Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

Social networking shouldn’t be compulsory, and yet it’s becoming an obligation. The hunger among Internet companies for data about who you are, what you do, where you go, and who you know keeps growing. They want you to share so they can earn. So they have violated Communication Neutrality: They have made mechanisms for expression into vehicles for marketing, forcing those who participate in online life to promote.

Social networking has become inescapable. Startups often require a Facebook or Twitter login. Google now requires a Google+ account to post app reviews on Google Play. And in many lines of knowledge work, including journalism, participation in these networks has become a job requirement…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Nick Heath.

Enterprise use of cloud services continues to grow – albeit from a small base – and in 2013 analyst house Forrester says many companies will begin deployment of private clouds. As spending on cloud services and platforms picks up, the way businesses use such services will also evolve. Forrester has put together 10 ways its analysts expect attitudes surrounding cloud to change next year.

Business will get real about cloud costs

Organisations will start paying more attention to cloud costs in 2013, Forrester claims. Cloud isn’t always cheaper, it’s just likely to be cheaper if organisations follow the right use model. To get the best ROI out of cloud services and platforms organisations need to model the cost profile of applications, monitor the resources they use and adjust any deployment to balance cost against performance, according to the analysts.

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Jeff John Roberts.

Aereo, a TV-on-the-go service that relies on small antennas, is getting a lot of legal attention. The bigger story should be how it is using economic breakthroughs in computing to offer a new form of TV.

The legal controversy surrounding TV-on-the-go service AEREO is interesting — but not nearly as much as the blend of technology that gave rise to the company in the first place. Aereo is a service that lets people watch live TV anywhere they go by renting them a personal antenna that beams shows to their phones, laptops or tablets. The service, which can be bought for $1 a day, is getting lots of attention because big broadcasters are suing try to sue it out of it existence…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

ServiceSource, the global leader in recurring revenue management, today announced that Richard Campione has joined its board of directors, effective November 29, 2012. A 30-year technology industry veteran, Campione has held senior executive titles at C3, Oracle, SAP and Siebel Systems and is widely regarded as one of the world’s foremost authorities on cloud computing.

Campione complements the ServiceSource board with strong technical and business experience earned in senior executive positions managing SaaS engineering, operations, marketing and sales organizations for Fortune 500, mid-sized and start-up technology companies. He currently sits on the board of directors for Biome Analytics and Winshuttle and has previously sat on the board for Crossgate and InspecTech. He holds a master’s degree in computer science and electrical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and specializes in helping companies use software to drive better business results…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

The large majority (80 percent) of IT directors feel under pressure as IT services move to the cloud, with 90 percent believing cloud service providers should take greater accountability and responsibility over data governance.

The unease around cloud accountability is shown in a survey of IT directors as the European Union Cloud Computing Strategy is warning cloud firms not to shirk their data protection responsibilities. The survey, commissioned by IT services provider Damovo, questioned 100 IT directors at UK organisations across business sectors employing more than 1,000 employees…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

MapR Technologies, Inc., the Hadoop technology leader, today announced that Jack Norris, vice president of marketing, will be a featured speaker at Up 2012 Cloud Computing Conference taking place on December 12 at the South San Francisco Conference Center, in San Francisco, CA.

The session, titled "Harnessing Big Data in the Cloud," will be held at 4:45 pm on Wednesday, December 12. IDC estimates that by 2020, business transactions on the Internet, business-to-business and business-to-consumer, will reach 450 billion per day. To collect, process and harness data at these levels of volume, variety and velocity, enterprises need scalable technologies and leveraging the cloud to do so is inevitable. MapR is the open, enterprise grade distribution for Hadoop that allows enterprises to harness Big Data in an easy, dependable and fast manner.

This session will provide insights into how MapR’s customers are using Hadoop in the cloud. It will also spotlight which enterprise features are most critical for these users.
Visit: http://up-con.com/ for more information on the Up 2012 Cloud Computing Conference.

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Evolve IP, The Cloud Services Company(TM), announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named its vServer product as a winner of the 2012 Cloud Computing Excellence Award. The award, presented by Cloud Computing Magazine, recognized vServer for its ability to help businesses improve business continuity, reduce costs, and increase productivity using the cloud.

Evolve IP’s vServer, a key component of The Evolved Data Center, is a premier private cloud service that organizations can access over private connectivity, just as if the servers were sitting in their own data center. That means organizations that use The Evolved Data Center’s vServer eradicate on-site management, maintenance, and capital expense…

Grazed from Midokura. Author: PR Announcement.

Midokura, a global startup focused on network virtualization, today announced its participation at the UP 2012 Cloud Computing Conference held on December 12 in San Francisco. Midokura will present on the trending topic of network virtualization.

The UP Cloud Computing Conference is one of the largest and oldest cloud events with world class lineup of speakers, providing solutions that can be applied today and tomorrow. The conference covers a wide range of topics and provides an annual review of cloud computing developments and trends and the impact on global economy and society…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Plexxi has made a new networking box that it calls a switch, but is radically different from the switches on the market today. The switch contains software plus an optical transceiver that link to other Plexxi boxes to form a fast connection between thousands of servers.

The enterprise infrastructure of the late 90s and early aughts is no match for the demands of webscale companies like Google or Facebook, or even cloud providers like Amazon. Thus, the giants in the web and cloud worlds are demanding new infrastructure and remaking the world of computing for their own needs…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

HP has announced the general availability of HP Cloud Compute, its flagship IaaS offering, first launched in public beta seven months ago. At the same time, HP unveiled beta versions of HP Block Storage and HP Cloud Application Platform as a Service, the latter based on VMware’s Cloud Foundry Open PaaS Project.

The key question is whether any new IaaS player can put a dent in AWS’ (Amazon Web Service’s) huge market share, which gives it vast economies of scale. It also takes years and all sorts of deals to collect the range of products and services offered by AWS, from maximum VM configurability to NoSQL databases to Hadoop/MapReduce services to virtual private cloud capability and a vast software marketplace…