Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

If you need more evidence of an effect of cloud computing on the high technology and the impressive growth of Internet traffic, the Global Cloud Index report prepared by Cisco, will put everything in its place.

According to the study, by 2016 total volume of traffic passing through data centers around the world will grow by 4 times and reach the level of 6.6 zettabytes. The compound annual growth rate of total traffic volume of the cloud – the fastest growing segment of the traffic data centers – will increased from 683 exabytes in 2011 to 4.3 zettabytes by 2016 (an increase of 44 percent)…

Grazed from NewsFactor. Author: Jennifer LeClaire.

News from the LinuxCon Europe conference is trickling in. Along with new cloud Relevant Products/Services-oriented vendor members, the Linux Foundation is also announcing that Hewlett-Packard and Citrix are boosting their investment in the open-source platform.

HP and Citrix are upgrading to Platinum membership. HP was previously a Gold member and Citrix was a Silver member. Other Platinum members include Fujitsu, IBM, Intel Relevant Products/Services, NEC, Oracle, Qualcomm Innovation Center and Samsung. HP and Citrix will each take a seat on the board of directors. Many of HP’s products — servers, printers, networking equipment and more — are already running Linux. HP’s membership upgrade is partly recognition Linux will help drive collaborative development going forward…

Grazed from The Register. Author: Gavin Clarke.

Thanks to projects like OpenStack and the mighty operation that is Amazon’s EC2, open source and Linux are quickly becoming the building blocks of “cloud” computing. OpenStack, which started life in 2010, releases compute, storage, networking and other components under an Apache licence, and it is being adopted by huge companies such as telecom giant NTT in Japan and IT behemoth Hewlett-Packard in its fledgling cloud.

Amazon EC2 runs tens of thousands of Linux servers, providing – among other things – storage, with 762 billion objects housed last year following growth of 200 per cent. 2012 will see the number of objects grow again. Open-source clouds – and we’re talking platform and infrastructure-as-a-service rather than hosted email or collaboration – currently have closed-source efforts such as Microsoft’s Windows Azure encircled and outnumbered…

Grazed from FierceTechnology. Author: Kathy Grise.

Cloud computing has become quite the topic for discussion among just about anyone and everyone today. Google produces about 254,000,000 results on cloud computing. But do we really understand what cloud computing is all about? Ask 10 people if they have heard about cloud computing. They will say yes. Ask them what is cloud computing, and they will give you 10 different perspectives.

Cloud computing is not just a new trend, but can be compared to what happened with the introduction of the Internet. Without common and established standards for the Internet, we would not have the compatibility and reliability today behind the various browsers, FTP clients and applications. The cloud is real and has significant implications to our day-to-day lives. It is big business worldwide, and every day, new jobs, educational offerings and conferences in cloud computing are created…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lindsey Nelson.

Businesses of every industry and size are facing economic and market changes that often prove difficult – if not impossible – to forecast. This leaves companies vulnerable to fluctuating swings in demand and under- or over-investment in IT. Underestimating demand can lead to missed opportunities, outages, and other major disruptions to your business. Overestimating demand, on the other hand, can result in write-offs for unused capacity and facilities. The inherent flexibility of cloud computing can free CFOs and CIOs from these worries, while providing a more efficient way to manage actual demand.

While the cost benefits of cloud computing are well understood, CFOs and CIOs have had difficulty getting a handle on the greater potential benefit – business agility. Their dialogue is likely to focus on “How much capital and operational expense can we cut with cloud?” and not “How will cloud improve revenue and make us more agile?” This focus on cost savings has shaped the relationship between CFOs and CIOs at many companies…

Grazed from TriplePundit. Author: Leon Kaye.

As customers demand safer and more sustainable products, companies such as SAP are in a position to help companies stay informed about their suppliers’ materials–and those of their suppliers’ suppliers. To that end, SAP today rolls out two new cloud computing solutions that provide manufacturers and their supply chains the ability to manage and track sustainability data. True, the need to stay compliant and out of trouble is one driver. But, as sustainability becomes integrated throughout companies’ DNA, and not just a silo, it will become more important for company employees and their partners to access such information in real time–and avoid any pitfalls that could harm a company’s reputation.

And trouble can come in many forms: chemicals that are unsafe and, of course, illegal in some countries; new recalls and regulations that make it more challenging for companies to operate in a cross-border environment; and a sloppy supplier that one manufacturer may have caught using dubious substances yet tries to pass off their products to other companies. So how is SAP leveraging itself in the market?…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Cyan, a company that has a history making optical packet networking gear as well as software to manage its own boxes and that of other network equipment companies, has hopped on the software-defined networking bandwagon with its Blue Planet controller.

Cyan, a company formed in 2006 to build optical networking gear for telecommunications providers has had a pretty good run selling boxes to middle mile transit providers that helped Internet traffic bypass routers in the core networks as well as software that helped manage the core network. But after seeing the trend toward software defined networks, the company tweaked its business to focus on software…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Don Cleveland.

My journey to purchasing a MacBook Air and adopting the cloud for all my data storage needs was fraught with many naysayers. What amazed me most was the salesman who challenged my commitment.

When faced with the idea of selling me something without a traditional hard drive no less than four salesmen attempted to talk me out of it. When pressed for reason all they could tell me was that the MacBook Pro was better because it contained a hard drive and a DVD slot for about the same price. When I explained that I was a writer and wanted the lightweight and faster processing capabilities an interesting social transaction took place that demonstrated the mismatch between my mental simulations and the salesman’s reasoning. Similar disconnects are happening every day as decisions are made about utilizing cloud computing…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Building an e-commerce platform that integrates cloud computing, social media, mobile devices and hosted applications into a single package is a tall order. But that’s what Cloudcraze, a relatively new application that has just reached version 3.0, promises to do. Here’s a look at the product, and what it says about trends in cloud computing.

Cloudcraze was introduced in 2009 to provide services related to the SalesForce (NYSE: CRM) Force.com cloud platform. The application has continued to evolve since that time, with the recently introduced version 3.0 of the platform bringing user interface enhancements…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Brocade, the switch company, is buying Vyatta, a company that pioneered the idea of open-source routing software, in a bid to compete in the networking world as software-defined networking severs the link between networking software and the box that it sits on.

Brocade, the networking and switch company, is buying Vyatta, a company that pioneered the idea of open-source routing software, in a bid to compete in a networking world where software-defined networking severs the link between networking software and the box that it sits on…