December 14, 2012 Off

The 5 Biggest Issues Facing Small Business In 2013 — #5 Cloud Computing

By David

Grazed from NewTek. Author: PR Announcement.

All week we’ve made you aware of issues facing small business in 2013. We’ve discussed Obamacare, small business lending, eCommerce solutions and CyberSecurity. Today we talk Cloud Computing.

Cloud Computing for SMART results. Cloud computing allows all of a small business’s critical transactions, as well as economic, ecommerce and web site traffic data to be accessible at anytime, anywhere – with the proper application. Something like the Newtek Advantage is extremely beneficial to small business owners, allowing them to see their real-time business information from any smartphone or tablet. Cloud computing is SMART, because it allows for:…

December 14, 2012 Off

EMC Bows to Demand, Joins OpenStack Contingent

By David

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

They’re dropping like flies to OpenStack’s siren song. The open source cloud platform’s latest conquest is EMC, whose VMware subsidiary already did a seemingly unthinkable thing a few months ago and joined the rival band as a gold member. EMC is only joining as a corporate-level sponsor.

To explain why EMC, a born street fighter, would tie up at all with a movement pledged to destroy VMware, the company wheeled out its global marketing CTO Chuck Hollis who blogged that OpenStack is catching on like Linux did and even though it may still be immature customers are asking about it…

December 13, 2012 Off

Will Audiogalaxy buyout move Dropbox into a cloud music service?

By David
Grazed from CloudTech.  Author: James Bourne.

There have been intriguing developments in terms of utilising the cloud as an entertainment vehicle during the past 24 hours, with Dropbox acquiring personal music streaming service Audiogalaxy and Amazon’s Cloud Player arriving on Samsung Smart TVs.  The acquisition of Audiogalaxy by cloud storage expert Dropbox may be a sign of things to come. Dropbox already allows limited music streaming as part of its cloud storage solution, and with Audiogalaxy’s expertise in that area, it seems like a match made in heaven.

In a blog post entitled “Hello, Dropbox” the three founders of Audiogalaxy, Michael Merhej, Tom Kleinpeter and Viraj Mody, wrote: “Over the last few years we’ve built a wonderful music experience on the web and mobile devices, attracting loyal users from all over the world.  “Today, we are thrilled to announce our team is joining Dropbox!” the blog continues, adding: “We are excited about the opportunity to join the amazing folks at Dropbox and bring great new experiences to 100m+ Dropbox users.”…

December 13, 2012 Off

How Cloud Computing Is Shaping Your Business, How Business Is Shaping The Cloud

By David
Grazed from CMSWire.  Author: David Roe.

There have been numerous reports over the years on how cloud computing has developed, how businesses are taking to it, and how it is being used in the home. However, little enough research has been done to assess what vendors think about it. A new report aims to remedy that.  Produced by IT Channel Insight, The Cloud Leaders’ Report 2012 pulls together the results of a number of interviews done with some of the players that are currently shaping the cloud computing industry.

Those that were consulted for this report include: Asigra, Axcient, CA Technologies, Citrix, Dell, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Rackspace, Red Hat, Salesforce, Shoretel, StorageCraft, Symantec and VMware.In fact, just about anyone who is anyone in a computing space that Gartner estimates will be worth US$ 206 billion in spending in 2016, up 41% from current levels…

December 13, 2012 Off

What next for Cloud Foundry?

By David

Grazed from GigaOM.   Author: Barb Darrow.

VMware aggressively recruited partners to base platforms on its open-source Cloud Foundry stack. Now as it preps the Pivotal Initiative spinoff, those partners worry about more intense competition with the Cloud Foundry mothership.  We all know now that VMware is spinning off its Cloud Foundry Platform as a Service (PaaS) effort to The Pivotal Initiative, along with some other VMware and EMC technologies.

What we still don’t know is what the emergence of this new entity means for the Cloud Foundry ecosystem — the third parties that built their own platforms atop the Cloud Foundry platform. Officially, no one’s saying anything beyond VMware’s opaque blog post announcing the move. Basically, VMware told us all to check back in Q1 2013 for details…

December 13, 2012 Off

Are Cloud Data Security Fears Overblown? A Sensible View.

By David
Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Emma Byrne.

Cloud computing is to the 21st century what electricity was to the 20th: It’s revolutionizing the way we do business.  But, as with any revolution, there will be an uncomfortable transition period. That’s because, for all the many benefits of cloud computing, there are also data security risks. As with all such transitions, the worst thing to do is sit on your hands, so it’s critical to properly understand the risks—but also to manage them effectively.

Naturally, risks are a part of life; it’s how you manage them that counts.

Part One: Emerging Concerns

Cloud computing is a rapidly growing business: Forrester Research predicts that the public cloud market will quadruple in size, from around $40 billion today to $160 billion by 2020. With big players like Amazon and Google in the Cloud Service Provision business, and organizations as diverse as Reddit and the City of Los Angeles using those services, cloud computing promises huge savings in cost and complexity…

December 13, 2012 Off

Analyst Outlines How IT Organizations Will Control the Cloud

By David
Grazed from CIO.  Author: Bernard Golden.

An intriguing report from Forrester Research, Cloud Keys an Era Of New IT Responsiveness and Efficiency, outlines how IT organizations will adopt and control cloud computing going forward. It presents a number of recommendations that every IT shop should take to heart.

The report breaks down into two areas:

While there is some sobering news-that application developers love cloud computing and have no plans to go back-there are also some practical solutions for Infrastructure and Operations (I&O) departments…

December 13, 2012 Off

Dell World: Dell Updates Cloud Strategy

By David

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Chris Talbot.

Dell‘s cloud computing business continues to grow, as the company unveiled at Dell World 2012 in Austin, Texas. With cloud revenue growing 30 percent year-over-year in the third quarter of 2013, Dell announced plans to continue supporting open source cloud platform OpenStack while also committing to building both public and private clouds.

Dell bought into the OpenStack concept fairly early on, and according to the company, the open nature of the platform enables customers to take advantage of hybrid cloud capabilities to move workloads between private and public clouds. Dell also committed to building its own public and private clouds on OpenStack….

December 13, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Oracle buys DataRaker for energy analytics smarts

By David

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

With DataRaker buy Oracle says it can expand its reach into the water and energy verticals and offer deeper analytical “Big Data” services. It also buys new customers and a better maintenance and support revenue stream.

Other than its well-publicized cloud computing push, Oracle  has  been buying more into vertical application niches for years. On Thursday it’s done more of the same with news of its planned acquisition of DataRaker, which specializes in “cloud-based” (naturally) analytics for the electric, gas and water utilities world. Terms were not disclosed…

December 13, 2012 Off

Outlook 2013: Cloud Computing & Communications

By David

Grazed from ChannelPartners.  Author:  Kelly Teal.

Cloud continues to capture the industry’s imagination and investment due to its transformative impact on the delivery and consumption of technology. Momentum is expected to continue in 2013 as more businesses — large and small — buy into the as-a-service model. This will ease channel sales next year.

However, the tremendous potential of this nascent market has attracted big brands and startups alike, creating a fragmented supplier base and complicating provider selection for channel partners and their customers. From assessing needs to picking providers to migrating workloads, the complexity of cloud presents a growing opportunity for channel partners…