Grazed from FierceEnterpriseCommunication. Author: Fred Donovan.

Whether it is a regulator threatening fines or a CEO fuming about a data breach, IT managers are well aware of the enterprise security risks of adopting cloud computing. The latest news to drive home this point was a recent statement by the UK Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) that companies face fines if they do not secure customer data held by third-party cloud providers.

UK companies are responsible for securing customer data whether they store it internally or externally, the ICO stressed. "The law on outsourcing data is very clear. As a business, you are responsible for keeping your data safe. You can outsource some of the processing of that data, as happens with cloud computing, but how that data is used and protected remains your responsibility," said Simon Rice, ICO’s technology policy advisor…

Products included in this release are: Acrobat XI Pro, Acrobat XI Standard, Adobe Reader® XI and newly integrated document services, Adobe FormsCentral and Adobe EchoSign.

Philippine cloud computing services provider ArcusIT (www.arcusit.ph) recently announced the latest update on their ArcusIT Cloud Server offering.

“With the new platform upgrade, the ArcusIT Cloud Server now has even more extensive configuration and Virtual Machine (VM) management features, including load balancing, autoscaling, availability & performance zone selection, network, and storage management. All cloud management and provisioning takes place through an intuitive web-based Control Panel,” said Oamar Gianan of ArcusIT.

ArcusIT virtual server service provides users with a simple, web-based interface for ordering, deploying, configuring, and monitoring cloud resources on demand.

Grazed from Who’s Who Legal. Author: Clive Gringas.

To appreciate why the “cloud” is the future of computing, one must understand a law of economics coined in 1890 and learn what happened around the same time at 57 Holborn Viaduct in London, England. In 1890, Alfred Marshall finished a decade’s work. His eight-volume Principles of Economics was finally ready. Those who read the fourth volume were introduced, for the first time, to the concept of “economies of scale”. Marshall’s analysis, then novel, was that in some trades “in which a man gains no very great new economies by increasing the scale of his production, it often happens that a business remains of about the same size for many years, if not for many generations.” These could be contrasted with trades.

“in which a large business can command very important advantages, which are beyond the reach of a small business. A new man, working his way up in such a trade, has to set his energy and flexibility, his industry and care for small details, against the broader economies of his rivals with their larger capital, their higher specialization of machinery and labour, and their larger trade connection. If then he can double his production, and sell at anything like his old rate, he will have more than doubled his profits. This will raise his credit with bankers and other shrewd lenders; and will enable him to increase his business further, and to attain yet further economies, and yet higher profits: and this again will increase his business and so on. It seems at first that no point is marked out at which he need stop.”…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Gregory Msungu.

Cloud computing as a technology trend has caught up fast in recent years. It has revolutionized IT in a way never seen before. It has clearly changed how the traditional software works for businesses. This has many benefits, considering many of the former models are rather physical, coupled with expensive licenses. Cloud computing is a dynamic technology and the following are some of the trends that experts and analysts have identified.

1. Cloud computing is scaling investment value

Cloud computing streamlines how software, business processes, and services are accessed. More than ever before, this is helping businesses scale operations and optimize their investments. This is not only through lower costs, efficient business models, or greater agility in operations. It has a lot to do with how businesses use it to optimize their investments. In the same breadth, businesses are scaling into more innovation with their IT capacity. This will certainly help them make more investments and draw corporate income…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Buyer beware when it comes to adopting OpenStack — or any open-source cloud — according to a newly released Gartner report. Long story short: evaluate OpenStack just like you’d assess a commercial offering, cautions analyst Lydia Leong. Just weeks before for the big OpenStack Summit, a new report cautions prospective users not to buy into the hype around this (or any) open-source cloud computing platform.

Gartner Research VP Lydia Leong suggests that prospective users proceed with eyes wide open and recognize that OpenStack, while promoted as an end to vendor lock-in can represent its own sort of “ecosystem lock-in.” She recommends the use of a third-party cloud management tool or API library that will work with multiple clouds…