Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Jack Rosenblum.

Companies are increasingly aware of the business value that cloud computing brings and are taking steps towards transition to the cloud. A smooth transition entails a thorough understanding of the benefits as well as challenges involved. Like any new technology, the adoption of cloud computing is not free from issues. Some of the most important challenges are as follows.

1. Security and Privacy

The main challenge to cloud computing is how it addresses the security and privacy concerns of businesses thinking of adopting it. The fact that the valuable enterprise data will reside outside the corporate firewall raises serious concerns. Hacking and various attacks to cloud infrastructure would affect multiple clients even if only one site is attacked. These risks can be mitigated by using security applications, encrypted file systems, data loss software, and buying security hardware to track unusual behavior across servers…

Grazed from IT Web. Author: Derek Hershaw.

While much has been written, spoken and hyped about the cloud and cloud computing, the reality is that the cloud itself is not new. "What is new," says MWeb CEO Derek Hershaw, "is the growing realisation that the cloud can be a powerful business tool."

Hershaw points out that anyone who uses social media, like Facebook or flickr, to share photographs with friends and family, or applications like Skype or Linkedin is already using cloud computing.

"When you use a service like Facebook or flickr, you don’t think much about how it works or where your photographs are stored. What concerns you is that your photographs are there, when you want to see them, regardless of where you are or whether you choose to access them from your smartphone, your tablet computer, your notebook or your desktop computer…

Grazed from MediaPost.com. Author: Yogesh Kumar Verma.

Cloud computing has become a marketing buzzword and is now used in many organizations. Yet the change to this system can represent a loss of control and the potential for disaster. Instead of fundamental shifts, IT decision makers want positive — yet incremental — change. They want to hear how the cloud can improve the way they work today, not radically alter it. In short, they want evolution, not revolution. The key is to balance the change and justify it on a case-to-case basis before making this change as a corporate decision.

Cloud computing is, in simplistic terms, the idea that you can offload your data storage and processing tasks to a very large set of computers, typically maintained by some large company such as Amazon. The novelty is that you abstract where the data is stored and which machine does the processing. None of this is really new — even conceptually, as the "grid folks" have been pushing the ‘compute-anywhere’ vision for years. Some of the key unresolved issues are outlined here:…

Grazed from Econonmic Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

Technology services firm Wipro has partnered with internet search engine provider Google to offer cloud computing solutions that leverage the vast computing infrastructure that the search major has built over the past several years.

Wipro will build technology services solutions such as developing applications using Google App Engine, cloud-based storage solutions that use Google’s vast data centers and data analytics that require significant computing power using both Google’s compute engine and its extensive server farms across the globe…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is a disruptive market force to traditional IT business operations, with its pay-as-you-go consumption model and asset-light delivery of key business applications and services.

As with many new, disruptive technologies, the question now arises as to how organisations embrace – or reject – cloud computing as vital to their business. Companies must decide whether they will adjust their focus in the name of future relevance, or cling to old models that were successful in the past. How have organisations entrenched in legacy technologies balanced the disruptive innovation represented by the cloud? What can be learned from those that are getting it right?

Bradley Bunch, General Manager: Microsoft Solutions at Dimension Data Middle East and Africa, believes vendors making the most successful transition to the cloud are those that realised years ago that cloud was set to become a revolutionary force in the industry, rather than a minor innovation…

Grazed from TechGoblin. Author: Daniel Moeller.

Science fiction is a popular source of entertainment, with its descriptions of futuristic societies and their use of technology. Most of it seems closer to magical premonitions than to reliable predictions, but other stories are eerily realistic, based on existing technology and the extrapolation of new developments. In some cases, this means that authors have actually predicted systems that seemed like magic back then, but are widely used now.

For example, not many people know that Mark Twain, famous for his novels Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn, predicted the internet in his short story “From the London Times of 1904” no later than 1898. In this story, he describes a network of information and communication formed by a system of telephones…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Steven Burke.

There is a twister that is about to wreak havoc on the channel landscape, and it’s going to hit those solution providers that are coming up short in terms of making investments to sell cloud computing services. Make no mistake about it. There are far too many legacy solution providers moving too slowly to make the treacherous transition to the cloud computing services model. One reason for the growing gap between the cloud computing solution provider haves and have-nots is the heavy investment in both technology and thought leadership that is necessary to cross the cloud computing chasm.

It’s one of the reasons, by the way, that we here at UBM Channel, with prodding from solution providers, put together the BoB (Best of Breed) conference, which is celebrating its second anniversary Oct. 15-17 at the Grand Hyatt in Tampa, Fla…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Dave Roberts.

Choices matter. Just ask Indiana Jones. In The Last Crusade, he was forced to pick the Holy Grail out of a lineup of cups that spanned everything from a crude wooden model to a high-end chalice apparently designed by Fabergé. The stakes were high. His adversaries chose poorly; Indy chose wisely, and won the day. Cloud computing strategies are a lot like that…