Grazed from FCW. Author: Alan Joch.

Implementing a disaster recovery plan can be like eating vegetables, getting enough fiber and sleeping at least eight hours a night. Most people understand why these things are important, but few do them religiously. The problem is that traditional disaster recovery methods call for re-creating the full IT environment at a separate off-site facility to keep agencies safe from unplanned IT outages. The investment in redundant resources pays off if a server gets fried, some stealthy malware takes down a storage system, or a hurricane forces a data center evacuation.

But on most days, when disasters don’t strike, all that duplicate hardware and software are running in standby mode and not contributing meaningfully to the agency’s daily operations. That is a tough expense to justify, particularly in times of tight IT budgets…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

When companies such as Google and Facebook design their own servers, switches and data centers, it’s more a business decision than it is a test of their hardware-hacking skills. Custom gear means lower power bills, better performance and the flexibility to adapt to unforeseen situations.

One of the best things about cloud computing — as both a business model and an architectural principle — is that hardware really doesn’t matter. By and large, as long as applications and systems management software are intelligent enough to run the show, servers, switches and hard drives just need to show up with minimal competency and stay out of the way. If you don’t believe me, just ask Backblaze … or VMware … or Facebook…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: John Foley.

The coolest cloud computing application in the world — and in our solar system — comes from NASA. The space agency is using commercial cloud services to process the digital images being transmitted to Earth from the Curiosity rover as it searches for signs of life on Mars.

Those images, taken by 17 cameras mounted to the six-wheel, SUV-like rover, are an incredible scientific trove, stored and managed by Amazon Web Services. The most recent images show the rover’s robotic arm taking the first scoops of Martian soil for analysis…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Microsoft Thursday launched the biggest, most dramatic makeover of its operating system since Windows went graphical, perfuming the effort with a billion-dollar marketing budget. Windows 8 will be on the street Friday, October 26. It has to best the competition from the smartphones and iPads that have helped Apple and Google suck up a lot of Microsoft’s business.

If the new un-Microsoft-like operating system doesn’t catch on – it has no familiar Start button or menu – it could be curtains for CEO Steve Ballmer and maybe even the company. Microsoft has been late to the Internet, search and mobile and looks to be an old relic, whose stock barely moves anymore, compared to Apple, Google and Amazon…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Byron Connolly.

IBM has launched a new local enterprise cloud computing service – hosted at its data centre in Baulkham Hills in Sydney – suitable for organisations wanting to deploy hybrid cloud models. The pay-by-the-month service – SmartCloud Enterprise+ – is being provided out of Big Blue’s seventh global cloud centre, which is also the first in the Asia Pacific region.

It builds on the existing “Amazon-like” public SmartCloud Enterprise service, which has about 47 customers in Australia. Around half of these customers are software vendors and the remainder are organisations that need computing power quickly. IBM hasn’t announced any customers yet for SmartCloud Enterprise+…

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

Novell has announced the availability of Novell Dynamic File Services, allowing organisations to automatically and dynamically manage data down to an individual file basis, including the ability to archive data to cloud storage providers like Amazon S3, Box, CloudMe and Dropbox. With this announcement, Novell adds to its long standing status as the industry leader in enterprise level tools for file access and management and printing.

“The release of Novell Dynamic File Services is an answer to the rapidly growing concern of managing massive amounts of unstructured data being developed in the enterprise,” said Eric Varness, Vice President of Product Management and Marketing at Novell. “Businesses today continue to drive intelligence through stored files and with Novell, users can control what happens to those files based on the organisations’ most important business drivers. Novell Dynamic File Services complements existing infrastructures, and helps IT professionals ensure better use of its high-performance storage systems while ensuring users stay productive.”…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Rebecca Merritt.

Analysts have predicted a trend towards moving IT from on-premise to off-premise, new cloud applications and an increase in spending on cloud services next year. IDC head of research Matthew Oostveen said with cloud computing maturing this year, more organisations will start to move their IT infrastructure from on-premise to off-premise. “2012 was the year that we all got tired of cloud – there’s cloud fatigue. But with Australia being the country that rapidly takes up technology, I think we have reached a period of maturity with the way that we view cloud,” he said.

“What is certain is we are watching a migration taking place where on-premise computing is moving to off-premise computing. It may start incrementally where we see an up take of co-location services, and obviously the co-locations services are being supported by the influx of new data centres in the market place [provided by] NextDC and Macquarie Telecom, which has built new facilities as well.”…

Grazed from Arc Advisory Group. Author: Peter Reynolds.

Invensys Operations Management and Microsoft recently collaborated on a series of Executive "Eye Opener" seminars intended to promote the potential business benefits of applying cloud computing, virtualization, and analytics in manufacturing. ARC Advisory Group participated in these seminars, which were held last month in Seattle, Houston, Philadelphia, and Minneapolis. Over 100 companies registered for the seminars and attendees included a cross section of representatives from manufacturing IT, operations and maintenance management, and IT management.

The goal of the multi-city seminar was to provide greater understanding of the business benefits and applicability of Microsoft Azure Cloud Technology in industrial automation and how proven technologies like virtualization can offer a clear pathway to additional benefits…

Grazed from UCStrategies. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is rapidly expanding. This means that large and smaller business is increasing their bandwidth consumption as they make the most of the many opportunities the cloud has to offer. Companies particularly enjoy the ability to purchase services that were once only accessible to enterprise-level businesses, such as data storage, security, billing support, and business voice.

Though no longer in its infancy, the age of cloud services is relatively young and it has to surmount a number of obstacles that are set to impede further growth. Here are the three main threats to cloud technology…

Ajubeo, a provider of high-performance, enterprise-class virtual private data centers and cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), today announced the addition of a three-tier, high-performance virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) offering as part of their unified IaaS platform. Available immediately, Ajubeo’s customizable VDI offering accommodates business requirements from small deployments to thousands of desktops and features VMware View 5.1 Premier, NetApp SSD storage and carrier-grade networking technology from Brocade. Benefits include increased security and centralization of end-user data, universal access to desktops and applications from any device over any Internet connection, efficient workforce collaboration and file sharing, and improved productivity and mobility.

"Ajubeo VDI is a game-changer for businesses of any size," said Chuck Price, president and CEO at Ajubeo. "Ajubeo customers are now able to tailor VDI environments unique to their total workforce demand, customizing pools of desktop instances within their private virtual data centers to address end-user performance needs without over-provisioning. The prohibitive impact of network latency when working with very large data files across large geographic distances is completely eliminated with our new VDI solution. Our customers can now maintain far better data security with higher application performance across their entire workforce, improving their competitive advantage and turning workforce productivity into a multiplier on enterprise value."