Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Alex Keane.

There is no denying that benefits exist for small and midsize companies that are prepared to invest in cloud-based solutions, as there are obvious cost advantages in out-sourcing certain processes, reducing hardware spend, and allowing flexible scaling as the need arises. However, as indicated on MiBiz, it seems company executives are somewhat confused when it comes to analyzing the possible benefits of cloud computing adoption. A recent survey, "the future of cloud computing," indicates that just 40 percent of those surveyed are experimenting with possible cloud solutions and approximately 25 percent announced that they are awaiting future developments before cloud computing options can even be considered, believing perceived security threats to be the biggest obstacle.

Derrick Harris, senior analyst at GigaOM Pro, indicated that, "Cloud computing is a multibillion-dollar industry today, but many companies are still unclear on which technologies they need, how they work together, who the main vendors are, and how to implement cloud technologies effectively." While this may be true to a certain extent, the fact remains that the biggest influencers when it comes to decisions involving cloud computing adoption will be IT professionals and company executives who are responsible for IT budgets…

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Texas Instruments Incorporated (TI) and Nimbix, a leader in heterogeneous high performance computing cloud processing, announced their collaboration on Nimbix’s Accelerated Compute Cloud (NACC). By selecting TI’s high-performance KeyStone multicore DSPs, Nimbix is significantly reducing power and accelerating workflows for video processing and imaging applications, making high performance computing in the cloud easier than ever before.

"When choosing technology for our accelerated compute cloud, we looked no further than TI’s KeyStone multicore DSPs," said Steve Hebert, CEO of Nimbix. "With the Nimbix Accelerated Compute Cloud, customers can leverage hardware acceleration technology, including TI’s multicore DSPs to increase the speed and ease of use for video and imaging applications, as well as reducing overall development costs. Together with TI, we are lowering the adoption barrier, while helping users achieve better cloud economics."…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Jack Clark.

All around us the Googles, Facebooks, Microsofts and Amazons are building datacentres so they can store companies’ information, allowing organisations to spend less on their on-premise IT equipment.

According to the digital cognoscenti, this breed of cloud computing is the way of the future. But what if there was another way to create a global cloud, one that didn’t involve cementing the dominance of global technology companies like Microsoft, Google and their ilk? Would you use it?…

Grazed from AOL Government. Author: Vic Berger.

With the government’s Shared First initiative, the emergence of the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) and ongoing budget pressures, migrating to the cloud has moved from an ideal to reality for many government agencies. However, along with the efficiencies and cost savings associated with cloud computing comes a number of information security risks that must be overcome.

Cyber security guidelines are continually evolving for the cloud computing environments that agencies are currently, or will soon be, operating. While the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), issued its first draft Guidelines on Security and Privacy in Public Cloud Computing nearly a year ago, a widely accepted IT service management framework like Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL v3), for instance, has yet to be updated for managing a cloud computing infrastructure. Simply put, a standard, industry-wide set of best practices for securing the cloud is still taking shape…

Grazed from Channel EMEA. Author: Editorial Staff.

A new survey of 300 senior IT professionals highlights a worrying lack of awareness of the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) guidance and recommendations on cloud computing, with over 40 per cent of professionals admitting they are unaware of them. Of those IT decision makers that are of aware of the ICO guidelines, less than 27 per cent admit their organisations are compliant.

CipherCloud, the leader in cloud information protection, commissioned the independent survey of 300 IT professionals across key industries including financial services, healthcare, and government between 15/11/2012 and 23/11/2012 by Opinion Matters. The survey was targeted at leading enterprise organisations in the UK…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Thomas J. Trappler.

One of the biggest stumbling blocks for companies contemplating entrusting a cloud-computing vendor with their data is the risk of unintended data exposure. A lot of data is sensitive. It might contain employees’ financial information, patients’ statutorily protected health information, other regulated information or proprietary intellectual property. Quite often, companies feel more control when they keep that sort of data in-house. But the risk that a cloud vendor might not handle your information as securely as you’d like can be mitigated.

One good way to do that is with encryption. An encryption algorithm encodes data, rendering it unreadable to those who don’t possess the decoding key. The idea is that, if encrypted data falls into the wrong hands, it will be of little or no use without the encryption key…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Following the launch of its open hybrid cloud management platform, dubbed CloudForms, in June, open source company Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) has made an incremental update to the platform while also announcing two new cloud solutions bundles and a cloud services offering.

CloudForms was designed as a cloud management platform that enables enterprises to create and manage IaaS hybrid clouds while also making self-service computing resources available to their end users in a managed, governed and secure way. The CloudForms 1.1 release expands on that summer product launch with additional language support to push deployments out to Asia-Pacific and Europe regions. Specifically, Red Hat has added support for Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Portuguese…