Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Don Cleveland.

It’s interesting to follow the big money that big companies are spending. It’s a lot like watching a huge ocean liner set sail for exotic places or a stretch limousine glide though town. These oddities can’t help but be seen but I often wonder if anyone is really watching. According to a Wall Street Journal article from last spring entitled, “The Sun Shines on The Cloud” the research firm IDC reported 16 billion in cloud revenue for 2009 and projects a $73 billion investment to be made by 2015. The background of this article is Amazon’s partial cloud failure that kicked Netflix and a host of other customers off the network last June. Amazon explained and apologized and the headlines screamed panic.

At the time and even now Amazon continues with business as usual in the cloud. In Luchi’s Week In Review piece last week on Cloud Tweaks, he reported that Amazon is seeking to control the domain .cloud. The mammoth doesn’t seem very worried about power outages or security risks. Nor has Netflix run away from the cloud when the temporary hitch affected their business. Apparently these disruptions we hear about every now and then are a blip on the radar screen. The big guys are basing their future on the cloud while many remain skeptical and concerned about security. Why can’t smaller companies think like big companies? Perhaps fear holds them back, a fear we are not even aware of…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

Global warming and climate change are on top of world’s list of concerns and one of the reasons is our dependence on dirty energy from fossil fuels. We all consider the transportation sector as the main pollution source of our atmosphere, but is the IT industry really exempted from the blame?

Governments around the globe usually have stringent standards on factory or industrial facility energy consumption and emission while the energy consumption in IT laboratories and data centers is overlooked, with the exception of some universities and research organizations. So there are no standards or laws that are meant to be followed when putting up such facility, which makes this a big problem. Research suggests that a great deal of energy is being wasted during energy conversion from AC to DC and it would cost twice as much, in terms of energy consumption, to cool a server than to run it…

Grazed from CloudTech News. Author: James Bourne.

A week after VMware released its Asia Pacific Cloud Index Survey, another report has come up from the Asia Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) claiming Japan is the most ‘cloud ready’ nation in the Asia Pacific region. Japan’s ranking is unchanged from last year at number one, with South Korea leapfrogging Hong Kong and Singapore into second place.

Hong Kong and Singapore, according to the VMware survey, were the most cloud-knowledgeable Asia Pacific nations, with nine out of ten IT professionals in Hong Kong claiming to have a strong knowledge of virtualisation and 82% of respondents in Singapore having a strong cloud knowledge…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Maxwell Cooter.

It could have been dull but the Dell Think Tank threw up some thought-provoking ideas on the future of cloud. There were 16 cloud commentators and they were locked in a room. It sounds like the precursor to a joke but this was no laughing matter (even though there were Englishmen, Irishmen and Scotsmen present) but an event that looked to explore all aspects of cloud in some detail. It sounds like it could have been deathly dull, but the Dell Think Tank was was one of the most interesting events I’d ever been involved in and the resulting debate

What made the event work so well was the wide-ranging experience of the participants. I was there as the token journalist but there were software vendors, cloud providers, analysts, lawyers, academics and Dell executives (generally keeping a low profile)…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Ellyne Phneah.

Singapore has slipped to fourth place from third in the Cloud Readiness Index 2012, dragged down by below average scores in data privacy, and power grid and green policy. According to the report by Asia’s Cloud Computing Association (ACCA) released Tuesday, the country scored the highest in areas such as data sovereignty, e-government and ICT prioritization, and intellectual property (IP) protection. It ranked second international connectivity and fourth for broadband quality.

The index measures 14 Asia-Pacific countries and markets using ten different measures covering regulatory issues such as data protection, infrastructure areas such as broadband and the broader business and government environment…

Grazed from PRWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Storing your data in the cloud means you can access it from anywhere – but so can others. Last week’s resignation of CIA director General David Petraeus is due to him and his ex-mistress not understanding this fact.

The past year has seen an enormous promotion of cloud computing by corporate giants like Apple, Microsoft and Google. Microsoft’s Windows 8 has their Skydrive cloud platform built-in. Apple’s new iPhone and Macbooks link to iCloud. Google goes further, producing a cloud-only notebook called the Chromebook. Users store photos, emails and documents – or in the case of Petraeus, intimate letters. However, in this rush the get into the cloud, the security of users is often ignored…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Cloudability says its analytics can cut your overall cloud services cost. Available now for Amazon Web Services, support is coming for other major cloud service providers, A raft of companies have sprung up to help companies get a better grip on their cloud spend.

Cloudability, which helps users ascertain costs of a wide range of cloud-based services, is now making its analytics broadly available for Amazon Web Services with support to come for an array of other cloud services. The Portland, Oregon-based startup says its new analytics provide a picture of actual AWS use and generates reports of actual use, recommending actions to save money…

Grazed from Digi International. Author: PR Announcement.

Digi International announced the purchase of Chicago-based Etherios, Inc., a salesforce.com Platinum Partner and creator of The Social Machine, a revolutionary new cloud-based method for integrating machines into core business processes via the Salesforce Service Cloud. Combining the iDigi Device Cloud with The Social Machine will enable almost any machine, anywhere in the world, to connect rapidly and easily to the Service Cloud. By enabling real-time machine interactions with organizations’ workflows, customers will be able to benefit dramatically through improved asset management, greater machine uptime and the ability to offer proactive customer service.

“Etherios is a world-class cloud computing services provider with hundreds of successful domestic and global deployments,” said Joe Dunsmore, CEO, Digi International. “We believe Digi’s deep device expertise combined with Etherios’ ability to integrate devices directly into an organization’s core business processes via the industry’s leading cloud-based CRM system can be an M2M game changer.”…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Michael Lee.

Speaking at VMWare’s vForum 2012 in Sydney today, IBM program director for Cloud Computing Client Engagements Dan Carr said that the maturity of cloud services has meant that businesses not only have traditional records-based applications to move to the cloud, but that new types of applications are being born out of the mobile and social boom that the internet is experiencing.

Carr said that customers that have come to him in the past four years have become increasingly concerned with the ability to align how they use the cloud with how fast their business is moving, saying that not only do they want to increase the efficiency of how they use the cloud, but also the ability in which they produce cloud application…

Grazed from ITWorld Canada. Author: Brian Bloom.

Governments in countries around the world are struggling to come up with a coherent doctrine for cyber-warfare. Based on what we’ve seen, an attack on by an enemy country’s on a government or military network isn’t viewed as gravely as an enemy launching mortar shells at a command post. The latter would almost certainly lead to a shooting war, whereas the former has been tacitly accepted as espionage rather than the opening of outright hostilities.

But what happens when enemy (or unfriendly) countries launch cyber-attacks that damage physical infrastructure (as the Stuxnet virus is widely believed to have done in Iran), or terrorists cause economic damage? Is it time to fuel up the bombers?…