October 21, 2012 Off

Red Hat Joins The Cloud Security Alliance

By David
Grazed from BizTech2.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Many companies and groups are working to address security challenges in various ways. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), founded in 2009, is one of the most important of such initiatives because it’s arguably the organisation taking the broadest view of the problem. It’s a not-for-profit organisation whose mission is to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure additional forms of computing.

Red Hat has been participating in the CSA community for nearly two years, and has been working to bring awareness and utilisation to the tools built by the CSA to provide security to physical, virtual and hybrid cloud environments. Now, as an official corporate member of CSA, Red Hat will continue to drive a focus around open standards and security to protect enterprise workloads in the cloud…

October 21, 2012 Off

Cloud computing 2012 – Looking back and moving forward

By David
Grazed from E27.  Author: Joash Wee.

Cloud computing has been a major topic for tech startups over the past few years. What has been done and what more opportunities are there in the cloud?  Cloud computing has evolved over the years and has become the backbone of a new breed of startups. From email backup solution service Dropymyemail to cross-platform syncing and sharing service Kleii to mobile apps like Instagram. In an earlier study, cloud computing is predicted to generate US$1.1 trillion in annual business revenues and nearly 14 million jobs worldwide by 2015.

A comprehensive infographic on Visual.ly on cloud computing through the years indicated that ads for full-time IT jobs focused on cloud computing grew almost three and a half times between 2009 and 2010, showing the demand for cloud computing professionals. Key features that attracted companies to cloud computing back in 2008 were efficiency, reducing capital costs and easing staffing…

October 21, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: U.S. and Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy

By David
Grazed from Yuma Arizona.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Washington, DC – The United States and Japan held the fourth Director General-level meeting of the U.S.-Japan Policy Cooperation Dialogue on the Internet Economy in Washington, D.C.

The dialogue highlighted common positions on the following important Internet and Information and Communications Technology (ICT) topics:

(1) Internet Policy Issues

Participants recognized the importance of international coordination on Internet policy issues, such as preserving the successful multi-stakeholder system of Internet governance, protecting personal data online, and assuring the free flow of information for the further development of the Internet Economy. In order to preserve the open Internet and protect Internet freedom, participants reaffirmed the importance of the three activities identified in the thirdDirector General-level meeting:…

October 20, 2012 Off

Google’s New Chromebook Caters to Cloud Crowd

By David
Grazed from Technology News.  Author: Peter Suciu.

Google unveiled a new Samsung Chromebook on Thursday, available for pre-order at US$249. The new model is more streamlined and far cheaper than its predecessors.

It costs $200 less than the Samsung Chrome 550, which was released earlier this year, and $100 less than the Series 5 model, which debuted last year.

The sleek new form factor is compelling, said Craig Stice, senior principal analyst for compute platforms at IHS iSuppli.

"To have a successful product in mobile, it has to be very thin, very light," he told TechNewsWorld. "That is enough to draw attention from other products that are out there."…

October 19, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: EMC, VMware, Cisco Earn Top Scores for Data Center Management

By David

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Esther Shein.

EMC’s Unified Infrastructure Manager earned the highest score for overall performance in InformationWeek’s IT Pro Ranking: Data Center Management report. The report targeted data center management software that automates, orchestrates and monitors data center resources.

Three hundred fifty-seven IT pros who use or have used and evaluated data center management products evaluated 10 products on a variety of criteria, including general performance and data center-specific criteria. In addition to EMC, survey respondents weighed in on products from Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Symantec and VMware. Note that other vendors, including CA, BMC and ServiceNow, were included in the initial survey but did not receive a sufficient number of respondents for their results to be reported…

October 19, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: Wither the hard drive? Facebook’s secret plans for flash memory

By David

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Facebook is planning to rely more on flash drives in places where most companies have used spinning disk, and based on conversations with sources and hints from Facebook, I think one of those places will be in Facebook’s cold-storage photo facility it’s building in Oregon.

Facebook has flash memory on the brain. The social network, which has helped rethink server design for its operations and is designing a new type of infrastructure from the ground up for storing infrequently accessed photos, is thinking about “more use cases for flash,” said Jay Parikh, vice president of engineering and infrastructure…

October 19, 2012 Off

Cloud Computing: For Dell, Consolidation Is Innovation

By David

Grazed from New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.

Dell announced Thursday a combination server, data storage and networking device, Active System 800. Dell hopes the glossy black rack, fast and flashy, will fare well against similar products from Cisco, Hewlett-Packard, Oracle and I.B.M. While the market sorts out which company wins, take a minute to admire what this trend says about tech.

For one thing, as cloud computing really starts to catch on, it is getting hard to tell the difference between innovation and consolidation. Dell’s “Active Infrastructure Family” of computers is a result of acquisitions the company has made in the past few years in storage, networking and software. Many of those companies would have been purchased by Dell’s competitors if Dell hadn’t got there first. Moving into the new era of cloud computing also involves rolling up the old era of separate computer businesses…

October 19, 2012 Off

Cloud Services Continue to Shake Up IT Outsourcing Industry

By David

Grazed from PC Advisor. Author: Stephanie Overby.

Half of the service providers surveyed by ISG said that a quarter of the engagements in their pipeline included cloud computing services and all of them expected cloud services to grow faster than traditional IT outsourcing particularly in the Americas.

However, Software-as-a-Service ( SaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service ( IaaS) are taking very different trajectories, says ISG’s emerging technology analyst Stanton Jones. "SaaS is more narrow, and we’re seeing units outside of central IT lead the drive to evaluate and purchase," Jones says. "IaaS is broader and is IT-led. We do not see as much growth here because IT functions are preferring to play it safe and stick with more modernized and standardized infrastructures."…

October 19, 2012 Off

Oracle OpenWorld 2012 Focuses on Cloud Computing

By David
Grazed from Arc Advisory Group.  Author: Greg Gorbach.

"I’m here to talk about cloud computing," said Larry Ellison in opening his keynote address, and the cloud was the omnipresent backdrop for many of the key technologies announced at Oracle OpenWorld this year.

These included new high-performance, high-capacity compute and storage hardware to run Oracle Cloud; and a new "pluggable" multitenant database to provide a secure, scalable way to isolate each customer’s data. A new service, Oracle Private Cloud, lets Oracle manage the Oracle Cloud behind a client’s firewall. New application services, social services, platform services, and infrastructure services all expand and strengthen Oracle’s cloud solutions portfolio…
 

October 19, 2012 Off

A Cloud Computing Game-Changer

By David

Grazed from CRN. Author: Steven Burke.

Twenty-five years ago, Sam Haffar and his brother Jason started out building white-box PCs for customers in Houston who were looking for a better value. The two brothers built the business one system after another, investing every year in top-flight engineering talent to provide customers with more innovative IT products and solutions. All of it was backed up by a super-high level of local touch and a corporate credo of "Customers For Life and Employees For Life."

From day one, Computex has always been out in front of big technology changes and was a virtualization expert long before it was fashionable. It’s those kinds of deep investments that have made the company, a member of the CRN Tech Elite 250, one of the most widely respected solution providers in the country. Top vendor executives and solution provider peers have sought out Sam and Jason time and time again for advice on how to cross the next big technology chasm…