Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Bart Copeland.

Many companies — perhaps blinded by all the hype and marketing claims — are still hanging back when it comes to cloud adoption. They shouldn’t. They should make the move now — but keep these 6 potential pitfalls in mind.

Done right, the enterprise cloud reduces IT overhead, delivers scalability, fosters innovation, and improves the way enterprises work. And that can save time and money. You’ve heard the cloud marketing spiel … faster, better, cheaper. Those are seductive adjectives. But for some organizations, cloud benefits like that can remain out of reach. Cloud Computing is just so…new, and as some industry experts have oh-so-astutely noted, “much can go wrong.” And that’s reason enough for many to fear cloud computing…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud Technology Partners™, the leader in transforming businesses with cloud solutions, today announced the closing of a $2 million series A-2 round. The additional funding will be utilized to underwrite the company’s continued aggressive hiring plans particularly in the area of intellectual property (IP) development, as well as sales, marketing and client services. This round brings the company’s total funding to $5 million.

"Cloud computing has changed the way we think not only about technology, but business itself. It’s not just about driving out costs anymore. The world now recognizes that virtually unlimited access to infrastructure, applications and services means that businesses can eliminate previous growth and competitive barriers and re-dedicate its resources to innovation and business differentiation," said Chris Greendale, Founder and CEO of Cloud Technology Partners. "Our early and significant success has enabled Cloud Technology Partners to attract highly experienced A+ professionals that are truly the cream-of-the-crop – each boasting many, many years of acquired knowledge and expertise, as well as direct hands-on experience…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Marshall.

Cloud computing has been on almost every IT organizations’ buzz word bingo sheet for many years, but still only a fraction of organizations out there today have successfully completed their "journey to the cloud." Even VMware — a company synonymous with server virtualization — has over the last few years turned its attention to the cloud. At last year’s VMworld virtualization conference, the theme was "Your Cloud, Own It." A year later, the VMworld 2012 conference theme was "Right Here. Right Now." And VMware was telling show attendees "this is the time to enter the new cloud era."

So is this the year of the cloud? Like VMware, VMTurbo seems to think so. Also like VMware, VMTurbo has its roots in virtualization. The company started out managing VMware ESX hypervisors and virtual machines, but it is now looking to the sky and updating its technology to bring additional intelligence and management to the cloud with the release of Operations Manager 3.2…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

TechSoup in partnership with TechSoup Global Network conducted its 2012 Global Cloud Computing Survey among 10,500 nonprofits, charities, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) from 88 countries on the use of technology hosted in the cloud at nonprofit organizations.

The objective of the survey was to determine the current state of the technological equipment of these organizations and their future plans in the adoption of cloud technologies. TechSoup Global’s report reveals that a majority of NGOs are keen to move their IT to the cloud. However, they need more skills and education and support to take full advantage of cloud in terms of costs, productivity and collaboration…

Grazed from Economic Times. Author: Peerzada Abrar.

Nexus Venture Partners has injected first round funding of $ 2 million in Bangalore-based storage startup Datagres which sells data management products to large enterprises. The two-year-old firm will use the funding to market its products and hire talent in the US and Asia markets.

"We have developed a technology that helps to distinguish active application data which is more in demand and bring it closer to applications at the right time for higher performance," said Srinivasan Viswanathan, founder of Datagres…

Grazed from ITWire. Author: Stephen Withers.

Founded almost a year ago by Macquarie Telecom, Fujitsu, InfoPlex and VMware, OzHub has the stated goal of building local consumer and business confidence in cloud computing. The latest companies to join the organisation are Alcatel-Lucent Australia and F5.

"Cloud is very real but there are also real concerns to address, such as the ability for emerging services to meet the performance and trust expectations of users," said Alcatel-Lucent Australia president and managing director, Sean O’Halloran. "We have a strong role to play and we’re thrilled to be supporting OzHub to put Australia forward as a leading cloud market."…

Grazed from Networking. Author: John Dix.

According to pundits a good percentage of IT spending is already out of IT’s control and the trend calls for it to keep tipping away.

As we enter budget season, that raises interesting questions about the future of IT spending and, more importantly, questions about corporate IT responsibility and accountability. Regarding the latter, there are many hidden perils that will likely get ugly in the coming years.

In its "Raising Your Digital IQ" survey of 500 large U.S. companies, PwC concludes that 15% to 30% of IT spending already occurs outside the IT consolidated budget (see "Does ‘shadow IT’ lurk in your company?"). And Gartner says that within three years that number will reach 35%. Ten years ago it was less than 10% (see "The upside of shadow IT")…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

Many small businesses are heading to the cloud. This is a fact, considering cloud computing companies are some of the fastest growing in the tech world now. Cloud computing offers promise for lower costs, heightened IT efficiency and security. Truth be told, even though the mentioned benefits are valid, cloud computing is not as glamorous as you might think. As a small business, all factors remaining constant, you must understand the ideal way to manage the benefits for optimal performance. Lower costs don’t necessarily mean efficiency. The following tips should get you there the smart way.

Keep your bandwidth efficient

Cloud computing technology runs on the internet. Speed matters. The bandwidth that is offered for whatever product or function your business adds on the cloud should be the most important factor when you select a provider. For example, when you have a small bandwidth yet your small business website is huge, the overall product will be extremely slow…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Carlene Masker.

In the current global economic climate, companies and enterprises are required to migrate to cloud-based deployment models in order reduce costs and become self-sustainable. Post the dot-com bubble, the development of advanced web and storage technologies has been on the ascension. One such revolutionary technology developed post the dot-com era is cloud Computing, which focuses on the deliverance of computing services over the Internet. The highlight characteristic of cloud computing technologies is that they bring about system independence, multi-tenancy, scalability, virtualization, and more. Due to these benefits, companies and organizations are keen on migrating to cloud computing platforms.

Security is a prime area of concern for businesses when planning to migrate to cloud based services, along with other concerns such as reliability and integrating capability with existing IT infrastructure. There are already numerous assertions made by major technology companies regarding the rise of cloud-based deployments. In a recent conference, Cisco stated that it will be a tedious task to monitor data transferred to and from the cloud. On the flip side, renowned cloud service providers like Salesforce.com and Amazon Web Services state that the fears regarding security risks in cloud-based models are sort of overblown…