Grazed from The Smart Data Collective.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The long-awaited final modifications to the HIPAA Privacy, Security, Enforcement and Breach Rules were introduced Thursday. The 563-word document outlines the changes that were initially slated for implementation last summer (remember the omnibus rule?). So how do these modifications affect HIPAA cloud providers?

While cloud providers have generally been considered and treated as business associates in the industry, the modifications make it even clearer that data center operators are officially considered business associates and are also directly liable for being compliant with the HIPAA standards that apply to business associates. The federal document states:…

Grazed from OutLaw.com.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Symantec said that nearly 1,000 of the 3,236 business and IT executives within global organisations of all sizes it had surveyed about the ‘hidden costs of cloud’ had simultaneously reported rogue cloud use within their firm and the loss of confidential information last year. Symantec defined ‘rogue clouds’ as "business groups implementing public cloud applications that are not managed by or integrated into the company’s IT infrastructure".  The primary reason why businesses allowed rogue use of cloud was to save money, according to Symantec.

"Perhaps the sales manager signs his department up for Salesforce without thinking to consult IT," Symantec said in a new report (11-page / 4.62MB PDF). "Or perhaps marketing shares important launch materials with outside vendors via an unauthorized Dropbox account. In either case the organization has put sensitive information into the cloud without organizational oversight. It’s a surprisingly common problem, found in three-quarters of all organizations. It also seems to be an issue experienced more by enterprises (83%) than SMBs (70%)."…

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

Avnet Embedded, an Avnet unit by way of Avnet Electronics Marketing Americas, has launched Open Compute Project (OCP) Innovation Labs as both technology showcases and development labs for users, developers and partners to design, deliver and integrate cost-effective, power-efficient compute, storage and networking solutions.

It says the lab will provide the OCP community with local and remote access to resources offering "hands-on" enablement of platform and configuration testing, hardware and software validation, performance tuning and community innovation. Avnet will bring together the hardware, connectivity and technical support resources to assist developers with application creation…

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

Calxeda, the Texas start-up with the ARM-based servers, joined the Open Compute Project (OCP) this week, contributing Project Knockout to the cause’s Open Vault dumb storage scheme.
A spec enhancement to the SAS expander slot on the Open Vault spec, Project Knockout injects compute into the customer’s storage tier.

Calxeda’s chips will be built into the storage chassis, putting processing close to the data and eliminating the need for a separate Xeon server to control the disks in Open Vault. The Knockout board, which will offer independent management that will improve performance, cost and redundancy, is ready for evaluation…

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

EMC said Tuesday that it means to offer its cloud-based online file-sharing service Syncplicity, acquired last May, with its Isilon and Atmos widgetry so customers can store files as in the cloud as well as on-premise. The stuff’s in beta. It’s supposed to increase productivity, flexibility and ease of management, and reduce compliance risks.

"The combination of Syncplicity and the Atmos cloud storage platform delivers a highly automated, enterprise-grade file-sharing capability, where policies and performance follow data wherever it’s accessed or shared without sacrificing security or control," VP of marketing for EMC’s Advanced Storage Division Chris Ratcliffe said in a statement. "As corporate users increasingly demand more mobility and access to files from multiple devices, EMC gives enterprises the tools they need to deliver new levels of productivity to their users."

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

The Open Compute Project, backed by Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), is gaining momentum, as evidenced by the increasing attendance at the Open Compute Summit. This week, the summit attracted more than 1,900 attendees that were interested in checking out the latest and greatest in Open Compute Project technologies, innovations and products. There has been a bit of buzz about some of the innovations unveiled at the show, and this can only mean good things for the open source cloud computing market.

Some of the interesting launches at the conference included a new rack design from Quanta in partnership with Intel (NASDAQ: INTC). The rack design will use silicon photonics when it is completed to increase the speed of communication between rack components. Fusion-io also announced ioScale, which will provide 3.2TB of memory capacity at $3.89 per Gigabyte…

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…