Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Sharon Hurley Hall.

Discussion of cloud computing is likely to move away from whether to adopt it to questions how to management it. That’s the view of Michael Vizard, writing for IT Business Edge. Mr Vizard believes that the adoption debate is largely over, and this hypothesis is borne out by recent IDC research that predicts 14 million new jobs in this sector over the next three years.

Cloud Job Expansion for Midsized Businesses

Small and midsize businesses will see their share of this expansion and will account for about half of the new jobs. Since their size makes them able to respond easily to technological and business changes, these businesses are quickly turning to cloud solutions, something many large businesses have been slower to do. In the main, small and midsized businesses are less constrained by the need to support legacy systems…

Grazed from CIOZone.  Author: Bill Gerneglia.

America’s mid-sized companies are far more important to the U.S. economy than most people realize. A recent Deloitte survey titled “America’s economic engine” whose purpose was to provide insight into this often overlooked source of economic dynamism yields interesting insights. As a group, this segment employs more people than the entire S&P 500 and has total revenues equivalent to 40 percent of the U.S. GDP. This is a collection of companies that really leverages the latest in IT to drive profits.

 Companies recognize the growing importance of technology. They continue to prioritize automation of business processes, data analytics, and business intelligence as triggers to increase productivity and areas where they are most likely to make investments in 2012. According to the survey there seems to be a greater recognition of the benefits of cloud computing. In the Deloitte September 2011 survey, Cloud Computing was recognized as a distant fourth as a means to increase productivity. In the current survey conducted in March 2012, it nearly equaled data analytics and business intelligence in terms of likely investments…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Larry Dignan.

OpenStack, a cloud platform started by Rackspace and NASA, is either the biggest virally growing open software movement since Linux or a murky hodge podge of technologies that could flop.

It all depends on what tech vendors you ask and the horses they have in the cloud architecture race.

Most of the horses—at least the vocal ones—to date appear to be on the pro-OpenStack side of the equation. Rackspace’s recent first quarter results highlight the power of OpenStack. Rackspace’s first quarter and outlook illustrate the power of OpenStack. Rackspace’s quarter was a disappointment, but Wall Street analysts kept gushing about the power of OpenStack…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Mellanox Technologies, Ltd. (tase:MLNX), a leading supplier of high-performance, end-to-end interconnect solutions for data center servers and storage systems, and Eucalyptus Systems, creator of the most widely deployed on-premise cloud computing platform, today announced that they have established a strategic partnership program to further accelerate and foster adoption of efficient, high-performance cloud infrastructures.

A critical issue in today’s cloud solution is complexity. The industry is looking for better integration of multiple software, hardware, and management elements, as well as end-to-end solution validation. The collaboration between Mellanox and Eucalyptus will provide the cloud industry with an efficient cloud infrastructure that is simple to deploy…

Grazed from InformationWeek.   Author: Jayabalan Subramanium.

Data security keeps chief information security officers (CISOs) up at night, and with new computing models such as cloud, the stakes can be perilously higher. The possibilities of data loss, data leakage, service downtime, regulatory constraints, and risk of intellectual property theft create a treacherous risk environment. These security issues illustrate the significant hurdles a business must clear before adopting cloud computing. Any organization considering a move to the cloud must carefully assess what applications and data it can migrate to a cloud environment because cloud computing may not be appropriate for all business processes.

Organizations must carefully examine the capabilities of any potential cloud services provider. Security, compliance, availability, and scalability are all factors that must be thoroughly evaluated before embarking on the journey to the cloud. At the same time, it is important to consider the financial viability of the service provider. A business does not want a service provider to disappear the month after it moves its processes into the cloud. In today’s harsh operating environment, adding value and increasing efficiency are imperative. Cloud computing has matured to the point that it can be a secure, viable, and highly effective approach. But without careful planning and consideration of market concerns, the gains can be overshadowed by the risk exposure…

Grazed from PCWorld.  Author: Bernard Golden.

Last week I wrote about the fact that IT organizations are now executing an "and" cloud computing strategy, in the sense that their future plans include (most likely) an internal cloud based on VMware and an external cloud (most likely Amazon Web Services).

I pointed out that the traditional model of managing virtual machines–creating a VM template that contains all the software components that the VM contains–is inappropriate in a world in which applications may be deployed internally, externally, across both internal and external clouds, and even transferred between internal and external clouds. This is due to the fact that the virtual machine images are typically incompatible across deployment environments…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

When it comes to cloud computing, the rule “no pain, no gain” seems to apply. Cisco just released a survey that had some rather colorful analogies relating to the attitudes IT managers have toward cloud computing deployments. Nevertheless, cloud is coming on fast and furious.

For instance, the survey of 1,300 managers finds that almost two in five,  39%, said they dread the challenge so much that they “would rather get a root canal, dig a ditch, or do their own taxes.” Further, almost one-third, 31%, said they could “train for a marathon or grow a mullet in a shorter period of time than it would take to migrate their company’s applications to the cloud.”

Security is also a nagging concern, cited by 72%. In fact, nearly two in five respondents said they would not trust their own personal information—such as medical records
and Social Security numbers—with the cloud provider they are currently using…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Adoption of cloud computing is largely being driven by software as a service and private cloud adoption according to a study released by Network Instruments. Although the majority reported improved application availability and user experience, over twenty percent indicated their ability to monitor and troubleshoot worsened after deploying cloud.

The onsite survey of 102 network engineers, IT managers and executives attending Interop found:

Cloud Becomes Commodity: Seventy-four percent of respondents have cloud computing services running on their network. Of these respondents, 45 percent have implemented some form of software as a service (SaaS) like Salesforce.com or Google Apps. This was followed by infrastructure as a service (16 percent). A smaller number (11 percent) rely on some form of platform as a service (PaaS) such as Microsoft Azure or Heroku…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Ignacio M. Llorente.

The European Commission has just published a report entitled Advances in Clouds – Research in Future Cloud Computing where a Group of Experts provides a state-of-the-art view on cloud computing technologies, its position in and its relevance for Europe. The Group of Experts was conveyed in 2011 and includes representatives from major Cloud players, like IBM, NEC, Google, Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs, France Telecom, Oracle, British Telecom, or T-Systems. The report brings valuable information for people defining Cloud Computing strategies, developing innovative research lines, or exploring emerging market opportunities beyond today’s Clouds.

The report features OpenNebula as one of the most widely used platform to build cloud infrastructures, and elaborates on OpenNebula and OpenStack as open cloud managers addressing different types of cloud needs, and implementing different distribution models and interoperability strategies…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Adam Riglian.

HP detailed its cloud computing strategy at the OpenStack Conference in San Francisco to an audience that had long been wondering when the Silicon Valley superpower would finally make clear its cloud ambitions.

The Palo Alto, Calif.-based tech giant had a major presence at the conference, headed by Zorawar “Biri” Singh, HP’s senior vice president and general manager of cloud services. Singh described HP’s plans for cloud computing services, described how its partnerships will work and talked about what he sees for the future.

It was a clear message that HP intends to compete in the cloud market at a high level…