Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM today unveiled new technologies designed to help organizations with today’s greatest challenges, including the need for improved security, the ability to take advantage of cloud computing, and the requirement to manage and analyze vast amounts of data. The new offerings include the most powerful enterprise Power Systems to date, a new high-end disk storage system and key software updates for IBM’s newest mainframe computer.

The announcement is part of IBM’s continued focus on Smarter Computing systems aimed at solving the varied and intensifying challenges organizations are facing, from security vulnerabilities to managing ballooning data volumes that are expanding through social and mobile technologies…

Grazed from Information Management. Author: Jim Ericson.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci led off the second full day of Oracle OpenWorld 2012 with a keynote address about his company’s aggressive approach to infrastructure and cloud computing.

Tucci said the Oracle audience was fortunate to be at the nexus of opportunities presented by cloud computing, which he called a huge focus for both Oracle and EMC. He traced the history of mainframe and client-server computing leading to the buildup – and now the build out – of computing architecture based on growing stores of data and commodity computing resources. He said relational database models will continue to thrive and that they are now augmented by developments such as NoSQL and Hadoop along with new programming languages.

The sum of this is that new opportunities will arise for companies with the strategy and skill sets to leverage all kinds of structured and unstructured data into better decisions. “Real time predictive analytics will be the killer app for this cloud era,” Tucci said…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Bill Claybrook.

When developers build mobile apps, they have the choice of building either apps that are installed and run natively on remote devices (native apps), or those that run in mobile cloud environments (mobile cloud apps). Native apps and mobile cloud apps each have their inherent advantages and disadvantages.

Native apps run on remote devices such as smartphones and tablets and are built specifically for a device and its operating system. Native apps have the ability to leverage device-specific hardware and software, meaning that they can take advantage of the latest technology available on mobile devices, such as GPS, camera, location and locomotion. This can be construed as an advantage for native apps over mobile cloud apps…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lindsey Nelson.

Has your organization embraced cloud computing? If so, you’ll likely be looking toward a hybrid cloud solution in your near future. Why is this? With a hybrid cloud, you get the strategic benefits of both the private and public cloud model, which once brought together, meets the individual needs of your organization.

If you’re investing in cloud computing or already have it in the works, it doesn’t hurt to have some guidance on pursuing a hybrid cloud. The Blending Clouds: A Blueprint for Your Hybrid Future white paper by Eucalyptus helps you understand the basic motivations for hybrid cloud, how to design it, the components to use, and the principles to consider when designing it. Put these together, and you have the recipe for a successful hybrid cloud. Here’s an overview of these elements from the white paper…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

GoDaddy has decided to close its Cloud Servers cloud computing product. The offering had been around for less than a year, although the company is attempting to integrate some of the technology into the next generation of its flagship hosting service.

Perhaps web-hosting giant GoDaddy wasn’t cut out to be a cloud computing provider after all. According to an internal email shared with me by an anonymous ex-employee, the company has decided to shutter its Cloud Servers product offering after less than a year…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanakarus.

Oracle has finally answered a big question hovering over its emerging family of cloud services: What do they cost? While not giving a public price for every one of its cloud products, Oracle’s website now has pricing for its on-demand database and Java development service, as well as for some applications.

Pricing for the database service, which uses version 11g R2, starts at $175 per month for one schema, 5GB of disk storage and 30GB of data transfer. A midtier option costs $900 per month with one schema, 20GB of storage and 120GB of data transfer. For $2,000 per month, developers get 50GB of storage and 300GB of data transfer, but still only one schema…

SafeNet, Inc., the global leader in data protection, today announced the immediate availability of SafeNet Authentication Service, a new cloud-based authentication service. The cloud authentication solution was designed and engineered specifically for the service provider environment and allows service providers to rapidly introduce authentication-as-a-service to their enterprise customers. By doing so, it enables service providers to increase their average revenue per user (ARPU), significantly reduce the cost and complexity associated with offering and implementing strong authentication, and strengthen their security and compliance posture.

Today’s launch builds on SafeNet’s industry leadership in authentication, which was recognized earlier this year when Gartner placed SafeNet in the “Leaders’ quadrant” in its January 2012 Magic Quadrant for User Authentication. SafeNet Authentication Service extends the company’s portfolio of two-factor authentication solutions, providing enterprise and government organizations with unprecedented choice and flexibility to best customize their authentication solutions to meet current and future security needs.

Anticipating rapid growth during the next year, Waterton Residential, a leader in the multi-family residential industry, has selected CenterBeam Inc. to be its supplier of a broad array of cloud computing and IT solutions. CenterBeam will assist Waterton Residential with moving to the cloud, offering the infrastructure management, communications and collaboration solutions, endpoint security, backup, helpdesk and professional services the company needs to maintain its competitive edge.

“CenterBeam’s comprehensive suite of services is making it very easy for us to maintain top-quality IT infrastructure and services while our company expands,” said Gregory J. Lozinak, executive vice president and COO of Waterton Residential. “CenterBeam will free our internal IT staff from day-to-day issues, enabling them instead to focus on strategic projects designed to add value to our core business. In addition, CenterBeam will deliver a consistent level of helpdesk support for our employees, who are spread across more than 50 locations in 13 states, as well as our mobile workforce.”

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Technology professionals are embracing the cloud with an increased vigor due in large part to the inherent cost savings the cloud offers with regard to storage. For those still on the fencepost, Logicalis, an international IT solutions and managed services provider, today announced a step-by-step guide for assessing and implementing a cloud-based storage solution.

“The amount of data companies need to store today is growing at an astounding rate,” says Victor Dermott, solution architect, cloud computing, for Logicalis. “So too is the cost to manage and maintain a secure, compliant environment. That’s why cloud-based storage as a service is becoming so attractive to CIOs and CFOs alike; reducing significant capital expenses for storage hardware and software as well as the associated management costs for maintaining these huge storehouses of data to a much smaller recurrent monthly operational cost makes both financial and technological sense.”…