Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

More companies are storing their data in the cloud as part of a hybrid onsite and offsite storage solution, but many admit they are not able to back-up large chunks of their data at all. Research company Vanson Bourne surveyed 650 IT decision makers across the US, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, which highlighted the way Cloud backup and storage is now seen as a key component of hybrid storage environments. Some 66 percent of those surveyed said they would increase the amount of data they store in the cloud by 2015.

Among those already using hybrid storage systems, improved data security was cited as the reason why 66 percent moved from their old backup and recovery tools to onsite and offsite data protection. Some 57 percent said they preferred such a solution because their rapidly growing business critical data required protection against natural disaster and theft…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Jack McCarthy.

Addressing the growing demand for more cloud computing power, memory and bandwidth, Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday unveiled High Memory Cluster instances. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances will serve memory-intensive applications such as databases, in-memory analytics, caching and scientific computing.

High Memory Cluster instances are aimed at applications that require a large amount of memory on a single instance or need to use distributed memory architectures, AWS said. "This is a real workhorse instance, with a total of 88 ECU (EC2 Compute Units)," Jeff Barr, chief evangelist with Amazon Web Services, wrote in an AWS blog…

Grazed from Gravitant. Author: PR Annoucement.

Gravitant, a leader in cloud services brokerage and management for enterprises, systems integrators and cloud providers, today announced that the company won two prestigious UP-START awards at the recent UP 2012 Global Cloud Computing Conference, the world’s first and largest hybrid format cloud computing event. Gravitant won UP-START awards for Best Cloud Broker Service 2012 and Best Cloud Automation Solution 2012, one of the few companies named as a winner in multiple categories.

The UP-START Cloud Awards are recognized by the cloud community as the industry’s most prestigious awards for furthering the understanding, appreciation and advancement of contribution of cloud computing in the business and technology community. Winners in the highly competitive awards are determined in multiple rounds of voting…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Jake Gardner.

Why seven? Why not?! While none of these problem areas align with the so-called deadly sins, the reality is that each represents a real challenge that can arise in many organizations, whether enterprises or SMBs, when it comes to implementing and maintaining a cloud architecture. These are universal challenges. While each is not an ultimate, insurmountable hurdle to adoption, thinking about how each of these is wrong, or at least misguided, is a smart way to navigate toward successful cloud strategy and implementation.

1. Organizational ignorance: Cloud is a hot concept for many businesses. In the last year, the emphasis on cloud computing as the go-to solution for infrastructure needs has propelled it to the forefront of the IT discussion, with many believing it will eventually become the way IT operates at a baseline…

Grazed from ReadWrite. Author: Antone Gonsalves.

Ruthless competitiveness is what Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison uses to win in business. So no one should be surprised that how he defines the cloud depends on what’s needed at the time. Inevitably, this sometimes shows the emperor has no clothes, or at least is down to his Armani skivvies.

While something in Oracle’s massive portfolio may fit the industry definition of a cloud service, it is not the company’s new integrated hardware and software bundle that’s meant to provide the infrastructure for private clouds, according to David Linthicum, chief technology officer and co-founder of cloud consultancy Blue Mountain Labs. What Oracle is really selling, or in this case renting, is preconfigured application servers for the data center. "Now we know how Oracle is addressing this shift in the market: by renting its stuff and calling it a cloud," Linthicum says…

Grazed from Out-Law.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

A "fragmented" legal framework, the "attitude" of regulators and a naturally cautious approach to security issues are among the reasons why UK businesses have made less use of cloud computing than US counterparts, according to experts.

IT law and cloud computing specialists Charles Park and Christopher Mann of Pinsent Masons said that EU financial services rules also present a sizeable regulatory barrier to businesses in that sector that are looking to utilise the cloud. A survey by Redwood Software, of 100 UK and 200 US senior IT decision makers at a range of companies with more than 1,000 employees, has revealed that 58% of US businesses use cloud computing for "private data storage" purposes compared to just 35% of UK firms…

Grazed from Out-Law.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) said that businesses and individuals would be more likely to utilise cloud computing (CC) if their "trust" in the technology grew. It said that there is inherently less trust in using non-EU providers of cloud services and encouraged the Commission to take measures, such as enabling the use of "subsidies", to encourage EU-based cloud suppliers to emerge and improve trust levels.

The EESC said that there is currently a "dependency" on non-European companies providing cloud services to EU citizens because some existing EU-based providers lack the "same level of global visibility and influence" as Amazon, Microsoft and Google and are therefore "unable to compete" with those US firms…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

While cloud computing is in first place among the technologies of interest to the corporate sector, the industry is a struggle for professionals in this field. In 2012, more than 1.7 million jobs in the field of cloud computing remain unoccupied, according to analysts firm IDC. The reason for this is lack of qualifications and certificates from applicants.

The trend is likely to continue in 2013 and staffing professionals worldwide said IT hiring will focus on jobs involving cloud computing, mobile technology and business intelligence. Enterprises are using SaaS (software as a service) products from a variety of vendors, but the developers, consultants and overall workforce necessary to support the technology haven’t developed quickly enough, said Eric Berridge, co-founder of IT consulting and resources firm Bluewolf…

Grazed from Smart Data Collective. Author: Vanessa Parks.

Cloud computing is now not just about uploading your files in Yahoo! Groups or Google Communities for sharing with a common group. Cloud computing today speaks of large data and resources used by enterprises. There are many businesses and industries affected by this trend in technology. One of which is the health care sector. In this article, we will talk about the impact of cloud computing to this industry in the nearest future.

1. Record and Protect Patients’ Information Safely

There’s a saying that doctors can never tell who their patients are to prevent judgments. Patients’ information contains such confidential pieces of data that need to be protected at all times. This is the very reason why the hospital’s IT infrastructure and network must be so secured from hackers or anyone who attempt to get data illegally. Cloud computing, in its most initial state, has had issues regarding security. However now that many experts joined in to make the system really hard to break into, organizations can rest assured that there are increased levels of security and privacy in the cloud. Hospitals who want to use cloud computing must adhere to the HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act)…

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

Panzura, a start-up with global cloud storage solutions, has gotten three patents on its widgetry from the US Patent and Trademark Office.
No. 8,306,948 – "Global Deduplication File System"
No. 8,341,363 – "Efficient Cloud Network Attached Storage"
No. 8,356,016 – "Forwarding File-System-Level Information to a Storage Management System"

The company says the new patents recognize the underlying technology of its Panzura Operating System, which forms the core of its Global Cloud Storage System. It says it’s the industry’s first storage solution to bring advanced NAS capabilities to a distributed, cloud-integrated storage tier, providing a globally distributed storage system with LAN-like performance…