Grazed from equities.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

Network operator commitment to the cloud phenomenon has reached startling new levels, with investment set to top last year’s record US$13.5 billion*.

This focus and the issues, market challenges and the potential of the cloud computing space, will all be highlighted and debated during the three day Broadband Cloud Summit as part of October’s flagship industry event, the Broadband World Forum in Amsterdam.

Almost half of the 185 operators selling cloud services today are in Europe. In the first half of 2012, European operators have already outstripped their operator peers in pace of cloud service launch – accounting for 55% of all new services brought to market…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

Oracle’s emphasis on cloud computing isn’t going to wane anytime soon. To the contrary, on Thursday the vendor held the first in nearly 100 Cloud Builder Summit events scheduled for locations across the globe between now and December.

Attendees will learn how they can build an "enterprise cloud environment" in just two hours using Oracle’s technology, according to the events’ website.

The limited information available suggests that the focus will be on private clouds built with products like Oracle’s Exadata and Exalogic "engineered systems," as well as its Enterprise Manager 12c software for management and orchestration…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Clive Longbottom.

Fear of cloud security risks has been around for as long as cloud computing technology itself. While high-profile cloud outages and data theft further make IT professionals sceptical, securing the cloud need not be taxing. Here’s a clue: Make data the centre of your attention, not the technology.

Moving IT to the cloud brings advantages such as flexibility and scalability, but its security risks are a major reason why potential customers are hesitant to adopt it. The benefits of cloud computing are plentiful. It makes for effective working across complex value chains — from the organisation to its suppliers and on to their suppliers and from the organisation to its customers and then on to their customers…

Grazed from TechTarge. Author: Michael Poulin.

Application interoperability is the issue that’s keeping my company from adopting SaaS applications. It doesn’t look like SaaS vendors can offer real-time interoperability between our apps in private clouds and SaaS apps. What approaches could we take internally to achieve private-public cloud app interoperability? Are there any standards?

Interoperability in cloud computing has the same problems as interoperability between homegrown applications and commercial software, or between different commercial software. These problems in the cloud are widely recognized but standards bodies turned to them only recently. The world of cloud is a bit wilder than the world of applications because clouds currently offer an opportunity for cloud providers to lock in new, and not technically savvy, business customers…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Chad Berndston.

Marc Benioff, the oft-outspoken co-founder and CEO of Salesforce.com, is among two new appointees to Cisco (NSDQ:CSCO)’s board of directors, the networking titan confirmed Thursday.

Benioff and Dr. Kristina M. Johnson, CEO of Enduring Hydro and the former Undersecretary of Energy for the U.S. Department of Energy, are part of Cisco’s board as of Aug. 1, expanding its membership to 14 seats.

"We are extremely pleased to welcome Marc and Kristina to Cisco’s board of directors," John Chambers, Cisco’s chairman and CEO, said in a statement. "Marc has changed the face of technology through his bold ideas around cloud computing and the social enterprise. Kristina brings an unmatched expertise in science and technology, which will help guide Cisco as we continue to innovate and transform our customers’ experience."…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mary Brandel.

When Donald Roper found himself in the job market earlier this year, he quickly learned how high the bar had been raised in his profession.

A senior systems administrator with 28 years in IT, an MBA and seven certifications to his name — including one in virtualization — he discovered that wasn’t always enough.

"A number of times, I’d go for an interview, and they’d ask, ‘Do you have Citrix?’" recounts Roper. "I’d say, ‘No — I thought you were looking for a virtualization person.’ And they’d say, ‘Oh yes, you have to have that, too.’ Nowadays, they want you to have everything."…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

These days, I’m running into more than a few innovative enterprises looking to stand up their own cloud computing services or APIs for consumption outside of the business. In essence, enterprises are becoming cloud computing providers.

Enterprises are standing up cloud services in support of new business opportunities, such as better supply chain integration, better customer service, or even the ability to charge a subscription fee for access to bits and pieces of their existing information systems that may be of value to outside users. In doing so, they may also gain a client list that includes partners, customers, or even unknown users leveraging these services for a fee…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

EMC’s newly minted deal to work with Lenovo on X86 servers reverberated throughout the hardware sector after it was announced Wednesday morning. Under a key part of this three-pronged arrangement, Lenovo and will make and sell servers that will be “embedded into selected EMC storage systems over time.”

That could have big impact on non-aligned hardware players. BusinessWeek looked at the deal through the Dell lens — EMC and Dell had a long-time if uneasy partnership that started to unravel with Dell’s acquisition of storage player Equallogic 5 years ago. Per EMC’s positioning, the Lenovo-EMC servers will compete most directly with Dell at the low end but HP stock also took a hit after the news…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Art Wittman.

For the last six weeks, Oracle and HP have been publically airing their dirty laundry in a court case that resulted from Oracle’s 2011 unilateral decision to drop support for HP’s Itanium-based servers. On August 1, Judge James Kleinberg issued his decision and order in the case, which amounted to yet another in a string of losses in court for Oracle.

In his decision, the judge strongly backed HP’s claims that its September 20, 2010, contract with Oracle explicitly said that mutual product support must continue as it had in the past.

In deciding a remedy, the judge had two options. The first was to award HP a cash settlement with no requirement that Oracle support HP’s Itanium servers. The second option–the one that Judge Kleinberg chose–was to require Oracle to continue support, and for Oracle to pay for damages HP has already incurred…