Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Archana Venkatraman.

Cloud computing services must become more federated and automated to help enterprise IT use them to deliver more for less, according to Intel.

“At a time when IT budgets are tight and when the IT teams are expected to deliver more for less, they need cloud computing services that are more flexible and responsive,” said Alan Priestley, Intel’s strategic marketing manager involved in the Cloud Builders programme – a cross-industry initiative aimed to help users build and operate cloud infrastructure more easily…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

10gen, the proprietor of MongoDB, signs on a raft of senior execs from Cloudera and Oracle to accelerate its NoSQL push worldwide. 10gen, the company behind MongoDB, the NoSQL database used by companies from Craigslist to Foursquare to Disney to Thrillist, is adding some serious enterprise and open-source software talent to its executive roster to help build momentum worldwide.

The new faces include Ed Albanese, who headed business development for super-hot Hadoop startup Cloudera and is now VP of business development for 10Gen. Albanese also spent time at VMware, Microsoft and Keane…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Google Apps for Business users need to be protected from their own downloaded apps, according to Waltham, MA-based CloudLock, which on Monday launched a firewall for just that purpose. The Google Apps ecosystem continues to grow. CloudLock, a company that already offers PCI scanning for Google Apps, is now adding a firewall to help companies control what information in employee Google Apps accounts can be accessed by third-party applications.

The beauty of cloud is that users can easily download and install lots of cool applications — from a variety of app stores. The danger of cloud… is also that users can easily download and install lots of cool applications from a variety of app stores. That freedom of choice is a nightmare for IT shops in this bring-your-own-device (BYOD) era…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Imagine being at a business tech conference in 2017. Where will we be? What will speakers be saying about the whole cloud phenomenon of 2012?

My ZDNet colleague Phil Wainewright just posted his predictions for cloud computing, as it will look five years from now, and I couldn’t agree more with his predictions, listed below (a couple of my own predictions follow as well):

• Cloud is delivered on mobile, includes social: Business will get the cloud even more tha the tech folks, and it will endure, "not as a technology buzzword but as a layman’s term for connected automation," Phil says.
• Many businesses will thrive because of cloud: "Cloud, in its widest sense of being connected to a global network of on-demand resources, is transforming entire industries.
• Many businesses will falter because of cloud: There’s also a dark side, since the disruption cloud creates will put many established companies out of business.
• Government will impede the progress of cloud: Am interesting prediction by Phil: "Policy makers want to regulate the cloud — and that’s when they see it as a force for good. When they discover the disruptive impact on those established industries that are past masters at political lobbying, it’s all too easy to see how governments will be tempted to clip the wings of cloud. Many governments across the globe are already curtailing their citizens’ access to cloud resources. As economic pressures intensify, this will get worse, not better."…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

Dilbert’s boss (he of the awesome two-point hairdo) tells Dilbert to move some of the company’s functions to the Internet but to call the Internet “cloud.”  Why? Because no one “will take us seriously unless we’re doing something in the cloud,” says Mr. Two-Points, aka PHB or Pointy-headed Boss. The remedy is to apply mindless jargon to what they’re already doing.  This has  been the practice of 95 percent of software companies for the past few years –put out an update and call it “cloud.”…

New parents are often amazed by the progress of their children. One day, they’re tiny, quivering creatures who flail and scream; the next, they’re walking and talking. These same parents are often overwhelmed by the sheer amount of energy a child generates–a seemingly inexhaustible supply that sends them spinning around rooms and through parks until they collapse, exhausted. A recent study and examination of cloud computing’s environmental impact leads to a similar analogy–although a bright, energetic and promising technology, it has more than one developmental milestone left to hit.

Give It Three Years

Or so says a recent survey by the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and IT certification group ISACA, as reported by Forbes. The 252 cloud users surveyed said that "platform and infrastructure service offerings are still in the infancy stage of maturity, while software as a service offerings are just emerging from infancy and are in the early stages of market growth." In three years, respondents believe cloud infrastructure will be mature enough to start disrupting the market…