Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

VMware’s Cloud Foundry and Microsoft Azure are two of the leading platform as a service (PaaS) offerings from two cloud heavyweights, but one consultant says both companies are largely ignoring the private cloud market, creating a glaring hole for customers. John Treadway, a VP at Boston-area consultancy Cloud Technology Partners, says VMware and Microsoft are holding back the entire PaaS industry by not offering commercial support for on-premise installations of the their platforms.

"I spend a lot of time with large enterprises, and we’re very big proponents of the PaaS opportunity," he says, but many customers are not willing to put resources in a public cloud, off their own premise, he says. Businesses and IT shops want to control these deployments behind their own firewall. "They want to run their own internal clouds," and VMware and Microsoft don’t have the tools to do that for Cloud Foundry and Azure, he says…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

UCSD’s Guardian magazine reports on an often overlooked aspect of cloud computing. According to the university’s researchers, "developing countries are utilizing the growing adoption of ‘cloud computing’ — the use of consumer devices to access remote computer and information resources — to expand their economic role in an increasingly global economy."

As the study illustrates, the cost efficiencies of cloud computing are the same in third-world countries as in the developed world, and up-and-coming nations can leverage data, applications, and infrastructure that were once cost prohibitive. In turn, this increases commerce by facilitating the countries’ entrance into the global markets…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bernard Golden.

I find cloud computing conference chatter, concerns and presentations an interesting phenomenon. For the past five years, the No. 1 concern cited about cloud computing at conferences has been security—and it’s probably going to continue for the foreseeable future as the No. 1 concern. It is, as I noted to one colleague, like living through Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day. Every conference features the same discussions, the same solutions, the same sage nodding about the need to "address this and make users more comfortable."

The recent Cloud Expo was no different. It seemed like every presentation, keynote and conversation paid deference to the issue of security. However, I took a different tack—focusing on the revolution in user (i.e., developer) expectations made possible by cloud computing with a presentation on The Democratization of IT (summarized in this blog post…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Dan Worth.

Tech chiefs from major cloud computing vendors including Amazon, Atos and SAP have met with leading European politicians to guide the creation of the European Commission’s (EC) cloud computing strategy. The EC wants to exploit the massive buying power of European nations, and ensure organisations can access cloud computing tools at low prices – a necessary step to improve services and reduce costs.

The meeting in Brussels on Monday, the first Steering Board meeting of the European Cloud Partnership (ECP), discussed their overall objectives for 2013-14, including raising public awareness of the benefits of cloud systems…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

Some Apple iCloud services suffered outages and/or performance issues on Nov. 18. The impacted systems included iMessage and FaceTime. Apple Insider claims iCloud has suffered roughly four outages in the past three months — not exactly a stellar track record for Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL), which focuses like a laser on end-user experience.

What’s the lesson here for IT service providers and computer consultants? Some cloud skeptics will start pounding the table again for on-premises servers. But it’s too late to put the cloud genie back in the bottle. Instead, IT consultants should look for ways to proactively warn their customers about potential cloud outages and emerging performance issues…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: David Meyer.

Top EU officials will meet with companies such as Amazon and Telefonica on Monday to discuss ways to set up a single European market for cloud services. The steering board meeting will be the first for the new European Cloud Partnership, which looks to take advantage of the public sector’s buying power to influence cloud computing provision in the region. To do this, the group will try to come up with common cloud procurement standards.

Digital agenda commissioner Neelie Kroes said in January that the European Commission will put €10m (£8m) into the partnership, in the hope of eventually pooling resources between member states…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

The PaaS (platform as a service) market will grow to $1.2 billion this year, up from last year’s $900 million take, as vendors and customers seek easier ways to create new applications and customize existing ones, according analyst firm Gartner. PaaS spending will rise to $1.5 billion in 2013, while reaching $2.9 billion by 2016, Gartner said Monday.

The firm includes both broader PaaS products such as Salesforce.com’s Force.com, as well as discrete application infrastructure components, such as databases, messaging and "other functional types of middleware offered as a cloud service," Gartner said…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Steve Gunderson.

It seems like every year some new technology explodes onto the IT scene with huge potential — and frequently even greater hype. But tackling every technology that comes along is usually both impractical and too expensive. So how do you choose the right ones and then integrate them successfully into your environment?

As we all know, one of today’s hottest IT topics is the cloud, and it’s more than likely on your priority list as well. But figuring out how to maximize the real potential of cloud computing while avoiding the trap of relying on it to solve problems it was never designed to solve is a script most IT executives are still trying to write…

Grazed from The Austin American Statesman. Author: Brian Garr.

Austin-based business software company Silverback Enterprise Group has acquired another cloud-based computing company. Silverback, which is backed by $50 million from Austin Ventures, purchased San Diego-based EPM Live, which provides cloud-based project portfolio and work management software that’s built on Microsoft’s SharePoint platform.

The company will be folded into another Silverback-owned company, Boston-based PowerSteering Software, which sells software that helps corporate customers manage projects, IT governance, new product development and other business. Financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. Silverback chairman and CEO Jack McDonald said the acquisition is complementary to PowerSteering’s existing offerings and will help solidify the company’s position as the lead vendor of cloud project and portfolio management software…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Samantha Robinson.

Businesses stand to make huge efficiency gains through the use of cloud computing. But many businesses are rightfully concerned that they’re not extracting every last drop of potential from what is possibly a very significant restructuring investment. In this article, we’ll draw from cloud computing theory to suggest areas those concerned businesses can check off to guarantee they’re getting the most out of the cloud.

Cloud computing is becoming ubiquitous and synonymous with remote service provision. As far back as the 1950s, scientists – including Herb Grosch – were predicting the current state of play, with clients accessing centralized mainframes. In fact, Grosch’s predictions – that the entire global community would access data stored in 15 data centers – form a great deal of the foundation behind IBM’s Smarter Planet vision…