Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth is focused on JuJu, a solution for deploying cloud services. JuJu is already mature and useful, but Ubuntu developers envision expanding on it in major ways in 2013, as evidence from mailing archives and Canonical announcements.

When it comes to cloud computing — which Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth has earmarked as a major focus for Canonical in 2013 — one of the Ubuntu ecosystem’s most innovative projects is JuJu, a solution for deploying cloud services. JuJu is already mature and useful, but Ubuntu developers envision expanding on it in major ways in the new year, as evidence from mailing archives and Canonical announcements reveals…

Grazed from CSO. Author: David Geer.

Automation, cost savings, and data redundancy—no wonder cloud adoption is tempting. The CISO can rest easy knowing there is no vice in moving to the cloud to reap these rewards. What may keep her up at night is not knowing how many missteps the enterprise is making in the process. Here CISOs and security buffs round up seven security sins that can undermine cloud computing’s benefits.

Failing to check IDs at the door

The only secure way to log in to the cloud is through enterprise identity management systems. Though many cloud services permit just about anyone in the organization to sign themselves up, create their own IDs and passwords without registering these with the enterprise, and then connect these credentials to personal email addresses, that does not mean that IT or the business should let it happen…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

The growth of cloud computing has caused a paradigm shift in all sorts of business applications, but perhaps most notably in ERP software. As noted in a previous article, cloud ERP is growing like wildfire as more and more businesses move to their ERP system to the cloud. But as cloud ERP becomes more popular, misconceptions about it also spread and it becomes more difficult to separate fact from fiction. In an effort to do just so, here are the top 3 myths about cloud ERP:

Myth #1: Cloud ERP is the same as hosted ERP

This is somewhat analogous to saying that renting a house is the same as leasing a house, which obviously is false. There are numerous differences between cloud ERP and hosted ERP involving software maintenance, network traffic, security, and statelessness…

Grazed from Yahoo News.  Author: Mayathi Nayak.

Social games publisher Zynga Inc confirmed on Monday that it has carried out 11 of the planned shutdowns of 13 game titles, with "Petville" being the latest game on which it pulled the plug.   Zynga in October said it would shut down 13 underperforming titles after warning that its revenues were slowing as gamers fled from its once-popular titles published on the Facebook platform in large numbers and sharply revised its full-year outlook.

The San Francisco-based company announced the "Petville" shutdown two weeks ago on its Facebook page. All the 11 shutdowns occurred in December.  The 11 titles shut down or closed to new players include role-playing game "Mafia Wars 2," "Vampire Wars," "ForestVille" and "FishVille."…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

It’s 2013. Cloud computing is another year older. As adopters, we’re making fewer mistakes, but I suspect we’ll repeat many of the same errors from 2012.  Now is the time to work on cloud computing improvements, to set reasonable goals — and to make sure we live up to them. To that end, here are four cloud computing resolutions for 2013 I suggest we all adopt:

1. I resolve not to "cloud-wash." 2012 was another year of cloud everything. Virtually all products had some cloud spin, no matter what it was or the type of problem it solved. The truth is that cloud computing should be a specific type of technology that includes attributes such as on-demand, self-provisioned, elastic, and metered by use. By calling everything "cloud," the vendors look silly — and they sow confusion…

Grazed from The Age.  Author: Danielle Kucera.

Amazon.com has apologised for a December 24 disruption in its cloud-computing services that hindered Netflix customers from watching movies, and said it is taking steps to prevent a recurrence.  Netflix said last week that many users in the Americas were unable to access online content on Christmas Eve because of an outage caused by Amazon’s web storage and computing system. Amazon didn’t identify Netflix in its statement, which was posted online on December 29, according to Tera Randall, a spokeswoman for Amazon Web Services.

"We want to apologise," Seattle-based Amazon said. "We know how critical our services are to our customers’ businesses, and we know this disruption came at an inopportune time for some of our customers."…

Grazed from The Calgary Herald.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon has announced major expansion plans beyond its traditional retail operations that could see it competing with technology giants Google and Apple.  Amazon believes its cloud computing operation could end up dwarfing other parts of its business, a senior executive with the company has told The Sunday Telegraph.

Andy Jassy, head of the Amazon Web Services division, said the unit was growing so rapidly that it could end up catapulting Amazon past its rival Apple to become the largest technology business in the world…

Grazed from The Houston Chronicle.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Think you’re busy now? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. According to The New York Times blogger Quentin Hardy , with the proliferation of cloud computing into more and more aspects of daily life, your spare time is about to become even more, well, spare.

Computing giants like Amazon and Rackspace are leaders in the virtualization of computer servers, a core element in the development of cloud computing. This technology makes it possible for a single PC that was used 20 percent of the time to be used 80 percent of the time or more, Hardy said. Software that monitored workloads could identify when a machine was free, and assign it a workload that would keep it busy without distracting it from its original function, he said. But until recently, that kind of utilization efficiency was seen mostly in corporate data centers and computer-centric organizations…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Willie Pena.

The unstoppable migration toward cloud computing is creating a massive demand for IT workers trained in cloud computing and related technologies, such as virtualization, according to a new report issued by IDC and Microsoft. The report also shows that there is currently a dearth of workers possessing the necessary skill set required to fill these cloud jobs in the U.S.

Cloud-Ready Workers in Demand

InformationWeek reports that IDC predicts 7 million jobs will be created in the cloud computing industry in the next three years. In its study, IDC also states that there are currently 1.7 million open cloud jobs worldwide which remain unfilled due to a lack of cloud-based training, experience, and certification among IT workers…