Grazed from CRN. Author: Rick Whiting.

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) has added 14,000 channel partners to its Cloud Essentials initiative in the past week since making it easier for solution providers to enroll in the cloud computing starter program.

The Cloud Essentials enrollment effort is one of a number of changes Microsoft has made to its Microsoft Partner Network (MPN) programs in recent days. The Redmond, Wash., company also has created several new "competencies," or technology areas in which partners can become certified, and consolidated others. The changes, some of which were previewed at the Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Toronto in July, come as the MPN re-enrollment season begins for Microsoft partners…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Edwin Schouten.

Cloud computing is a trend towards the industrialization of IT, but this industrialization of IT services also has significant impact on the influence the consumer has on the services. Contracts are standard and cannot be tuned to meet consumers’ wishes; ”what you see is what you get.” But IT still needs to govern regulatory compliance, so how does this work with cloud services?

Cloud in the Financial Sector

I will illustrate this using the regulatory organization from my home country The Netherlands (aka Holland). Recently I was a panelist for a discussion on cloud computing in the financial sector at the national outsourcing congress where I represented the cloud providers. On the panel with me were a representative of consumers, a lawyer and a representative of DNB (De Nederlandse Bank), a public limited company responsible for safeguarding financial stability…

Grazed from Phys.org. Author: Editorial Staff.

Researchers from North Carolina State University and the University of Oregon have found a way to exploit cloud-based Web browsers, using them to perform large-scale computing tasks anonymously. The finding has potential ramifications for the security of "cloud browser" services.

At issue are cloud browsers, which create a Web interface in the cloud so that computing is done there rather than on a user’s machine. This is particularly useful for mobile devices, such as smartphones, which have limited computing power.The cloud-computing paradigm pools the computational power and storage of multiple computers, allowing shared resources for multiple users. "Think of a cloud browser as being just like the browser on your desktop computer, but working entirely in the cloud and providing only the resulting image to your screen," says Dr. William Enck, an assistant professor of computer science at NC State and co-author of a paper describing the research…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Eric Bloom.

Rick Chapman, the Founder of SaaS University, managing editor of Softletter and author of the just released book SaaS Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Success in Your Cloud Application Business, and I spoke earlier this week. Our discussion centered around the use of SaaS within IT and its future effect on IT jobs.

Rick’s belief is that the number of jobs within IT will decrease over the next ten to twenty years. This is the case because many of the systems previously developed and/or purchased and supported by IT staff members will eventually be replaced by SaaS (cloud) based applications which do not require internal IT staff. He went on to say that not all applications would be replaced, primarily only those applications which companies do not feel are truly key to their internal process or contain proprietary algorithms. For example, it’s unlikely that a financial trading firm management firm will outsource the software used for stock analysis and trading or that a large retail company processing milions of transactions will outsource its credit card processing systems to a “cloud” outsource…

Grazed from GNOME.ES. Author: Editorial Staff.

In the coming year, the Internet of Things will change how consumers and enterprises use technology, interactive displays will become common in public spaces, robots will be used to rehabilitate patients, and visualization will help solve the big data problem.

Those are just some of the technological advances that experts from the IEEE Computer Society, a membership organization for technology leaders, foresee in 2013. “The promise for the coming years is not just technology,” said incoming IEEE Computer Society President David Alan Grier. “But technology and data–how we get data from the right sources and get it to the right people in the right forms. That is the big issue that engages many of our members.” Among the major advances that IEEE Computer Society experts forecast for 2013:…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

In days past, virtualization platforms that relied on an amalgamation of different technologies could present complications for IT managers. But in a sign that hybridized virtualization environments are becoming the accepted norm, Convirture has announced a new version of its management tools that supports all major virtualization and cloud platforms.

If the world of virtualization and cloud computing were simpler, there might be one clear preferred solution for building computing infrastructure. But organizations now have an array of enterprise ready hypervisors to choose from, ranging from Xen to VMware to KVM. At the same time, several major cloud platforms, including Eucalyptus, OpenStack and Amazon EC2, are available. Because all of these technologies have different strengths and weaknesses, many IT infrastructures rely on a mix of these various solutions…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

The market for cloud-related jobs for technology professionals keeps expanding, with tens of thousands of job openings. But cloud computing skills may be providing non-tech professionals and managers an edge in the job market as well.

Wanted Analytics recently reported that within a given month, more than 10,000 US-based jobs were advertised online for technology positions that need experience and knowledge of cloud computing. The number of job ads increased rapidly in 2012, reaching new highs in demand each month and is up 80% from a year ago. Essentially, demand for cloud jobs maps closely to IT overall, led by such positions as software engineer, Java developer, systems engineer and enterprise architect…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Peter Wayner.

Rackspace was one of the first players in the cloud arena. The company recognized early that enterprises wanted faster, simpler ways to spin up and spin down servers. If the bosses are going to be fickle and impulsive, there will always be a market for companies that make it easy for the people curating the data to pivot. If the corporate vision is going to morph, the IT shops will want a way to morph with it.

At Rackspace, the meaning of "cloud" has always been a bit simpler and more straightforward, and the philosophy a bit more open and pragmatic, than at other cloud providers. While some of the others spun elaborate metaphors, abstracted away the old files, and portrayed the opaqueness of their mechanism as a feature, Rackspace sold real instances that felt more like real computers. From the beginning, Rackspace’s cloud was just a fast way to buy extra machines for an hour, then turn them off…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

While organizations continue to adopt cloud computing solutions, data security remains an issue, according to survey of enterprises commissioned by Asigra and performed by the customer metrics and research organization, TechValidate.

The survey found 21 percent of respondents cited data security as the biggest concern while the location of where the data was stored came in at 7 percent. Backup related costs, user-related data loss and service provider stability all ranked at 3 percent. Overall, 59 percent said that all of these were concerns with respect to storing data in the cloud…