Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

In the latest case of researchers using the cloud for good, Google is highlighting the six projects to which it awarded grants via its Exacycle for Visiting Faculty program. Ranging from genomic research to astronomy, the researchers received 100 million computing hours apiece.

Deep in the bowels of Google’s offices in Mountain View, Calif., and Seattle, a group of researchers has been consuming an incredible amount of computing resources trying to make scientific discoveries that they hope will help change the world…

Grazed from NIST. Author: PR Announcement.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) announces a Cloud Computing and Big Data Forum and Workshop to be held on Tuesday, January 15, Wednesday, January 16, and Thursday, January 17, 2013. The format is a two-day forum followed by a one-day hands-on workshop. The NIST Cloud Computing and Big Data Forum and Workshop will bring together leaders and innovators from industry, academia and government in an interactive format that combines keynote presentations, panel discussions, interactive breakout sessions, and open discussion. The forum and workshop are open to the general public. NIST invites organizations to display posters and participate as exhibitors as described in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below.

9:00 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Eastern Time (ET) on Tuesday, January 15, 9:00 a.m-5:30 p.m. ET on Wednesday, January 16, and 9:00 a.m.-12:40 p.m. ET on Thursday, January 17, 2013.

ADDRESSES: To register, go to: http://www.nist.gov/itl/cloud/cloudbdworkshop.cfm. The event will be held at the National Institute of Standards and Technology, 100 Bureau Drive, Gaithersburg, MD 20899 in the Red Auditorium of the Administration Building (Building 101). Please note admittance instructions in the SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION section below…

Grazed from PhysBizTech. Author: Madelyn Kearns.

While clouds often symbolize a lazy sense of freedom or wistful disconnect, healthcare’s adoption of cumuli demands certain boundaries be established to keep the latest advances in information storage/sharing from raining down on the industry’s developing techno-ecosystem.

As Adam Greene — partner at the Law Offices of Davis Wright Tremaine and chairman for the HIMSS Cloud Security Workgroup — noted during his introduction at the Privacy & Security Forum in Boston last week, a purportedly successful outlet like cloud computing, rather liberated and undefined in these early stages, poses a lot of questions for providers and servicers alike regarding its receptiveness to hard HIPAA legalities…

Grazed from AOL. Author: Charles Allen.

The intelligence community is developing a single cloud computing network to allow all its analysts to access and rapidly sift through massive volumes of data. When fully complete, this effort will create a pan-agency cloud, with organizations sharing many of the same computing resources and information. More importantly, the hope is the system will break down existing boundaries between agencies and change their insular cultures.

As in the rest of the federal government, lower costs and higher efficiency are the primary reasons for the intelligence world’s shift to cloud computing, said Charles Allen, formerly Under Secretary of Homeland Security for intelligence and analysis, currently a principal with the Chertoff Group, in an interview with AOL Defense. Now in its eighth month, the goal of the effort is to connect the CIA’s existing cloud to a new cloud run by the National Security Agency. This NSA-run network consists of five other intelligence agencies and the FBI. Both of these clouds can interoperate, but the CIA has its own unique needs because it must work with human intelligence, which necessitates keeping its cloud slightly separate, he said…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

The hypergrowth that the SaaS category saw last year has leveled off, but these companies are still outperforming traditional software rivals and legacy IT providers who are mired in a hardware-oriented world, according to new research from martinwolf Global M&A Advisors.

The growth in value of software-as-a-service (SaaS) companies may not be white hot anymore, but the sector as measured still showed not-too-shabby double-digit growth last year — according to new data that measure enterprise value of tech companies. The SaaS numbers for 2012 looked particularly robust compared to enterprise value of traditional IT vendors which are trying to negotiate a tricky transition from hardware providers to more well-rounded IT services companies, said Marty Wolf, president of martinwolf Global M&A Advisors, a company that consults on merger and acquisition strategies…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

As 2012 winds down, Google is shutting down more of its services, this time calling the closures "winter cleaning" rather than the usual "spring cleaning."
Venkat Panchapakesan, VP of engineering, said in a blog post that difficult decisions are necessary for Google to maximize its impact.

Eleven services are being discontinued, although few are likely to be widely missed — none of these offerings have a particularly high profile. Five affect Google Calendar. On Jan. 4, 2013, Google plans to:
— shut down the ability to create new time reservations through Calendar Appointment slots;
— discontinue Calendar Labs experiments Smart Rescheduler and Add gadget by URL; and
— terminate two U.S.-only features: Check your calendar via SMS, and Create Event via SMS…

Grazed from CXOToday. Author: Sharon Lobo.

Undoubtedly, cloud computing can be counted amongst the most hyped technologies ever. And the last 5 years bear witness to this fact. In the last half decade, every IT vendor or analyst has prophesied how this technology will change the way we perceive and consume technology. However, the irony is that we were users of cloud even before we were made aware of the tag. Services like Hotmail, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, Skype etc. were all delivered via cloud. Even today, cloud continues to remain hyped, according to Gartner’s 2012 Hype Cycle Report, with a probability of achieving a plateau of productivity in 2 to 5 years. So has all this hype helped in the adoption of the cloud? In this first of a two part article, let’s take a look how businesses perceived and adopted cloud in 2012.

The story so far…
Ever since, cloud took shape of hype, IT vendors on various forums have always endorsed it to be the solution for every enterprise regardless of the industry or category it belonged to. It was mainly large enterprises who were early adopters of the cloud and too private cloud. Now, private cloud kills the whole concept of cloud, since the entire infrastructure is now managed by a third-party instead of the business to which it belongs. However, this was a positive step towards cloud’s adoption. Surprisingly, public cloud, which was primarily targeted towards SMEs, never saw an substantial uptake in this segment, with security concerns and weak SLAs being the key concerns…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Akamai’s 8-month search for a new CEO didn’t take it too far: It tapped co-founder and chief scientist Tom Leighton to succeed Paul Sagan, who announced his intention to leave last April. Now Sagan will cede the CEO slot on January 1. Eight months after launching an executive search for a successor to Akamai CEO Paul Sagan, the company tapped its c0-founder Tom Leighton for that role.

Leighton, who is also chief scientist for the Cambridge, Mass. content delivery network (CDN) provider, will start his new gig January 1, 2013. Last spring, Sagan announced his plans to step down as CEO at the end of 2013. Both Leighton and Sagan will remain on the board and Sagan will stay on as a senior strategy advisor, the company said…

Relational database vs non-relational database: All you need to know

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Google’s webmail service Gmail was down for 18 minutes last week after a “routine update” broke the service for a few minutes. The search giant reported that it conducted a routine update of its load balancing software between 8:45 AM PT and 9:13 AM PT and after the problems were detected managed to quickly roll back the buggy code. But this didn’t stop some people from questioning why Google would roll out a software update at what are peak email-checking hours on the West Coast…