of strategic development Robert Feldstein with looting its files and taking more than 100,000 confidential documents with them to new jobs at graphics rival Nvidia last year. The suit, which does not name Nvidia, was filed in district court in Boston.

AMD said the contraband includes licenses with two enterprise customers, a document outlining proposed licensing strategies and plans for new technologies. It complained that if either of the first two fell into Nvidia’s hands Nvidia would have an "unfair advantage."…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Microsoft upgraded its System Center suite Tuesday to make it a hybrid cloud manager and a more complete manager of the capabilities included in Windows Server 2012, launched last September.

As System Center 2012 and Windows Server 2012 mesh more tightly together, Microsoft has achieved what it refers to as its "Cloud Operating System," in the words of Michael Park, corporate VP for server and tools business marketing, in an interview. The term means mainly that System Center can now scale across many Windows Server 2012 servers, and link up operations that may be scattered across more than one data center. System Center 2012 was augmented Tuesday with Service Pack 1. It’s been extended so that a single instance of System Center’s Virtual Machine Manager module can handle up to 8,000 virtual machines on a cluster with 64 hosts. Add another Virtual Machine Manager instance and manage another 8,000 VMs…

Grazed from ComputerWorld UK. Author: Glyn Moody.

There are so many parts to the institutions running the European Union that it’s easy to lose sight of them all and their varied activities. For example, one of the lesser-known European Parliament bodies is the Directorate-General for Internal Policies. You might expect the studies that it commissions to be deadly dull, but some turn out to be not just highly interesting but hugely important.

One such is the new report "Fighting cyber crime and protecting privacy in the cloud" [.pdf]. Here’s the basic background:

While cloud computing is not a new technology per se and has been developed and marketed primarily for profit-driven purposes, the growing reliance on its infrastructures and services poses a series of challenges for EU strategies and policies. This study addresses these challenges, examining the current EU framework in the field and highlighting the legal aspects in relation to the right to data protection, the issue of jurisdiction, responsibility and the regulation of data transfers to third countries…