Grazed from MaximumPC. Author: Paul Lilly.

It wasn’t too terribly long ago that "cloud computing" was a loosey-goosey marketing term being thrown around by anyone and everyone in the software space. And now? There’s been a marked shift towards cloud-based services, which is a market that research firm Gartner predicts will grow 19.6 percent to $109 billion by the end of 2012.

"The cloud services market is clearly a high-growth sector within the overall IT marketplace," said Ed Anderson, research director at Gartner. "The key to taking advantage of this growth will be understanding the nuances of the opportunity within service segments and geographic regions, and then prioritizing investments in line with the opportunities."…

Grazed from Hartford Business. Author: Editorial Staff.

Stamford cloud-software developer Kaavo says it won a patent on technology that is the centerpiece of a product introduced three years ago.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office this week issued to Kaavo patent No. 8271974, titled "Cloud computing lifecycle management for N-tier applications.” There are 45 claims in the patent, the company said. Cloud computing is the delivery of software or hardware resources via a network, typically the Internet…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: John Omwamba.

The kind of network model that one employs to compile, distribute and exchange data determines the security of its passage through the Internet. This brings the question of whether the flat model can serve as the best security option for cloud computing. This model, first of all, helps to create a more direct relationship between the data provider and the recipient compared to tiered structures. Tiered structures are networks that have not only the access and the core but other integrated endpoints within the distribution path. The flat system only has the access and end points. It virtually eliminates the necessity of intermediaries, which leads to fast and more reliable information retrieval.

The basic question is: is it still the way to go when thinking about cloud security?…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

When it comes to managing on-premise systems, virtualization and cloud computing shops want quick answers to complex queries — without dealing with the underlying infrastructure. Some of those shops have taken a leap of faith and adopted emerging products that offer such big data analytics features, delivered via Software as a Service (SaaS).

"They can simplify views of very complex information into a webpage that anyone can look at," said Nathan Smith, senior engineer at Centered Networks, a San Francisco-based Desktop as a Service provider…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Proximex™, a global leader in physical security information management (PSIM), announced today that its Physical Security Information Management (PSIM) solution has been implemented on the Windows Azure cloud computing platform. The Proximex Surveillint™ Cloud Edition implementation serves as a signal of marketplace acceptance of the Windows Azure cloud-based solution delivery model from Microsoft Corp. for mission-critical enterprise applications.

Surveillint by Proximex connects and correlates information from disparate systems into one centralized view to help mitigate risk, ensure compliance and lower total cost of ownership. Cloud enabled deployment options for Surveillint offer a number of potential advantages to PSIM users, including:

• Capital savings, by eliminating the requirement for customers to procure, deploy and maintain system hardware to support their infrastructure software environments
• Flexibility, by providing customers with the ability to quickly expand capacity to support changing operational needs on demand
• For management, the ability to better understand and plan for the operational requirements and costs associated with PSIM deployment and operation…

Grazed from PCPro. Author: Editorial Staff.

Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive and Box.Net are the four biggest names in cloud storage, but how do they work out for business use? Dropbox is arguably the archetypal cloud storage service, and one of the first services to demonstrate the potential of cloud computing to the mainstream user. Despite concerns about security, it has become a popular tool in enterprise.

End users who used it and loved it within their personal computing bought it to work, and now many companies – officially or unofficially – use it as a quick and dirty system for sharing files between multiple users, perhaps across multiple companies and locations. What’s more, with its easy sync capabilities it’s a fine means of keeping key files up to date and accessible across desktop and laptop PCs and mobile devices…

Grazed from ENP NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Emerson Network Power, a business of Emerson (NYSE: EMR) and a global leader in maximizing availability, capacity, and efficiency of critical infrastructure, today announced a strategic partnership with high-performance cloud infrastructure provider Joyent to transform and optimize how physical and logical data center resources are packaged and delivered for public and private clouds.

‘We selected Emerson as our partner because the Trellis platform is the only DCIM solution available today that can provide holistic, real-time visibility from service processor to power grid and enable the dynamic optimization of data center physical resources,’ said Jason Hoffman, founder and CTO of Joyent. ‘Our partnership will enable us to offer a unique, tightly integrated, modular, highly efficient solution that optimizes the entire infrastructure based on the energy consumption of application workloads.’…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

The private cloud is many things, say its champions: a way to move data off a local server stack but still retain the benefits of being "alone"; a way to reduce costs and a way to improve agility. But amid all that this subset of cloud technology does well, there are some things that aren’t its strengths–and some it can’t do at all. Enough misconceptions have arisen, in fact, that research firm Gartner issued a news release detailing five things these clouds are not.

I Do Not Think it Does What You Think it Does

Chief among the myths surrounding taking a cloud private is that it is the same as virtualization, according an equities.com report on the Gartner statement. The research company notes that "server and infrastructure virtualization are important foundations for private cloud computing. However, virtualization and virtualization management are not, by themselves, private cloud computing." They also point out that, contrary to popular opinion, this kind of cloud computing is not necessarily on-premises, won’t always be private, and isn’t an entirely cost-saving measure. Nonlocal data centers still meet privacy requirements, hybrid clouds are on the rise, and cost benefits are not nearly so significant as the agility and task automation abilities a company gains…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Jeff Vance.

If you’re already tired of all the hype surrounding cloud computing, you’d better brace yourself for another cycle focused on OpenStack, the open-source cloud platform that’s touted as the operating system for the cloud.

The forces aligning behind OpenStack are impressive ones. The project originated in NASA, was moved along in partnership with Rackspace and is now spearheaded by the OpenStack Foundation. OpenStack is backed by 180 member companies, including biggies like AT&T, HP, IBM, Cisco, VMware and Intel…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

GigaMedia Limited (NASDAQ: GIGM) today provided more details on its new cloud computing business, GigaCloud, and announced launch is planned for March 2013. GigaCloud provides a unique, integrated platform of critical services and tools for small-to-medium enterprises (SMEs) in Greater China enabling SMEs to increase flexibility, efficiency and competitiveness.

"Cloud technology is changing the way businesses operate," stated GigaMedia Chief Executive Officer John Stringer. "Old hardware and telecom systems no longer support the way businesses work today; in Asia, SMEs are looking for solutions that are flexible, mobile and affordable that allow for managing business remotely using smart phones or tablets."…