Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Dublin-based Cloud Vertical, which wants to help companies get the most bang for their cloud computing buck, now has cash and backing from the Citrix Startup Accelerator to build its business, says Cloud Vertical CEO Ed Byrne.

Cloud Vertical, a Dublin-based startup that helps companies maximize their public cloud spending, got a boost this week with new funding from the Citrix Startup Accelerator. While not disclosing the amount of the investment, Cloud Vertical CEO Ed Byrne said it’s an important vote of confidence given that Citrix is the company behind both Xen, the virtualization foundation of Amazon Web Services (AWS), and CloudStack, an open-source platform that powers private clouds…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: James Clark.

While we are all very happy about the entire cloud data storage concept and feel that it’s a breath of relief from the constant battle against malware, key loggers, PC monitoring software, and whatnot, we tend to forget that there are steps which we need to take to ensure security even after we have shifted all our digital luggage to the cloud.

It’s not as difficult as putting security barriers on an Android but sometimes it isn’t a walk through the park either. So to cut down the confusion and help the technologically helpless, here are ten steps that will make your life on the cloud a smooth experience…

1. Password First.

If we are talking about ideal scenarios, then your username and password should be unique for every service or site you have to use credentials for. The reason is simple enough: if one gets compromised, so do the rest of your accounts…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

It’s 11 p.m. Do you know where your data is? If your enterprise has transitioned to the cloud for data storage the answer almost certainly is “no.” Portions of it might be in Malaysia; other bits in Antigua. Today, governments across the globe are deeply uncomfortable with that answer — but they don’t need to be. Just a small application of technological magic through encryption at rest can dispel concerns about data’s location.

The underlying problem is familiar to most cloud-sophisticates. Cloud architecture is a distributed network. Optimizing efficiency means locating server farms wherever energy and labor costs are cheapest. And, given the speed with which information transits the network, there is no need to build data centers close to where the data users reside — data can be almost anywhere in the world in milliseconds…

Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Editorial Staff.

That software is everywhere is so commonly accepted that it hardly needs repeating. Take, for example, Getaround. To consumers it’s a marketplace where the car-having and car-needing come together to work out short-term rentals mano a mano. But the people at Getaround aren’t running a car rental company – they’re running a software company. And a small one, at that. They, along with lots of other small firms and start-ups, are competing against giants in their fields: established, mature, enterprise-type companies that not only have market share, but the capital and cash resources that come with it. We’ll call them Goliath.

So what’s a young David-like up-start to do, armed only with a brilliant idea, raw talent and a willingness to put in long hours? How do they deliver quickly, and on a shoe-string budget? They reach for the slingshot in their back pocket: cloud computing…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Forty-four percent of U.S. executives aim to tackle current IT challenges through leveraging cloud solutions, and they are planning to invest more in cloud computing in the future. That is the finding of an IDC survey commissioned by T-Systems. Corporations expect cloud computing to deliver lower IT costs (26 percent) and to enable them to replace legacy systems (21 percent) and adopt new applications more flexibly (14 percent).

"As the U.S. cloud services market continues to mature, enterprises find that overall business impact and productivity gains from the cloud are as significant as achieving cost reductions," said David Tapper, IDC VP Outsourcing and Offshore Services Market Research. Cloud computing is seen as most likely to deliver solutions for Customer Relationship Management (31 percent), productivity tools like email, collaboration or Office packages (28 percent), online stores, and Enterprise Relationship Management (26 percent each)…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Matt Bulter.

Incredibly, only 16% of people can explain what cloud computing is, a recent survey said. Most believed it was about drugs, pillows, the weather, or toilet paper. (No, I’m not making this up.) But just because people don’t understand the cloud, it doesn’t mean they aren’t using it. The fact is that many use cloud computing without knowing.

In other words, that lack of knowledge isn’t as big a problem as it might seem. Of the more than 1,000 Americans surveyed, more than half initially reported that they’d never used it. However, further questioning revealed that 95% of those surveyed do actually use popular cloud services like Gmail, iTunes, or Amazon…

Grazed from iHealthBeat. Author: Editorial Staff.

Researchers are beginning to leverage cloud computing to advance health care research, NPR’s "All Tech Considered" reports. Through cloud computing, analyzing data that used to take years and tens of millions of dollars now can be done much faster and for less money. Organizations can rent massive computer resources on an hourly basis at a relatively low cost.

Using the Cloud for Patient Data Analysis

Michael Cunningham — medical director of Seattle Children’s Hospital’s Craniofacial Center — treats young patients whose skulls have fused prematurely. He said that researchers have been able to identify such patients whose cells looked similar by using cloud computing to analyze vast amounts of data…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Noel Randewich.

Speaking at Oracle’s annual investor day on Thursday, Catz said Oracle is now a one-stop shop for companies moving to cloud computing, while rivals like Amazon.com and Salesforce.com each offer some but not all of the necessary components. Echoing comments by Oracle co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Larry Ellison to CNBC television earlier this week, Catz said Oracle has no need for any big acquisitions, but left the door open.

"You know us, I’m a personal shopper for our CEO. When we find something that’s really compelling that we think we can make a lot of money for all of you with, we’re going to buy it," she said. "We don’t feel pressed to buy anything. We’ve got all the most incredible parts right now," she added…

Grazed from InfoQ.com.  Author: Abel Avram.

Zenoss has conducted a survey among IT operations specialists in order to evaluate virtualization, open source cloud and PaaS adoption. This article contains a digest of the survey results.

With The State of the Open Source Cloud 2012 survey, Zenoss has tried to evaluate data center virtualization and cloud computing usage. One of the main questions was related to the virtualization technology used, VMware taking the first spot with 74% followed by Linux KVM – 23.3%, and Microsoft Hyper-V with 19.6%. Several respondents noted that they were using multiple virtualization technologies, while 5.9% did not use any such technology. The graphic below shows all the responses to the virtualization question:..

Grazed from Cadalyst. Author: Carles Marti and Rick Rundell.

Two industry insiders provide perspectives about hardware and software solutions that are changing the way professionals work. Cloud technologies are increasingly prevalent these days: There are web-supported calendars, cloud-based phone systems, and CAD software programs hosted in the cloud. You even can print projects from cloud servers.

That said, what is the impact of cloud computing on the AEC field? Rick Rundell, Autodesk’s senior director for project, data, and collaboration services, joined Carles Marti, marketing project manager for Designjet web services at HP, to address that question. Their consensus is that AEC companies that want to stay competitive should consider the cloud as a way to help their employees be productive outside the office…