Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Bob Lewis.

Once again, IT is going away or becoming less important or being relegated to nonstrategic support responsibilities or something. We’ve heard this tune for decades. It might really happen this time, though — a consequence not of the cloud or BYOD or any of the usual suspects, but of so many companies being seriously sick.

It’s probably true that CIOs have to take IT to the next level or have it fall to a lower one. What is the next level? To recap from last week’s Advice Line on the subject, next-gen IT collaborates, widely and deeply, with everyone else in the enterprise. That, in turn, can’t happen without a company that (1) does something that matters, (2) has executives, managers, and employees who are committed to making it happen, and (3) has enough mutual trust throughout that whoever needs to collaborate right now can do so without any concerns about the political consequences…

Grazed from CFOWorld. Author: Editorial Staff.

Aptira, a provider of managed hosting, public cloud infrastructure and enterprise private cloud solutions, has selected Piston Cloud Computing’s Piston Enterprise OpenStack™ to bring an easy, secure and open private cloud operating system to its Australian, New Zealand (A/NZ) and Indian enterprise customers. Aptira is Piston Cloud’s sole A/NZ and Indian partner, and selected Piston Enterprise OpenStack because it is the only streamlined cloud platform that can be installed in 10 minutes and can reduce cloud operating costs by more than 30 per cent1.

Customers will have the choice of an on-premises model, or be provided with a hosted data centre, infrastructure management, and server and network equipment powered by Piston Enterprise OpenStack software. By deploying Piston Enterprise OpenStack, Aptira’s customers will be able to easily build and manage their private cloud without requiring a large capital outlay…

Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Esther Carey.

The General Services Administration is seeking input from industry about the potential of developing cloud-computing brokers which could mediate between cloud providers and consumers. The agency released a request for information Tuesday to assist other agencies in moving toward the cloud.

The end goal is to "develop new and innovative ways for the government to procure cloud services in less time with higher value delivered, and allow government to take advantage of the inherent benefits of cloud computing," GSA said. The RFI identified several possible benefits of cloud computing, including pay-as-you-go pricing and the ability to easily take advantage of innovation…

Grazed from MSPNews. Author: Laura Stotler.

In the wild and rapidly evolving world of cloud computing, there are no regulations or safeguards in place to protect the SMBs and enterprises that increasingly rely on these services. Now more than ever there is a need for a globally accepted and universal standard and code of behavior for managed service providers (MSP) that deliver cloud solutions.

Charles Weaver, co-founder and CEO for the MSPAlliance, a 15,000-member certification and standards body, is calling on the industry to come together to create regulations and standards that will protect cloud services consumers. Weaver contends that with cloud computing adoption accelerating, there is an urgent need for standards and regulations.

"Today, the cloud is unregulated," said Weaver. "It actually takes more licensing, oversight and continuing education to cut and style hair than it does to manage data in the cloud."…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Verio Inc., the leading provider of online business solutions worldwide, provides infrastructure designed to offer small-to-medium businesses additional flexibility and functionality via the company’s Cloud(n) platform. With the ongoing evolution of what small businesses require to succeed in today’s economic climate, Cloud(n) provides SMBs efficient, reliable cloud services that are risk and hassle-free.

Verio’s Cloud(n) is ideal for SMBs with fluctuating resource needs, who want a safe and reliable, yet flexible hosting solution. Businesses seeking excellent performance and functionality without the costs associated with enterprise-level solutions are ideal candidates for Verio’s Cloud services…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Richard Minney.

Business management and ERP have undergone huge technological, social and economic shifts. The explosion of cloud computing, mobility of business users, Big Data demands and microscopic focus on cost cutting are changing the pace and direction of every company’s IT strategy.

Five years ago cloud computing was more expensive than on-premise, analytical data was difficult to curate and the benchmark in usability, especially on mobile devices, was set extremely low. Today’s advances in these areas create massive opportunities for large and small businesses to take advantage of the best tools, infrastructure and user interfaces modern technology has to offer…

Grazed from The DataCenter Journal. Author: Jason Cowie.

Chief information officers understand the private cloud and the benefits associated with the technology, but they still need to sell the initial investment to other executives – CEOs and chief financial officers. To C-level leaders, the CIO’s ability to explain concrete return on investment and demonstrated value makes all the difference between embracing cloud computing or abandoning cloud initiatives that could have been hugely beneficial. So how can CIOs present the business-friendly benefits of the private cloud to their bosses?
The value of private cloud education

For starters, CIOs need to look at themselves as educators. Some might feel this is less necessary than it once was. Last fall, for example, the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) surveyed a group of 500 IT and business professionals and 400 IT firms. Among its findings were positive indicators about executive understanding of the cloud. The 58 percent of executives and IT staff who said they had significantly increased their knowledge of the cloud suggests that the CIO’s role as educator should actually be shrinking…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Editorial Staff.

Yahoo Japan subsidiary IDC Frontier has invested $6.1 million in Basho Technologies, a U.S. distributed-data and cloud-storage technology firm, and will use Basho’s technology in its own cloud-computing platform, Basho said.

IDC Frontier will deploy Cambridge, Mass.-based Basho’s riak software in its cloud platform and help Basho roll out its technology throughout Japan. Cloud computing is the delivery of computing and storage capacity that allows users to, for instance, rent servers and software to store data over a network…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

Cloud computing leader Amazon Web Services shed a little more light on its upcoming first-ever user conference, re:Invent, which will be held in Las Vegas at the end of November.

The re:Invent conference, which will run Nov. 27 through 29 at Las Vegas’ Venetian casino and resort, will host AWS customers from around the world in a first-ever gathering of customers, partners, developers and others that make up the AWS ecosystem, Adam Selipsky, vice president of marketing, sales, product management and support at AWS, told eWEEK.

“We’re very excited to be holding our first global user and partner conference at the end of November in Las Vegas,” Selipsky said. “It’s something we’ve talked about for a number of years and had strong demand from customers and partners.”…

Appcelerator, the leading mobile platform company, has released a Virtual Private Cloud edition of Appcelerator Cloud Services (ACS). Introduced three months ago, ACS integrates services such as push notifications, user logins, photo uploads, check-ins and status updates easily into apps. Tasks that usually require server programming or tedious integration with multiple SDKs are performed through one simple interface. The newly released ACS Virtual Private Cloud is designed for enterprises that want dedicated, on-demand server resources for all ACS features along with secure connections to their corporate data center without purchasing or administering their own infrastructure.