Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) will bang the drum for its Cloud OS initiative on January 15. The software giant plans to discuss new management products and services that "deliver against Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision."

When Windows Server 2012 launched in Sept. 2012, Microsoft claimed it was the first true cloud operating system. The company’s Hyper-V hypervisor, System Center management tools, and Windows Azure public cloud also play into the cloud OS strategy — which faces stiff competition from established Linux offerings and emerging open source platforms like OpenStack and CloudStack…

Grazed from American Banker. Author: Brian Browdie.

A string of cyberattacks that has bedeviled some of the nation’s biggest banks appears to have a state sponsor who is taking the battle to the cloud. The know-how required to mount the attacks, which have slowed the websites of at least six U.S. banks since December, has persuaded U.S. officials that the disruptions are the work of Iran, The New York Times reported Tuesday.

Though security experts have previously tied Iran to the onslaught, whoever is behind the attacks has showed an ability to shift tactics in ways that has left banks vulnerable, according to security experts. The experts also say that regardless of whether Iran is waging the attacks, cyber thieves from around the globe may be piggybacking on the onslaught to commit fraud…

Grazed from ChannelPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

Two in five people say they have little or no understanding of cloud. While the IT industry continues to talk up the potential power of cloud computing, new research published today indicates the general public’s understanding of ‘the cloud’ is still poor. Hosting firm Webfusion polled more than 1,000 members and discovered that almost two in five (38 percent) said that they had little or no understanding of the term, while only a third (34 percent) said they were confident that they knew what it meant.

Although the poll found that ‘cloudy’ applications such as file hosting services similar to Dropbox, email services like Hotmail or Gmail, or online music hosting such as iTunes were each seen as cloud services by around 30 percent of the population, a similar proportion did not recognise these to be cloud. A much smaller proportion (15.7 percent) said that scalable hosting across multiple servers counted as a cloud service…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) will update its open hybrid cloud strategy during a North America partner conference, scheduled for Jan. 14-16 in San Diego. North America Channel Chief Roger Egan, in an interview with The VAR Guy, said telcos, cloud services providers (CSPs), VARs and other types of partners are opening their arms to Red Hat’s CloudForms (IaaS) and OpenShift (PaaS) strategies. But can Red Hat really muscle aside VMware (NYSE: VMW) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) as partners seek the building blocks for public and private clouds?

In many ways, Red Hat has successfully diversified beyond its Linux heritage. Moves into the virtualization, storage and middleware markets seem to be taking hold. Roughly 500 people, including roughly 175 partners, will listen to Red Hat’s updated vision during the North America partner conference, which is one of The VAR Guy’s Top 100 Channel Partner Conferences for 2013…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: David Greenfield.

Gone are the days when the cloud meant simply a hosted virtual instance or resource on some provider’s network. We’re seeing all sorts of new variants and twists emerge. I’m not just referring to the use of storage or compute resources or those that allow for elastic computing, such as Amazon’s Reserved Instances.

We’re likely to see industry-specific community clouds emerge. These clouds are built to address the security and compliance needs within specific industries. Examples of community clouds may well be Verizon’s Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) cloud service, which targets the healthcare community; and Metal Lynx, a cloud community targeting buyers and sellers of precious metals…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Compliance may not be quite the hot topic it was a few years ago when regulations such as HIPAA and SOX came into being, but it’s still of critical importance to many businesses—and particularly to their customers, who would generally prefer not to have their personal information lost or intercepted. Cloud and managed services provider ViaWest knows this, and has expanded its reporting services for its customers using its data centers.

ViaWest typically provides a variety of SSAE 16 (formerly SAS 70) reports to customers, and now it’s expanding that portfolio to include dual-standard SSAE 16 and ISAE 3402 SOC 1 Type II, SOC 2 Type II, SOC 3, PCI reports on compliance for Sections 9 and 12, as well as HIPAA reports for physical controls…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Srikanth RP.

The immense potential of the Indian SMB market is well known. Market research firm, Zinnov, says that with over 50 million units, India has the largest number of SMBs across the world. While a majority of SMBs in this sector have global aspirations, they are way behind in technology adoption – a vital parameter for competing against global players.

While this sector wants to use technology, a majority of SMBs seldom adopt technology as they are either too expensive or too cumbersome to deploy. The cloud is a perfect technology for SMBs as it gives them the ability to conserve cash, and scale without technology infrastructure restrictions…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Rick Blaisdell.

When it comes to cloud computing, expectations are high for 2013. Businesses of all sizes are putting their hopes into cloud computing technologies and services to help them deliver business value while reducing operating costs. According to a recent Foresights survey nearly 50% of all enterprises in North America and Europe will set aside budgets for cloud investments in 2013. Also, 50% of software development companies are planning to deploy applications in the cloud. Let’s see what analysts and researchers expect from the cloud computing market in 2013:

Cloud technology will reach more customers in 2013

The cloud computing marketplace will reach $16.7B in revenue by 2013, including the large and well-established software-as-a-service (SaaS) category, according to a research report by 451 Market Monitor, compared to a revenue of $8.7B in 2010…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Edwin Schouten.

You’d think that by now, since we started talking about the term cloud computing back in 2008, we’d all know what its characteristics are and how it’s consumed and delivered. This, however, does not seem to be the case, even though there are some great recaps out there. I just read the Computerworld UK post, CIOs frustrated by ‘fake’ cloud services. But this is not unique to cloud alone. Think of SOA for instance, which was never really understood by the public at large.

In my opinion, this has to do with the fact that some of the large IT companies “define their own standards” and interpretations of information technology. Marketing teams at companies sometimes use different terms and abbreviations to add a false sense of uniqueness. They can also “interpret” well-known terms and abbreviations freely to suggest false similarities. This makes it more difficult for IT consumers to compare individual solutions on facts and capabilities…

Grazed from International Law Office. Author: Fiona Wilson and Oliver Bray.

The recent rise of cloud computing – both for businesses and at consumer level – is providing a decent challenge for the regulators tasked with applying established data protection principles to this new and fast-developing industry.

Until last year there had been little guidance at UK or EU level. However, in July 2012 the Article 29 Working Party – the independent advisory body made up of data protection regulators from across the EU member states – released its Opinion on Cloud Computing (05/2012). This was closely followed by guidance from the UK regulator, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO). The ICO’s Guidance on the Use of Cloud Computing was published in September 2012…