Grazed from BusinessCloud9. Author: Stuart Lauchlan.

Last week’s formal announcement of the European Commission’s Cloud Computing strategy confirmed one thing: the Eurocrats in Brussels are leaning towards ‘a European Cloud’ in a big way and intend to achieve it through a combination of legislation, unification and standardisation. That has two immediate implications as national European government strategies – described by the Commission as not enough to achieve full potential of the Cloud – work out where they sit in this new push, while non-EU providers and governments, most notably in the US, must decide whether Brussels actions will lead to more open or more closed markets.

So what has the reaction been on both sides of the Pond to the forthcoming European Cloud? “The Cloud Industry Forum is keen to support positive credible action that encourages the adoption of Cloud Services and in that spirit the notion of aligning European member activity under a common ‘framework’ is sensible if it covers the truly practical issues that can impact adoption,” comments Andy Burton, chair of the CIF…

Grazed from Resource Nation. Author: Jessica Sanders.

As a small business owner, there is no question that cloud computing offers a variety of features that not only make the business run smoother, but make your life easier. While, first and foremost, it allows you to be more mobile, it also provides more extensive access for businesses who have many users for one program and is often more cost effective.

However, that doesn’t mean each and every program you run should be on the cloud – though it’s not unheard of; there are a few select programs that, when available in the cloud, can truly be used to their full potential…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Klint Finley.

Sacha Labourey wasn’t interested in cloud computing when he resigned as co-general manager of the JBoss division at open source software giant Red Hat in 2009. “I didn’t think it was anything special,” he says. “I thought cloud was just a bunch of servers running in a data center somewhere.” But within a year, he had a complete change of heart — so much so that he co-founded CloudBees, a cloud service for building Java applications.

“I wanted to help developers, and eventually, I realized the best way to do that to take the complexity out of fitting all the little pieces of the development stack together,” he says. He realized that cloud computing could be more than just a bunch of servers. It could be a way of making life easier for developers…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

The healthcare industry hasn’t been a big fan of cloud computing. In fact, even co-located and hosted data centers are a stretch due to security and privacy regulations. Verizon, however, aims to change that equation and just might succeed. Verizon’s enterprise unit, bolstered by its Terremark cloud computing portfolio, on Monday launched a portfolio of services designed to meet HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) requirements.

In a nutshell, health care players—payers, insurers and hospitals—will be able to host patient information in Verizon’s Terremark data centers. Verizon also plans to offer co-location, managed hosting, cloud and private cloud services. Verizon’s enterprise cloud services plan starts with healthcare, but can scale to other industries. How will Verizon court healthcare? HIPAA requirements and various providers in the industry are held together by something called a business associate agreement (BAA). The BAA dictates that each party that touches patient data is required to meet HIPAA standards. If one party in the data chain fumbles it is liable for penalties and fines…

Grazed from AMEInfo. Author:  Editorial Staff.

Citrix will be showcasing network and cloud computing solutions that equip organisations to support the growing trend towards mobile workstyles in the region. With global research showing that corporate employees are increasingly relying on multiple computing devices to access corporate apps, data and services from a range of locations outside of the traditional office setup, Citrix’s technology showcase is set to show how businesses can meet the resulting challenges of security, access and management today and into the future. Mobile workstyles are shown to have been adopted today by a quarter (24%) of organizations worldwide, a figure expected to reach 83% by 2014. In line with this trend, many organisations in the Middle East are also exploring the efficiencies and benefits this can bring to the company and its staff.

Citrix will display its flagship product range designed to support mobile workstyles on its stand (CLD 16 in Hall number 6), including Citrix XenDesktop for centralized virtual desktop delivery as a service, Citrix Receiver and Citrix CloudGateway , an enterprise mobility management solution that securely delivers mobile, Intranet, Web, SaaS and Windows apps and data to any device, anywhere. Also at the Citrix stand, a networking and cloud solutions demonstration will feature NetScaler, the most advanced cloud network platform deployed in thousands of networks around the globe to optimize, secure and control the delivery of all enterprise and cloud services…

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…

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