Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknas.

Rackspace has released Cloud Monitoring, which includes an API designed to give users flexibility in monitoring websites and Web applications that run on a variety of platforms, the company said on Wednesday.

Cloud Monitoring is based on the technology from Cloudkick, a company Rackspace acquired in 2010. Since then the Cloudkick team has been working to incorporate its monitoring system into Rackspace’s product portfolio, according to John Engates, CTO at Rackspace.

An important function is the service’s ability to monitor different systems…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

Autodesk missed second quarter sales expectations by a wide margin and the company said it would restructure and lock down expenses as it tried to position its business better for cloud computing.

The design and engineering software maker reported second quarter earnings of 28 cents a share on revenue of $569 million, up 4 percent from a year ago. Non-GAAP earnings were 48 cents a share. Wall Street was expecting second quarter earnings of 49 cents a share on revenue of $593 million.

That sales miss translated into Autodesk shares plunging 21 percent in afterhours trading…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Agam Shah.

Dell on Thursday said it will offer dedicated servers in its data centers and off-premises application and storage services for companies looking to establish private clouds.

Dell’s Cloud Dedicated program intends to reduce the stress of companies hosting servers locally by moving workloads off premises to Dell’s data centers. Dell will deliver IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) offerings through the private cloud, which could reduce the costs involved in deploying servers and managing services locally.

The program helps companies move applications into the cloud, and the service levels can meet security and compliance requirements, Dell said. The service bundles storage and networking, and can handle large or small workloads. A number of managed service options are offered with the program…

Grazed from MSPNews. Author: Laura Stotler.

Virtualization, the growing prominence of "bring your own device" in the workplace, the push to move applications to the cloud and the growing presence of big data all present unique challenges for today’s managed service providers (MSP). In the face of these changes in technology, end devices and the way services are delivered, perhaps the most important solution MSPs can offer their customers is solid security services.

And yet delivering security in a changing marketplace isn’t as simple as offering firewall management – not in a world in which data centers are migrating throughout the globe, mobile devices are multiplying faster than hardware can be manufactured and users are demanding more and more from their service providers…

Grazed from Federal Times. Author: Nicole Blake Johnson.

For some federal network managers, the topic of cloud computing causes palms to sweat and hearts to race.

That is because “moving to the cloud” really constitutes a huge leap of faith for managers used to controlling every switch, router, firewall and wire that makes their network responsive. In short, it’s about ceding a lot of control, said Joe Beal, director of security services and chief information security officer at Creative Computing Solutions Inc., a program management and information technology services firm.

These managers are transitioning from being infrastructure and systems owners to data owners, Beal said…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.

Business organizations are increasingly moving towards the cloud. However, there are still some obstacles to its widespread acceptance and ongoing development. While many are happy about how things are evolving in the cloud, there are also some missing pieces that must be taken into consideration.

For one, service administration is still far from being perfect. Cloud computing services must be managed by enforcing policies, offering service authentication, and allocating such services only to authorized users. There are very few cloud computing providers who can offer an acceptable service administration but majority of these suppliers have to step up in order for cloud computing implementation to be successful…

Grazed from ITBusiness.ca. Author: Editorial Staff.

According to a global survey conducted by data recovery vendor Kroll Ontrack, data loss and data recovery aren’t top of mind for all IT organizations implementing a cloud computing or virtualization deployment.

Conducted at VMware Forums globally, 367 IT professionals participated in the in-person survey, with 51 per cent representing enterprises and 32 per cent being service providers.

The survey found that while 62 per cent of respondents are leveraging the cloud and/or virtualization, only 33 per cent of these organizations test data recovery plans regularly to ensure proper protocols are in place to protect this data…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jeffrey Burt.

Cisco Systems continues to be the dominant player in a growing Ethernet switch market that is being fueled by such trends as cloud computing, virtualization and mobility, according to IDC analysts.

In the second quarter, revenue for Ethernet switches worldwide jumped 8.5 percent, to $5.5 billion, while 10 Gigabit Ethernet switch sales increased 22.9 percent from the same period last year. In addition, 10GbE port shipments hit a record 3 million in the quarter, leading the overall market growth.

The strong performance of Ethernet switches—which saw revenue increases in every region, including economically troubled Europe—is an indication that networking continues to play a key role in new IT infrastructure deployments, according to Rohit Mehra, director of the Enterprises Communications Infrastructure business at IDC…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Kirill Bensonoff.

There’s usually nothing very complicated about paying sales taxes. You go to the store to buy an Xbox game and, at least in most states, you pay a few extra bucks.

When you start talking about the cloud, things get more complicated very quickly. After all, the whole point of cloud computing is that your software and storage space is remote—often in a different state or even a different country. Maybe your data is duplicated in two different places with wholly different tax laws.

The issue is so complicated, and so new, that most states don’t have clear rules yet about how to levy taxes in the cloud…

Grazed from Channelnomics. Author: Justin Crotty.

Enterprises have been dabbling with cloud computing and IT outsourcing services for years. Many have reached the point where they’re either comfortable with the functionality and reliability, or see that the economic benefits certainly outweigh the potential risks. This move to mainstream acceptance of cloud and IT outsourcing marks a significant evolution from “the dev/test period” to the “mission-critical era” and brings a great opportunity to the channel.

For one, this new era pushes IT needs and services beyond your block and tackle hosted e-mail and cloud-based backup. Rather than replacing or adding servers to their data centers, enterprises are looking to move application servers into hosted environments, or replace them with software services. In an effort to achieve this, many businesses are turning to systems integrators (SIs) for software, infrastructure, platform and professional services needed to support their cloud environments…