Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Laurie MacVittie.

Originally used as an inexpensive alternative to quickly deploy services outside the realm of IT, cloud computing is quickly becoming a de facto standard for new application resources. The challenge is how to manage those resources transparently. The cloud should be an extension of the internal data center, and cloud bridges, gateways and brokers are all components that IT should focus on for connecting to their external cloud deployment.

But there are challenges to integrating bridges, gateways and brokers to any production cloud deployment. First, the market is still shaking out what each of these product categories do and what they’re called. Second is where they fit in the infrastructure, and then third and possibly most important, who owns these technologies and who ultimately is responsible for their success…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Lucian Constantin.

Some cloud providers fail to detect and block malicious traffic originating from their networks, which provides cybercriminals with an opportunity to launch attacks in a botnet-like fashion, according to a report from Australian security consultancy firm Stratsec. Researchers from Stratsec, a subsidiary of British defense and aerospace giant BAE Systems, reached this conclusion after performing a series of experiments on the infrastructure of five "common," but unnamed, cloud providers.

The experiments involved sending different types of malicious traffic from remotely controlled cloud instances (virtual machines) to a number of test servers running common services such as HTTP, FTP and SMTP. In one test case, services running on a targeted server were accessible from the Internet, but the server was located in a typical network environment, behind a firewall and an IDS (intrusion detection system). The goal of this particular test was to see how the cloud provider would respond to the presence of outbound malicious traffic originating from its network…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

EarthLink, Inc. (NASDAQ: ELNK) a leading IT and communications provider, today announced plans to extend its core fiber IP network, expand its IT Solutions footprint with four additional data centers and launch its next generation cloud hosting platform. By integrating additional distributed data centers with an expanded IP network, EarthLink is creating an end-to-end cloud fabric to meet the growing demand for highly-secure cloud hosting and IT services.

EarthLink will expand its new cloud hosting platform into four new data centers in San Jose, Chicago, Dallas and South Florida throughout next year through agreements with leading-edge space and power providers. It is also enhancing its existing data center in Rochester, N.Y. with its next-generation cloud architecture early next year. The company’s next generation cloud architecture is a state-of-the-art, integrated computing and storage platform designed to support current and future demands of the IT Services business. EarthLink is using best-in-breed platforms to provide comprehensive IT solutions including cloud hosting, virtual desktop, security, colocation, back-up and application solutions…

Grazed from InsiderMonkey. Author: Marshall Hargrave.

Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO) is a giant in the communications technology industry, with a market cap around $90 billion. However, this size has made it tough for the company to navigate the nimble cloud computing and wireless area network sector. The company grew EPS by only 5% annually for the last five years. As well, the company is expected to only see limited improvement over the next five years, with an 8% EPS annual growth rate, so is now a good time to buy Cisco?

Although the company made its largest acquisition in seven years earlier this year, we believe Cisco can make a bigger splash in the cloud computing area. Cisco has been in a heated battle with a number of smaller companies that have been attacking its communications equipment market share, namely in the cloud. We currently see little reason to invest in Cisco, even with a 3.2% dividend yield and a trailing P/E of 12x, given the other higher growth opportunities in the communication and wireless area network optimization space…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Having your own cloud is great. But what if you need to isolate different applications and resources from one another? You could, of course, build multiple clouds. Or you could adopt technologies like Rackspace‘s (NYSE: RAX) new Cloud Networks feature, which supports multi-tiered networks across an Open Stack cloud infrastructure. Here are the details, and what they reveal about future cloud trends.

It’s easy to think of the cloud as the place where everything that doesn’t live locally should be dumped. After all, since the definition of what exactly constitutes cloud computing has always been a bit hazy, the simple conceptualization is to treat the cloud as one lose and wild expanse of infrastructure which doesn’t need much hierarchy or internal organization…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Jennifer Scott.

Giving customers an element of control when it comes to storing their data in the cloud is the key to gaining their trust and, in turn, their patronage. This is the belief of Trend Micro’s solutions architect, Udo Schneider, who spoke to Computer Weekly at this week’s SNW Europe conference in Frankfurt.

Despite the continued excitement around cloud computing and the growth multiple studies have shown when it comes to adoption, security is still the inhibitor for businesses looking at the technology. “It might be driven by paranoia, but still all the different analysts and conversations with customers show security is still number one,” Udo Schneider said. “Most other problems, I don’t want to say they are solved, but they are addressed…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Reportlinker.com announces that a new market research report is available in its catalogue:

Global Cloud Virtualization Software Market 2011-2015

http://www.reportlinker.com/p0787849/Global-Cloud-Virtualization-Software-Market-2011-2015.html#utm_source=prnewswire&utm_medium=pr&utm_campaign=IT_Hosting

TechNavio’s analysts forecast the Global Cloud Virtualization Software market to grow at a CAGR of 14.98 percent over the period 2011-2015. One of the key factors contributing to this market growth is the need to develop platform-independent computing solutions. The Global Cloud Virtualization Software market has also been witnessing an increasing focus on green cloud computing. However, increasing security concerns regarding cloud computing could pose a challenge to the growth of this market…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Nasuni, which helps distributed companies manage their cloud storage securely, has $20 million in a new funding round — led by a mystery investor — to help it pay for new features and expand sales and marketing, said CEO Andres Rodriguez.

Nasuni, a company that helps distributed offices put their storage in the cloud and manage it securely, has $20 million in new funding to pay for new features and functions and expand sales and marketing. The Series C round was led by a mystery investor, with other contributions from current backers Flybridge, North Bridge Venture Partners, and Sigma, and brings its total funding to $43 million…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Michael Cooney.

When you go to a Gartner conference one of he main things you’ll notice is the sheer volume of data they can generate on just about any IT topic. Last week’s Gartner Symposium/ITxpo in Orlando, Fla., was no different. The conference, attended by some 9,000 executives focused on the changes security challenges, mobile computing, big data and cloud will be bringing to IT in the near future.

Trying to get through it all can be daunting so we’ve tried to simplify that process by distilling a variety of Gartner ITxpo presentations and coming up with the most salient information. So here goes. From the Gartner analysts, presentations on:…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Michael Brenner.

Jack Clark, a reporter for ZDNet, recently pulled together opinions from industry experts to create a vision of cloud computing in 2020 in an article, entitled “Cloud Computing: 10 Ways It Will Change by 2020.”

So what will cloud computing look like eight or ten years down the road? What will influence the evolutionary path it takes? And how important will it be to an enterprise computing infrastructure? According to the article, Forrester Research states the global cloud computing market will grow from $35 billion in 2011 to $150 billion in 2020 and it will be a key part of IT infrastructures. Driven by data such as that, here is what the experts says is coming in 2020 for cloud computing…