Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

AWS CTO Werner Vogels and I sat down at the AWS re:Invent conference yesterday to talk about whether large companies are actually using the cloud to innovate through new styles of applications. Vogels says they are, and has plenty of examples to prove his point. Maybe big businesses really do understand cloud computing after all.

When I sat down with Amazon CTO Werner Vogels at the Amazon Web Services re:Invent conference on Wednesday, we began the discussion by talking about applications designed to take advantage of everything the cloud has to offer in terms of control, resiliency and programmability — what Vogels calls 21st-century architectures. It’s great in theory but, I asked, “Who’s actually building these apps?”…

Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: Caron Carlson.

Enterprises have been loud and clear about ongoing security concerns regarding cloud computing, but by and large, vendors haven’t responded with robust service level agreements or any other reassuring controls, experts say. Customers should be on the lookout for nine controls that could relieve their concerns, reports Brandon Butler at Network World. One of the most effective security provisions customers should ask for in a cloud contract is a certificate that shows data is deleted when the contract expires. This is not at all common, Butler notes, but it is legally defensible.

Other highly effective provisions would include a disaster recovery clause and a clause that establishes that the provider is responsible for the customer’s losses if a security breach occurs. Unfortunately, these provisions are also non-existent today…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Jack Clark.

Cloud computing is rearranging the datacentre infrastructure market: large server makers are seeing their dominance wane as competition grows from low-cost Asian manufacturers that sell directly to the clouds of Google, Amazon and others. HP, Dell and IBM are all struggling to ship servers due to competition from low-cost and specialist vendors, figures from Gartner shows.

The latest report by the analyst company on the worldwide server market was released on Wednesday. It paints a grim picture of the global datacentre market, with the market’s overall revenues during the third quarter decreasing 2.8 percent year-on-year and overall shipments growing a measly 3.6 percent…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CloudStack Collaboration Conference — Cloudian today announced that it has extended its industry-leading Cloudian Cloud Storage Platform for easy integration with Apache CloudStack. The Cloudian solution enables cloud service providers and enterprises to seamlessly deploy S3-compatible cloud storage quickly and cost-effectively along with a state-of-the-art cloud computing platform under a common user interface and single provisioning and sign on.

"Storage is a critical element of cloud computing, and Cloudian’s object store is very complementary to Apache CloudStack," said Kevin Kluge, VP of Product Development for Citrix and Apache CloudStack Committer. "We are pleased to have the Cloudian Cloud Storage Platform support the Apache CloudStack cloud computing platform, giving users powerful storage via a simple, elegant deployment."…

Grazed from The Register. Author: Timothy Prickett Morgan.

Retailing giant Amazon runs AWS as a subsidiary at arm’s length and in a somewhat stealthy manner at that. Having AWS be a little removed from Amazon is necessary because Amazon often competes with some of the companies that want to host applications on its cloud, and the stealth is just a way for AWS to preserve some mystique in terms of just how large the cloud computing unit is and how pervasive its use is.

As the first mover and undisputed leader in cloud computing, what we want to know is exactly the kind of data that Rackspace Hosting provides in its quarterly reports: server count, customer count, employee count, revenue per customer, and revenue by category for the collection of infrastructure and platform services that are known as the AWS cloud…

Grazed from GMANetwork. Author: Editorial Staff.

A vulnerability in cloud-based mobile browsers may allow hackers to steal cloud computing time from users of such apps in mobile devices like smartphones and tablets, a tech site reported Thursday. Security researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon said the cloud resources that do the heavy lifting can be tricked into doing "other things," according to an article posted on PC World.

"(It) depends on how well-provisioned the cloud browser platform is, as well as how large of a job the attacker is executing. Cloud browsers operators who are monitoring resource use will definitely notice a spike in service use. However, reacting to BMR (Browser MapReduce technique) jobs requires the operator to build additional defenses into their framework," it quoted NCSU assistant professor William Enck, a co-author of the paper, as saying…

Grazed from Yahoo. Author: Alistair Barr.

Amazon.com Inc’s cloud computing division is going after big corporate customers, a new focus that will put the fast-growing unit into direct competition with some of the world’s largest technology companies.

Andy Jassy, head of Amazon Web Services or AWS, criticized the hefty profit margins of what he called "old guard" tech companies on Wednesday and unveiled a new data warehousing service that he said will cost about a tenth of existing solutions…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Shaun Nichols.

Administrators with Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are looking to cloud computing platforms to power the administration’s next generation of projects. Speaking at the 2012 re:Invent conference, Nasa IT CTO Tom Soderstrom and software engineer Khawaja Shams said that the JPL staff are using cloud platforms to power, among other things, the Mars Curiosity rover mission.

The rover, which has already made a number of historical discoveries on the red planet, uses a number of computing and storage platforms from Amazon in order to communicate with the rover and process data gathered in the mission…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Dean Takahashi.

Corporate interest in software-as-a-service apps continues to grow, particularly in the era of cloud computing. But integrating those apps with the data in core systems of a business isn’t easy. And a number of companies are working on how to make integration “suck less.”

That was the topic of discussion for a breakout session at VentureBeat’s CloudBeat 2012 conference today in Redwood City, Calif. The goal is to make data integration “lightweight,” or easy enough to be done in an automated way, said Sam Ramji (pictured second from right), vice president of strategy at Apigee, a company that sells its applications programming interface (API) platform to big corporations…

Grazed from eChannelLine. Author: Mark Cox.

Distributor Avnet Technology Solutions has expanded its Cloud Solutions practice with the announcement of four new off-premise cloud computing solutions, two of them backup solutions, one SharePoint and one web hosting. All four services are powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and are the first offerings from a new relationship between the two companies. They are available to partners in the U.S. and Canada.

"This is our coming out party with AWS," said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of Avnet Cloud Solutions, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. "Our cloud portfolio was strong previously, but we have significantly broadened it with AWS. This is the first public announcement of our partnership with AWS."…