Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Dana Gardner.

It now falls to CIOs to not only rapidly adapt to cloud computing, but to find the ways to protect their employees and customers as they adopt cloud models – even as security threats grow.  This is a serious — but not insurmountable challenge.

Cloud computing has clearly sparked the imagination of business leaders, who see it as a powerful new way to be innovative and gain first-mover advantages — with or without traditional IT’s consent.

This simply now means that the center of gravity for IT services is shifting toward the enterprise’s boundaries – moving increasingly outside their firewalls. And so how can companies have it both ways — exploit cloud’s promise but also provide enough security to make the risks acceptable? How can organizations retain rigor and control while pursuing cloud benefits?…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Allan Hackney.

My friends in the IT field seem to be moving toward jobs at cloud computing firms. I’m in IT operations at a traditional company. Am I missing the boat? There are two sides to the cloud computing coin: the buy and the sell. I surmise from your question that your friends are moving to sell-side consultancy and delivery firms. This is a fast-growing industry, and as a result, there’s a willingness [among employers] to make attractive offers to find talent. But don’t lose sight of the fact that in due course the buy side will be a much larger employer of cloud talent by orders of magnitude. If you’re at a traditional company, now is your moment to step up and lead the charge. You can really distinguish yourself as the cloud expert in your company (as opposed to being one of many at a cloud vendor or consultancy)…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Wyse Technology, the global leader in cloud client computing, will exhibit, demo and lead discussions on cloud client computing at Citrix Synergy(TM) 2012 in San Francisco, May 9th – 11th. Wyse, a Platinum Sponsor, will demonstrate its complete line of solutions, including the Wyse Xenith — the award-winning zero client for Citrix XenDesktop(R) and Citrix HDX(TM) technology, as well as reveal its next game changing solution — in Booth #206 at Moscone Center…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudscaling has joined the more than 300 member companies of the Open Data Center Alliance. The Alliance works to speed the migration to cloud computing by enabling the solution and service systems to address IT requirements with the highest level of interoperability and standards.

Cloudscaling joined the Alliance as a Contributor member and will participate with the Alliance’s Infrastructure Technical Workgroup to further the development of usage models developed by the Alliance. Contributor members are selected and approved by the organization’s Steering Committee.

Participation in the ODCA contributes to Cloudscaling’s development of hardware blueprints. The blueprints comprise a layer of the recently announced Cloudscaling Open Cloud System (OCS) that defines production-grade server and networking combinations that deliver predictable technical and economic performance to meet specific design requirements. Blueprints show how to implement cloud resource block designs in physical hardware to meet design requirements for security, availability and subscription rates…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider will be showcasing its next-generation data center switches, CloudEngine 12800, at Interop Las Vegas. With the industry’s largest switching capacity and highest performance, the CloudEngine series provide a better way for global enterprises to tap into the opportunities presented by the rise of cloud computing and ICT convergence. In addition to showcasing its latest innovations, Huawei will leverage its industry-leading, high reliability and high security campus solutions to power networking connectivity for Interop attendees and exhibitors at the event venue as one of two core network providers selected by the organizer.

"As one of the leading business technology events, Interop is an important platform for us to showcase our advanced products and expand our business globally," said William Xu, CEO of Huawei Enterprise Business Group. "We are excited to introduce the CloudEngine 12800, Huawei’s latest data center switches that provide the industry’s highest performance and help customers build scalable, virtualized and converged data canter networks in the cloud computing era."…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Beth Stackpole.

The biggest fact that organizations building out cloud environments don’t understand about governance in the new world of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) is that, despite the handoff of certain IT functions, the responsibility around governance still remains at home.

Within the structure of traditional IT, companies could skirt some of the real governance challenges by clamping down on certain deployment scenarios and keeping anything questionable within the four walls and security controls of internal IT. That’s not so easy with a true cloud environment, which mixes it up between private and public clouds, ultimately with applications running between the two, depending on demand and use case.

"What’s great about cloud computing is that it offers a great deal of agility, but that poses a governance challenge," said Bernard Golden, VP of enterprise solutions at EnStratus, a provider of cloud management and governance tools. "In the past, even if you didn’t do governance quite right, everyone and everything was still in the same sandbox. But now you can’t rely on that."…

Grazed from MarkteWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Acquia, the enterprise guide to Drupal, today announced that CEO Tom Erickson will participate in a panel discussion on application development in cloud computing during the invitation-only Goldman Sachs Cloud Computing Conference on May 8 at Rosewood Sand Hill in Menlo Park, CA. This year, the event will focus on the next stage of cloud development and global opportunities the cloud presents.

Goldman’s second annual conference provides a forum for industry leaders to network, discuss and debate the important trends driving this tectonic shift in the technology landscape. The event brings together some of the most influential individuals in cloud computing with leading industry executives in panel discussions, fireside chats, and keynote presentations. Erickson will join CEOs from other leading cloud application companies to discuss and share insights and examples on the "Developing Applications in the Cloud" panel…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Infinitely Virtual, a leading provider of virtual server cloud computing services for businesses, today announced it has added Microsoft’s SQL Server 2012 to its menu of servers from which customers can choose to meet their specific business needs.

In the first major upgrade since 2008, MS SQL Server 2012 introduces "Always On" data protection, and provides more rapid query performance and faster data discovery, among other key enhancements.

"Our customers are increasing their investments in the cloud and upgrades such as Microsoft SQL Server 2012 help us give them the most advanced hosting capability, with the latest enhancements in data management, business intelligence and protection," said Adam Stern, founder and CEO, Infinitely Virtual…

Grazed from Wired.  Author: Robert McMillan.

A San Francisco court has spent the past few weeks considering a copyright question that could weigh heavy on the future of cloud computing.

It’s part of a high-profile lawsuit between Oracle and Google. Oracle says that Google violated its copyrights and patents when it wrote its own version of Java for the Android mobile operating system. Part of what the court is trying to figure out this week is whether Google wronged Oracle by writing software that mimicked the Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs are coding standards that let programs communicate with one another).

The conventional wisdom in the coder community has been that it’s fine to reproduce the interface of someone else’s APIs, so long as you don’t actually copy their software. So if the court finds that APIs are copyrightable, it could have major implications for any software that uses APIs without explicit permission — Linux for example. But it could affect things in the cloud, where there are several efforts to clone Amazon’s Web Services APIs…