September 18, 2012 Off

CIA venture arm targets a secure cloud platform

By David

Grazed from Government Computer News. Author: Editorial Staff.

In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture fund company, has made its second investment in cloud computing in as many months, having recently entered into an agreement with Huddle to develop a secure version of its content collaboration platform for U.S. intelligence agencies, Information Week reports.

Last month, In-Q-Tel signed an agreement with Adaptive Computing to develop a cloud operating system. The agency company is also working with cloud storage specialist Cleversafe. Huddle, which promotes itself as an alternative to Microsoft’s SharePoint collaboration technology, is developing a version of its cloud-based platform that complies with the Federal Information Security Management Act. The Homeland Security Department and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency are preparing to implement the technology, according to the tech publication…

September 18, 2012 Off

5 Sneaky Tripwires in Your SaaS Contract

By David

Grazed from CFO. Author: Rob Livingstone.

In 10 Things You Just Gotta Have in Your Cloud Contract, I covered a range of things (10, as a matter of fact) that CFOs should think about when they sign a cloud contract.

But the subject is hardly exhausted, especially when it comes to software-as-a-service (SaaS), the most popular flavour of cloud computing, and (not coincidentally) the one with the lowest barrier to entry. The risks in cloud computing are more concentrated at the software layer than the platform and infrastructure layers (the other cloud computing flavours). The software layer contains all your application and business logic, which supports and runs your business…

September 18, 2012 Off

Secular Cloud Computing Trends Draw Investment Spending

By David

Grazed from The Wall Street Transcript. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing remains the main secular trend driving investment spending in technology, and it is enabling more secular trends in mobility, analytics and social computing, both in the consumer and enterprise worlds, says Deborah L. Koch, a Co-Manager at the Northern Technology Fund (NTCHX) and Senior Vice President at Northern Trust Corporation.

“You don’t really have the data or the logic of the applications stored on your computer, you’re accessing it through the Internet. What we’re seeing today is a broader adoption of that, not only by consumers to access digital content of all forms but also in the enterprise,” Koch said…

September 18, 2012 Off

Eliminate Storage Headaches: Virtualize

By David

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: George Crump.

he primary objective of virtualization and cloud computing is to create a data center that is more responsive to the needs of the business, that enables technology to be a competitive weapon instead of a cost center. Storage has to play a key role in this evolution so it can support these Agile IT initiatives.

In our upcoming webinar 3 Ways To Use The Cloud To Eliminate Storage Headaches, we are going to discuss how to eliminate storage administrative headaches like provisioning, performance management, storage expansion, and data protection. The key to eliminating these headaches is to create a storage value infrastructure which has three steps: virtualize the storage, automate the storage, and cloud-extend the storage. This first column will be devoted to storage virtualization, and we’ll cover the other two steps in our next column…

September 18, 2012 Off

New VMTurbo Release Enables Intelligent Onboarding and Automated Control for Cloud Infrastructures

By David
Grazed from VMTurbo.  Author: PR Announcement

VMTurbo, the leading provider of intelligent workload management software for cloud and virtualized environments, today revealed VMTurbo Operations Manager 3.2. This new release addresses the growing demand for greater intelligence, agility and automation in onboarding application workloads to private, public and hybrid clouds, as well as providing holistic and granular control for distributed multi-site operations.  The release also extends discovery and application-aware management to Java applications and Linux environments, and adds hypervisor support for Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (RHEV) 3.0.

“IT organizations are moving beyond simple virtual machine provisioning. Our clients are now considering how to orchestrate the delivery of multi-tier applications and assure committed service levels,” said Alessandro Perilli, research director at Gartner. “Automated infrastructure optimization, through dynamic resource allocation and intelligent workload placement, is critical to enable service assurance and scale operations in large private or public cloud environments”.

September 18, 2012 Off

Making Full Access to the Cloud Possible: Cloud Service Providers profit from HOB PPP Tunnel

By David
Grazed from HOB.  Author: PR Announcement

For Cloud Service Providers (CSP) it is important that their customers have universal, 24/7 access to their resources stored in the cloud. Important characteristics of a cloud access solution are, in addition to security, definitely high availability, multi-tenant capability and an easy and flexible installation and administration. The secure remote access solution HOB RD VPN blue edition fulfills these requirements and more: the optional HOB PPP Tunnel ensures full access to the cloud network. A further advantage for Cloud Service Providers: Attractive licensing. Licenses can be additionally added or subtracted monthly – fully flexible as their demands require.

HOB RD VPN with HOB PPP Tunnel for Secure Full Access

September 18, 2012 Off

Mission-Critical Applications in the Cloud: Are Agencies Ready for the Heavy Lift?

By David
Grazed from MeriTalk.  Author: PR Announcement

As Federal agencies are making cloud progress, the early-adopters that are moving their mission-critical applications to the cloud are realizing cost savings and improved access to IT, according to a new MeriTalk report, sponsored by EMC Corporation, VMware and Carahsoft. The report, “Mission-Critical Cloud: Ready for the Heavy Lift?” reveals that Feds could save approximately $16.6 billion annually if all agencies move just three mission-critical applications to the cloud. It tells us Feds spend more than half their IT budget on supporting mission-critical applications – and that private cloud is the platform of choice for mission-critical application transition. The study reveals how Federal IT executives view the barriers, current status, and future plans related to this shift.

September 18, 2012 Off

Dell Helps XS Deliver Cloud Based Agricultural Application to Increase Farming Yields with End-to-End Enterprise Infrastructure

By David
Grazed from Dell.  Author: PR Announcement

As a drought in the Midwest raises food prices, farming efficiency and getting the most from farm lands has become more essential than ever. XS, Inc. is known in the food and agriculture industry for its ability to provide internet-based applications to help its agricultural clients drive efficiency and business value within their own organizations. To keep those online applications up and running, XS, Inc. selected Dell Compellent storage arrays, PowerEdge servers, PowerVault disk storage, and Latitude laptops. Since XS, Inc. moved to Dell Compellent this year, the company has maintained 99.999 percent storage availability to support the company’s rapid growth and expects to realize an annual cost savings of $500 per deployed workstation and $2,000 per deployed server.

September 18, 2012 Off

GE Working to Bring Air Traffic Management into “The Cloud”

By David

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

A global leader in avionics and software development, the General Electric Company (NYS: GE) has embarked on an 18-month project with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to help bring NextGen air traffic management (ATM) technology into "The Cloud." Cloud computing will enable airlines and air traffic controllers to perform their tasks by sharing not only real-time information but also data analysis and decision support tools to improve aircraft operations and airspace efficiency.
GE researchers are working with NASA to enable NextGen air traffic management to be operated through …

GE researchers are working with NASA to enable NextGen air traffic management to be operated through cloud computing to improve aircraft operations and airspace efficiency. The effort to bring cloud computing to air traffic management is part of GE’s efforts to build the Industrial Internet.

September 18, 2012 Off

Emerson’s Trellis platform plays integral role in public and private clouds

By David

Grazed from PRNewsWire. 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.”…