Grazed from WindowsIT Pro. Author: B. K. Winstead.

As we begin a new year, with all the self-reflection that often entails, I’m not afraid to admit my many addictions. Nothing illegal or immoral, of course: smartphone addiction, computer gaming addiction. But I’d say there are few things more important to me than music; I listen to music whenever I can, and I’ve always had an insatiable need for new music at every available opportunity. So I was a little disturbed when I saw a recent press pitch about cloud computing technologies heralding the death of the CD.

First of all, I’m all in favor of cloud music players. In the past year, I’ve become a devotee of Spotify in particular because it lets me choose the music I get to listen to, as opposed to Pandora and other services which provide only radio stations based on your tastes. With Spotify, I can choose a new album or artist and listen repeatedly, which lets me decide whether I want to spend money on that particular music. If I do choose to buy something, my first choice is still to get the CD…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Ellen Messmer.

The Security for Business Innovation Council, comprised of IT security professionals from 19 companies worldwide, called cloud computing the main disruptive force for 2013. In its report, "Information Security Shake-Up," the group said it was evident many organizations are preparing to move more business processes to the cloud. This year, it will even be "mission-critical apps and regulated data" consigned to the cloud.

The Council, established several years ago to advise RSA, includes security professionals from Coca-Cola, eBay, FedEx, EMC, Fidelity Investments, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, and Walmart, among several others. "Although supplier lock-in and system availability are some of the big concerns with the cloud, security remains the number one obstacle to adoption," the Council’s report says. "But trust in the cloud is growing."…

Grazed from Devry University.  Author: Editorial Staff.

What is the predominant perception that people have toward cloud computing?  This infographic, related to Cloud Computing is a must view…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

As 2013 begins, the SaaS (software as a service) market is set to heat up even more, as well as potentially undergo a number of key shifts. Here’s a look at a series of key SaaS vendors and trends to watch as the year unfolds.

Salesforce.com: No discussion of the SaaS market is complete without covering Salesforce.com, the largest independent player. While the company should generate plenty of news for its social collaboration, CRM (customer relationship management), customer service and application development software, it’s also possible that Salesforce.com will come up with a brand-new application that touches on an area it hasn’t directly been involved with until now…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

A recent whitepaper from IDC sponsored by Microsoft has suggested a widening skills gap for cloud computing, and the trend will continue further through 2013. In particular the research, of over 600 organisations, showed that as the cloud evolves, cloud-specific skills will grow at six times the rate of overall IT skills, noting that cloud-related skills “represent virtually all of the growth opportunities in IT worldwide”.

According to the paper, worldwide IT jobs will hit just under 30m by the end of 2015; however the 22.3m non-cloud jobs represent a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 0% from 2011, as opposed to the 7m cloud-related jobs having a 26% CAGR, going up from 2.7m in 2011…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Alistair Maughan.

Hey, EU, get off my cloud! Most people wouldn’t include the European Union on a list of growth drivers for the ICT sector. And with good reason if the EU’s recently-announced policy approach to cloud computing is anything to go by. In the past, the EU has been less a facilitator and more a barrier to adoption of cloud computing. This is because the ubiquity of cloud computing is threatened by the need to comply with the EU’s rules on data privacy and transfer. But, in a recent communication, the European Commission has said it aims to “unleash the potential of cloud computing in Europe”.

Unfortunately, the Commission seems to believe that the way to promote the growth of cloud computing is to regulate it. In doing so it has missed the opportunity to do something meaningful for companies seeking to implement cloud services across their organisations by reducing the data privacy burden…

Grazed from Engadget. Author: Ben Gilbert.

NVIDIA’s CES 2013 press conference is still ongoing, but the chipmaker is already unveiling something we’ve only seen teased before: the NVIDIA Grid, a card used for cloud computing across PCs, smart TVs, and smartphones. CEO and founder Jen-Hsun Huang detailed the new card on-stage, which you can see above in a rack of 20 grid servers. Huang says the rack pushes out roughly 240 NVIDIA GPUs worth of power, or about 200 teraflops — equivalent to approximately 700 Xbox 360s.

The Grid was given a tease earlier this year; the card will assist in pushing serious horsepower to the cloud, so that gaming over the air, across multiple devices becomes a less complicated reality…

Grazed from The National.  Author: Tony Glover.

This year, prices of IT devices such as tablet computers and smartphones are set to fall as Asian manufacturers undercut western IT companies.  At the end of last year, even top-of-the-range Apple products such as the iPhone 5 were being heavily discounted by electronics retailers in the United States such as Best Buy, Wal-Mart, Radio Shack and Target.

Wall Street analysts from Pacific Crest, Canaccord Genuity, Mizuho Securities, UBS and Jeffries & Co swiftly sliced between US$50 (Dh183) and $100 from their Apple share targets, believing this to be the start of an inexorable drop in IT prices. The US technology investment bank Pacific Crest cut its sales expectations for Apple from 174 million devices to 151 million for this year, and from 181 million to 161 million for 2014…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author:  Editorial Staff.

Gartner lists Amazon, AT&T, Google, HP, IBM and Microsoft among what it says are the top 10 cloud storage providers.  According to its survey, about 19% of organisations are using the cloud for production computing, while 20% are using public cloud storage services.  That means there’s a pretty good sized market for the cloud, and specifically cloud storage. Gartner predicted in 2012 $109 billion was spent on cloud computing, a 20% increase from the year before.

But the cloud is a big industry too, with a lot of vendors seemingly having a cloud strategy today. So where do potential customers start? Recently, Gartner released a list of the top 10 cloud storage providers, based on enterprise capabilities. Below is a description of each, based on pros, cons, strengths and weaknesses…