Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Joyent has named a new CEO and announced the altest generation of its infrastructure as a service software. The moves are in preparation for a big play in the coming months as the company looks to build the right computing platform for data and cloud applications.

Joyent, the private cloud infrastructure service provider, has named Henry Wasik as chief executive officer and unveiled a new version of its infrastructure management software called Joyent7. Wasik fills the role left vacant by David Young when he left earlier this year. In the interim, Joyent co-founder and CTO Jason Hoffman had filled the role…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Natalie Smith.

One of the hottest topics in IT circles this past year has been cloud computing and the promises it has to offer. Advocates claim the cloud will provide substantial savings to enterprise IT, since acquiring servers and software licenses – as well finding IT personnel to manage and maintain infrastructure – has traditionally been time consuming and often costly. As technology develops ways to improve computing resources for businesses, companies’ infrastructures are also evolving to meet the needs of their users. Access to company networks is now more convenient with the advent of tablets and smartphones – regardless of location, employees are urged to view and upload data. It is this flexibility that cloud hosting can also offer, removing the need to invest significantly in equipment and software.

Traditional business IT environments spend about 70 percent of their budgets on maintenance alone, while only 30 percent is allocated for innovation and increasing productivity. Moreover, deploying these innovations often takes longer because of over-burdened resources. IT personnel are frequently spread too thinly, with tight budgets and complex, under-resourced systems. This is exactly where cloud hosting can showcase its benefits by lowering costs and outsourcing much of the day-to-day maintenance…

Grazed from HealthCare IT News. Author: John Andrews.

With its ease of installment, functional versatility, cost effectiveness and seemingly limitless capacity, cloud computing is taking the healthcare IT landscape by storm. There are many different deployments happening at facilities across the industry as providers search for ways to improve their computing power, inject vitality into established systems and utilize the cloud’s potential for clinical, financial and administrative purposes.

"Cloud computing is definitely a high growth area," says Paul Burke, director of revenue cycle technology for Chadds Ford, Pa.-based IMA Consulting. "It serves as both a conduit and repository for data. For hospitals that are still using 25-year-old technology, hooking up to the cloud provides a wealth of new functionality and enables them to squeeze more mileage out of those systems."…

Grazed from Federal News Radio. Author: Jason Miller.

The General Services Administration is working overtime to get the first set of cloud-computing services through their cyber hurdles. The Federal Risk Authorization and Management Program (FedRAMP) is five months into its initial operating capability of reviewing and offering preliminary approval to vendors which meet the cyber standards for cloud services. And the list of agencies and companies wanting to take part is growing faster than expected.

"We’ve got over 50 applications from cloud service providers. We’ve got six in the queue, and we have a target of issuing three [vendors a] Joint Authorization Board-approved authority to operate by the end of the calendar year," said Kathy Conrad, GSA’s principal deputy associate administrator in GSA’s Office of Citizen Services and IT, which runs the FedRAMP program office. "We’ve also got 15 accredited third-party assessment organizations and more in the queue."…

Grazed from GeekZone. Author: Editorial Staff.

GreenButton is launching GreenButton Cloud Fabric, the a server solution that enables users running compute intensive applications to deploy, manage, and run a variety of applications in either private or public clouds or both. GreenButton Cloud Fabric delivers a comprehensive and integrated on-demand cloud solution that leverages the cloud’s processing power for high performance computing workloads for a fraction of the cost.

GreenButton’s Cloud Fabric is a highly cost-effective server platform that provides organizations with supplementary processing power in the cloud without the complexity or operational expenditure risks. The platform features multi-cloud management with a single tool set, known as Mission Control, and an easy to use software developer kit (SDK), including a development emulator for easy enablement of workloads. Mission Control includes commercial features around billing, reporting with organizational control and chargeback…

Grazed from InformationAge. Author: Editorial Staff.

Spanish telco launches Instant Servers, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) public cloud offering aimed at developers, businesses and large enterprises Telefónica Digital launched its global cloud computing platform Instant Servers on Tuesday, offering configurable virtual servers designed for mobile, enterprise and machine-to-machine applications.

Customers using Instant Servers will be able to acquire, manage, monitor and control their virtual servers at all times from a dedicated website, Telefónica said, in addition to deleting ones no longer needed…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Shawn Drew.

The cloud is often touted as the solution to so many IT problems, or if nothing else, the future of IT. While these statements may only be slightly exaggeratory, more and more companies are getting disillusioned by their cloud experiences. New research is beginning to find reasons why many company’s ROI isn’t what it should be and finds that how IT thinks about the cloud plays a powerful role.

Cloud Management

It is entirely the fate of IT managers these days to be forced into adopting solutions that they may only slightly understand. Such is the case with many IT departments and cloud computing, a technology so hot right now that failing to enter into the cloud is likely to put a company at a disadvantage…

Grazed from International Law Office. Author: Sanjay Pritam and Peter Lumley-Savile.

More and more businesses are looking to use cloud computing to access a broad range of computer software and services. At its most basic level, ‘cloud computing’ is defined as the delivery of information technology as a service over the Internet. Cloud computing offers companies substantial cost savings and greater flexibility; but despite these obvious benefits, it also presents significant risks, particularly in relation to the security of data stored in the cloud. It is therefore important that a business considering the use of cloud computing takes appropriate steps to mitigate the dangers, both legal and commercial. A company can quickly become dependent on the ability to access the cloud and may be paralysed in the event of service interruptions.

While a number of issues should be considered in a cloud computing contract (eg, performance monitoring, interoperability and transitional arrangements), this update focuses on a contract term that often does not receive the consideration it deserves, normally to the detriment of a cloud computing customer: the force majeure clause…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Blancco, the global leader in data erasure and computer reuse solutions, is serving as a key sponsor at Cloud Security Alliance Congress 2012, November 7-8, in Orlando, Florida. At Booth 1, Blancco will highlight the critical role data erasure plays in securing cloud data. Blancco will also offer conference attendees its recently updated white paper, "Data Erasure Solutions for Data Center and Cloud Computing Security." The paper discusses how certified, auditable and automated data erasure protects information on equipment slated for reuse or retirement, while also supporting erasure of virtual machines (VMs) and logical units in active environments.

"While much focus was previously placed on pulling data into the cloud, growing attention is now given to securing this data when it exits, as when a customer changes its service provider or a data center upgrades data-rich equipment," said Markku Willgren, president of US Operations, Blancco. "As we celebrate our 15th anniversary at this security-minded event, Blancco is proud to demonstrate how we’re helping a diverse IT customer base address issues like Big Data and targeted removal of data on active systems, while streamlining implementation of erasure best practices."…