Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Once again Amazon has experienced significant problems at its big US East data center. The snafu has taken down Foursquare, Reddit, Heroku and other popular websites.

Here we go again. Problems with Amazon’s Elastic Block Storage (EBS) service have brought down Foursquare, Reddit, Heroku, and other popular websites. Once again, Amazon’s U.S. East data center in Virginia is ground zero for these issues, just as it was last June when there were two significant outages…

Grazed from Windows IT Pro. Author: John Howie.

The rise of public cloud computing and its adoption by enterprises of all sizes is presenting challenges to professionals who are charged with the security of the organization’s data. One major issue is that individual departments and even employees can purchase public cloud services — often by using a corporate credit card — without the knowledge or oversight of the IT department. Such purchases can lead to significant governance challenges, introduce unknown risks, and even prevent the organization from meeting its statutory and regulatory compliance obligations.

Public cloud computing is desirable for many reasons, including increased IT agility, reduced time to roll out a new product or service, access to the latest technology not available inside the enterprise — and even a strategy to work around restrictions put in place by the IT departments, such as a limit to the size of email attachments or the types of files that can be sent or received through the email system. For these reasons, many IT departments are considering deploying private clouds, which departments can access and use instead of public clouds. Examples on record include State Street Bank (which expects to see significant savings as well as improve operational efficiency and security of customer data), engineering and construction firm Bechtel Corporation, and chemical company Sinochem Group. However, private clouds aren’t inherently more secure than public clouds and can even be far less secure. In this article, I’ll discuss some pitfalls and make recommendations for securing private clouds…

Grazed from Ping Identity. Author: PR Announcement.

Ping Identity®, The Cloud Identity Security Leader™, today announced that is has joined Box and PhoneFactor to host a special local edition of the Cloud Identity Summit in Washington, D.C. The third of a six-city tour, the Washington, D.C. event will take place on Thursday, November 1, offering IT managers and security professionals the opportunity to explore the role of identity as the new perimeter. Experts from leading practitioners and vendors in identity security will discuss the ways cloud computing, mobile devices and social networking challenge common identity management.

Attendees will hear how cloud identity security can help organizations leverage the Cloud to attract and retain customers, engage with business partners and dramatically improve employee productivity. The Washington, D.C. edition will feature a complete lineup of Cloud identity best practices and insights, including:…

Grazed from Financial Review. Author: Mark Garnett.

Companies are moving their information technology functions to the cloud in increasing volumes – largely driven by the perceived cost benefits. The growth is significant, with Forrester Research predicting that cloud computing will expand from $41 billion in 2011 to about $241 billion in 2020.

The trend means organisations need to consider the legal, privacy and security implications of the change. “Cloud computing” refers to IT storage and processing that is located outside a user or organisation’s local IT infrastructure. This means that traditional IT services, such as the provision of email and the storage of company records or financial systems, are provided over the internet, with services often provided by a third-party company…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Thomas Claburn.

Google’s latest Chrome OS device, the third-generation Samsung Chromebook, isn’t quite disposable, but it’s so affordably priced–$249, or $330 with 3G–that you could drop it and live with yourself. All your valuable data would be safe in some distant data center.

When Google senior VP Sundar Pichai introduced the new Samsung Chromebook at a media event in San Francisco on Thursday, he said, "To us, Chrome OS represents the most distilled form of cloud computing we can find."…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

A few weeks ago HP’s Meg Whitman braced tech watchers with sobering warnings that earnings for one of the pioneering companies of Silicon Valley may fall 10% next year, and may not grow for another two years. But HP’s head of cloud computing says don’t let that talk fool you: HP will be a big player in the cloud, says Zorawar Biri Singh. "I wouldn’t confuse the last couple of weeks with any statement on the cloud," he says. "It’s a big deal for us."

Singh acknowledges that HP has "made a mess of" its cloud marketing strategy in the past two or three years. But in recent months HP has worked to unify its message around the HP Converged Cloud strategy, including reportedly naming the company’s former networking CTO Saar Gillai to help lead its cloud segment with Singh. "I have a big part in that, Meg [Whitman] is directly on top of it, the board members are integrally involved in it," he says. "This is a top-down strategy that is pretty well understood."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Gregory Musungu.

Cloud computing has been called a saint and other great names by friends and foe. It promises great benefits, cost cuts and efficiencies at individual and enterprise level. However, even as momentum grows, uptake figures have not been at all impressive. In fact, experts indicate that the confidence in the cloud and what it can do is waning. This trend is negative. In this article, we look at some of the factors that hurt cloud computing confidence, especially among would be users.

Insecurity in the cloud

Security is one of the hottest cloud computing topics. It worries so many people. Depending on the application whose service you use with the cloud, security cannot be guaranteed. And because of the fact that cloud computing is entirely constructed on the precepts of the internet, it’s hard to convince one security is taken care of. Moreover, more and more companies are attached in the cloud by malicious hackers. These security threats deem user confidence because people love to back up their data, feel it and see it-as is the case with traditional techniques…

Grazed from HealthTech Zone. Author: Editorial Staff.

A recent report finds that the fun is just beginning for healthcare in the cloud.

The cloud computing market is poised to expand by an estimated 20.5 percent over the next five years to become a $5.4 billion market by 2017, according to “Healthcare Cloud Computing Market – Global Trends, Challenges, Opportunities & Forecasts.” Healthcare spending on the cloud hovers around $1.8 billion as of 2011 despite market penetration of only four percent.

“The market is witnessing a surge in the adoption of technology, and cloud computing is expected to bring about a revolution in the healthcare IT market,” MarketsandMarkets said in the report. It noted that healthcare organizations (HCOs) are expected to deliver more with fewer resources, which is helping to fuel the growth in cloud usage…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Ryan Galloway.

Like so many technical terms that seem to creep into our everyday lexicon, “cloud computing” is a term we hear often, even though its actual definition may be unclear.

There was a time — not too long ago — when words like “server,” “hosting,” and even “blog” crept to ubiquity while still baffling many casual users of the early Web. For many, “cloud computing” is equally mysterious. But there’s a very good chance that you’re already using cloud computing in your daily life. Whether at work or at home, cloud computing is everywhere, even if you don’t realize it.

Here are some common ways you may already be using the cloud:…

Grazed from MSPAlliance. Author: Ed Silverton.

Corent Technology continues to win industry awards and other recognition as its products allow software vendors to transition to Software- as- a- Service (SaaS (News – Alert)).

The company just won an award from the West Coast Wall Street Conference, which follows Corent’s SaaS Enablement Platform being named the “2012 Cloud Product of the Year” at the TechAmerica’s High-Tech Innovations Awards. It was also a finalist in the Cloud Computing/SaaS category for the national 2012 American Technology (News – Alert) Awards. Last year, Corent was named the first IBM certified technology provider partner to IBM cloud…