Grazed from Manufacturing.net. Author: Don Lyman.

Cloud technology is proliferating throughout corporations around the globe, and manufacturing companies have been among the earliest adopters of cloud-based solutions. According to the July 2012 IDC Manufacturing Insights report, “Business Strategy: Cloud Computing in Manufacturing”, 22% of manufacturers worldwide have already implemented cloud-based computing systems, and an additional 45% of those surveyed are actively evaluating cloud deployments to replace internally-managed IT infrastructures over the next 24 months.

For the large number of manufacturers considering moving to the cloud, this article will provide a clear analysis of how cloud-based systems differ in their capabilities and costs from the traditional on-premise and hosted IT alternatives…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Having a cloud computing startup has at some times felt like being part of the California Gold Rush, says Nand Mulchandani, CEO and co-founder of ScaleXtreme, a 2-year-old company focused on easing management of multi-cloud environments.

Scads of entrepreneurs over the past few years have launched companies in an effort to grab a share of the riches they’ve seen companies such as Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and VMware reap. And why not? Forrester last year projected that the cloud computing industry will grow six-fold from $40 billion in 2010 to $241 billion by 2020…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Calabasas-based NetSol Technologies has created a new division to tackle the cloud computing market, the firm announced this morning. NetSol said that its new division, NetSolCloudVM, will offer infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) products to the North American market.

The company said that the division will offer clients IT infrastructure on a monthly, tiered subscription. The firm did not detail what kind of infrastructure it will use for the new offering, but did say it looks to provide "private cloud performance at an elastic cloud price". The new division will be headed by Imran Haider.

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

AT&T* is the leading choice among U.S. businesses for connecting their private clouds according to a study by industry analyst firm Frost & Sullivan. “Based on Frost & Sullivan’s independent research, AT&T emerges as the most widely used networking provider for connecting private clouds, demonstrating its early strength in this emerging area,” said Lynda Stadtmueller, Program Director, Cloud Computing Services, Frost & Sullivan.

“The Frost & Sullivan research highlights business customer reliance on virtual private networks (VPN) for connecting clouds,” said John Potter, Vice President, Hosting, Applications and Cloud Solutions, AT&T Business Solutions. “Using our VPN capabilities, customers are able to easily and seamlessly connect their private networks directly to virtual machines, the engines of the cloud. This can reduce time and costs associated with provisioning.”…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Joe Onisick.

In order to navigate the current landscape of IT, you need an economy-size can of Buzzword-Be-Gone. You can’t discuss any current technology without its marketeers describing it as a cloud-based, big-data solution that provides synergy and business value through blah, blah, blah. One term gaining tons of traction recently is software-defined data center. This one is being tossed around by execs at VMware, EMC and throughout the industry. Let’s dig into it some.

The concept of a software-defined data center is based on abstracting the hardware itself from the delivery of services to the business. This should sound quite familiar, as it’s a concept that’s been with us from the early days of virtualization through to the current cloud discussions. A software-defined data center is one in which the configuration of hardware is done through upper-level software systems. This allows new services to be turned on or off rapidly and existing services to grow and shrink as needed…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Gina Narcisi.

VMware has jumped on the open standards cloud computing bandwagon, recently announcing it will join the OpenStack Foundation and contribute to the development of the open source operating system for cloud computing.

The virtualization software provider has touted its vCloud product suite as a cloud operating system, which many view as a proprietary competitor to OpenStack. But while the cloud provider community may not have anticipated VMware’s move to join the OpenStack Foundation, the bid is a logical next step for VMware given recent industry events, noted Sam Barnett, directing analyst for data center and cloud at Campbell, Calif.-based Infonetics Research Inc…

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Bert Markgraf.

The eventual goal of cloud computing is a virtual IT environment accessed through a universal virtual desktop. While VMware recently introduced a completely virtual data center, the more immediate IT configuration, especially for midsize businesses, is likely to continue to be a mixture of local storage, traditional company data centers, and cloud infrastructure.

Employees will be able to get access to their data from office PCs and mobile devices, but they will not have a uniform virtual desktop and universal access to all applications. The virtual desktop infrastructure still has some limitations…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Jon Yeomans.

Huawei has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Intel, signalling the two companies’ intention to work together in a number of fields.

The firms will collaborate on new server, datacentre, storage and cloud computing products, with a view to selling them in Huawei’s home market of China and elsewhere, the pair announced on Thursday. No further details on the new products were given…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Pogoplug appears to be the first company to offer a service that uses Glacier, Amazon’s slow-but-cheap storage service as a data archival backend-in-the-cloud. But nobody expects it to be the last.

After Amazon announced Glacier, its slow-but-cheap data archiving service, a few weeks ago, it was only a matter of time before third-party service providers would take advantage of it. Now Pogoplug appears to be the first to do so. The San Francisco startup, which made its name with its shared storage service for small businesses and consumers has integrated Glacier as the archiving backend for that service…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Yandex, the Russian search engine, has taken its cloud storage product out of its invite-only beta. Like Box or Dropbox, Yandex.Disk offers users access to their files from any device, including their Apple and Android phones. Users will get 10 GB of storage for free.

Yandex, Russian’s largest search engine, has launched its own cloud storage product and will offer up to 20 gigabytes of storage for free. The service, called Yandex.Disk functions like Dropbox and Box, and comes immediately with 10 GB of storage. You can get more if you spam invite your friends…