Grazed from FinancialPost. Author: Christine Dobby.

As electronic information accumulates into virtual mountains, the ease and low cost of storing it offsite or outsourcing software functions can be irresistible to businesses looking to cut expenses in any way they can. But since this often involves the transfer of personal information, experts say the increasingly ubiquitous “cloud” can also create unforeseen headaches when that information ends up outside Canada.

“There may be situations where the government authorities, courts, administrative bodies wherever the server is located, may have more access or different access to your data than you would expect here in Canada,” said Mark Hayes, managing director at Heydary Hayes PC, an intellectual property and technology law practice in Toronto…

Grazed from The Huffington Post. Author: Matt Norris.

Many SMEs are asking themselves whether the financial and practical benefits of using cloud computing are negatively outweighed by the associated risks it brings.

Cloud computing is no different from the other risks your business faces. When you opt to put an essential element of your business in the care and control of an outsourced provider you need to have made that decision with due consideration to your business needs and the risks associated. Assessing and mitigating the risks involved, and anticipating problems such as service failure and associated loss, will go some way to providing peace of mind when opting for cloud data storage and management…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ) announced disappointing Q4 2012 results today, which included bombshell claims about the Autonomy business. But amid all that disappointing news, HP’s cloud computing business showed signs of hope. HP CEO Meg Whitman, during an earnings call today with Wall Street financial analysyts, said:

"We are seeing strong growth in our cloud systems business. HP CloudSystem is the industry’s first complete integrated and open cloud platform that enables customers to build and manage technology services across traditional, private, managed and public cloud environments. We continue to grow our customer base which now stands at over 850 customers."…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Deney Dentel.

It’s rather difficult to get a good read on public opinion, especially about things that half of them don’t know about. Cloud computing is one of those things. How does one get a really good view on the overall public perception of particular things?

Sure, you’ve got your own personal opinions, but they may be years ahead or behind the bulk of the public, depending on what exactly the subject is. We’re speaking very generally right now and philosophically at that, but this is a general topic that is extremely relevant. How can we really gauge things, and not just model them and pretend as if we’re doing something real…

Grazed from CloudComputingNews. Author: Britt Cooper.

It has recently been shown that 80% of private businesses involved in foreign trade are small or medium sized businesses and many of these are growing or looking to expand and develop. Expanding a business however means more people, bigger servers, more complex IT management, more computers and ultimately, more data to manage.

The solution to this is increasingly being seen to be cloud computing with its offerings ranging from dedicated servers, managed hosting and so on. Small businesses have embraced this new way of facilitating business expansion, using it to control data and finance management. Here are five reasons why small businesses are choosing the cloud:…

Grazed from GovWinNetwork. Author: Alex Rossino.

Cloud work is progressing painfully slowly in the Army, but with the Army Private Cloud (APC2) contracts in place, a maturing Army cloud strategy, and additional work appearing at the Army IT Agency and related to the Distributed Common Ground System, we can expect it to pick up pace in the months and years ahead.

Stories in the trade press provide weekly evidence that federal agencies are in the midst of a government-wide shift toward cloud computing. For example, this week it is HP Enterprise Services which announced that it recently won a $36 million contract with the Department of Veterans Affairs to migrate the VA’s email to a cloud environment. Cloud efforts at one department, however, do not seem to be in the trade press very often…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The Canadian Cloud Council’s third national cloud Conference, "Cloud Matters", will be held at the Rimrock Resort in Banff, Alberta on March 11 and 12, 2013 and will feature a closing keynote presentation by Chris C. Kemp.

Kemp is the Co-Founder & CEO of Nebula, a cloud systems company dedicated to enabling all enterprises to easily, securely and inexpensively deploy on-premise private cloud computing infrastructures. Prior to Nebula, Kemp was the Chief Technology Officer for IT at NASA, where he co-founded OpenStack, and was responsible for pioneering work in cloud computing, open source and open government. Mr. Kemp has also served on the White House Cloud Computing Executive Steering Committee, and was the chair of the Cloud Standards Working Group. He is an acknowledged technology leader and has been named a top CIO by CIO Magazine. Most recently, he was recognized as the number one leader in cloud computing for 2012 by TechTarget…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

Enterprises can now run Windows Server 2012 on the Amazon Web Services cloud, and take advantage of improved management features and new versions of IIS and the .Net framework. AWS isn’t the only provider whose cloud can run Microsoft’s new server operating system. The OS can already be installed on Microsoft’s own Azure cloud and Rackspace also offers a number of different configurations on its platform.

The operating system is available in AWS data centers around the world, and enterprises can choose between 31 Windows Server 2012 virtual images. They support 19 different languages and have been prepackaged with SQL Server 2008 and 2008 R2, Tom Rizzo, general manager for the Windows team at AWS, wrote in a blog post on Tuesday…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Hewlett Packard charges Autonomy with accounting improprieties, misrepresentations and disclosure failures and is pushing US and UK authorities to pursue criminal action. The company said $5 billion of an $8.8 billion charge is related directly to Autonomy’s misbehavior.

Hewlett Packard CEO Meg Whitman said “outright misrepresentations” about the state of Autonomy’s financial health led to HP overpaying for that company last year and Whitman is recommending civil and criminal investigations into that issue. HP took a loss of $6.85 billion ($3.49 per share) for the year ending Oct. 31, mostly related to a previously announced $8 billion charge related to the company’s Autonomy business…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Carl Flinders.

The number of global IT services deals with a cloud computing element have tripled since 2010, according to research from IT outsourcing consultancy Information Services Group (ISG). ISG used its TPI index to analyse IT outsourcing deals and found this year will see 300 IT contracts awarded which feature cloud computing services. This compares with 110 in 2010 and 220 in 2011.

Stanton Jones, emerging technology analyst at ISG, said the move to standardised platform-based services which are difficult to customise is a step-change for the IT services sector. “Cloud services, especially shared platforms, are a new terrain for providers and clients alike, as they are highly standardised and can’t be easily customised — the antithesis of traditional outsourcing,” said Jones…