Grazed from Network Computing.  Author: Mike Fratto.

Since Citrix gave Cloudstack to the Apache Software Foundation, there has been a lot of blogging, tweeting, and arguing about whether cloud computing software vendors should simply let Amazon AWS drive cloud computing standards. My answer is no. First, I don’t think Amazon even wants to be the standard and second, standards should be developed independently of any single vendor. It’s time for the stakeholders–enterprises, vendors, open source projects, and anyone else interested to start scoping, developing, and implementing standards that everyone can use. If that doens’t happen, the cloud landscape will continue to be fragmented to everyone’s detriment…

Grazed from ReadWriteCloud.  Author:  Joe Brockmeier.

If you’ve any doubt that cloud storage is a huge market, Amazon’s numbers ought to be very persuasive. The latest figures from Amazon indicate the company has added about 143 billion objects to S3 in one quarter. But it also looks like Amazon’s growth may be slowing – somewhat.

Amazon reported tripling the number of objects stored in 2011. By Amazon’s figures, the company added about 500 billion objects to S3. That’s roughly 125 billion per quarter, though it’s unlikely it’s an even split per quarter.

If the pace remains the same, Amazon would be on track to add another 429 billion through 2012 – or a total of 572 billion for the full year. That would leave Amazon with 1.3 trillion objects and change hosted in S3…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Top10CloudStorage.com has released an important resource page for those looking for the top cloud servers and cloud web hosting. This new addition to the already popular website breaks down the pros and cons of the best cloud hosting and best cloud servers on the market each week.

The format of this new resource page quickly informs the consumer about the pricing, performance and ranking of cloud hosting and cloud servers companies while also offering an in-depth look at each with cloud web hosting reviews and cloud hosting reviews. Furthermore, Top10CloudStorage.com also provides an informative look at the cloud server options that are available and dissects each with helpful cloud server reviews…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

As business use of cloud computing rises, those businesses need to keep tabs what they’re using. Now, roughly 175,000 Rackspace cloud accounts can use Cloudability services for free to monitor how much they’re spending on their cloud services.

Cloudability, which launched at our Structure event last June, generates daily, weekly and monthly emails detailing a company’s cloud spending and provides a graphical dashboard of that spending. The goal is to make cloud IT spending as efficient as possible. Normally, it’s is free for companies spending less than $2,500 per month in the cloud, and the price after that is based on overall spending…

Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Linda Musthaler.

Cloud computing is the ideal environment for processing big data. For databases that scale horizontally, sometimes with a million or more fields and reaching multiple petabytes in size, it’s possible to chunk up the data and spread it across hundreds or thousands of servers for parallel processing and analytics. It’s an efficient and effective use of cloud technology.

Of course, if you put data in the cloud, you will want to protect it with encryption, especially if the data includes any sensitive customer or financial information. However, the very thought of generating and managing all the encryption keys for hundreds of separate data files can be a problem. And, if your data is in a public cloud, you wouldn’t want to give access to the keys to the root user, who is often an administrator for the cloud provider…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Darryl K. Taft.

OpenStack has announced “Essex,” the fifth version of its community-driven, open-source cloud operating system, with a focus on quality, usability and extensibility across enterprise, service provider and high-performance computing (HPC) deployments.

The OpenStack Essex news comes just days after Citrix announced its plans for the next version of its CloudStack cloud platform, which the company submitted to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) and itself became a sponsor of ASF.

Speaking of sponsorships, GigaOm reported that IBM and Red Hat are poised to lend their substantial might behind the OpenStack open-source cloud project at the upcoming OpenStack Spring 2012 conference…

Grazed from MidSize Insider.  Author:  Megan Mostyn-Brown.

Telecoms like Verizon and CenturyLink have joined Time Warner Cable in what’s turning out to be a highly competitive cloud computing market. These popular domestic telecommunications services have snapped up cloud service and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers like NaviSite, Qwest, and Terremark in hopes of competing with companies like Amazon, Microsoft Azure, HP, and Google to name a few and to make up for their flagging revenue from traditional services.

The Advantages

Why would an enterprise that’s already satisfied with their cloud service provider chose to switch over to a carrier provider? The answer is infrastructure, security, and the potential for a unified communication platform. ComputerWorld consulted with independent analyst Bob Rosenberg, who predicts that telecoms have an edge over other cloud service providers because they have trusted wired networks. Enterprises have depended on many of these companies for decades to provide telephone and internet services with good results. Their proven dependability and security is a key component in attracting customers looking for a "low-latency connections for large amounts of data transfer." Having a trusted name can do a lot for enterprises or consumers that are nervous about the security aspect of cloud computing…

Grazed from CM Crossroads.  Author: Steve Abrams.

There is a lot of buzz in the IT industry around cloud computing and its impact on driving greater efficiency across an IT organization, but when considering adoption of cloud computing infrastructure, where should an organization begin? The application development lifecycle can be a good starting point. Infrastructure utilization is low, labor costs are high, and the lifecycle is ripe for automation. Cloud computing can dramatically streamline the lifecycle by reducing the need to acquire dedicated infrastructure, providing pre-configured application lifecycle management environments, and providing needed resources on demand. All of this reduces cost and time to market while improving quality.

Studies [1] have shown that 30 to 50 percent of all servers in a typical IT organization are dedicated to test, with most of the servers running at 10 percent utilization or less. Paradoxically, one of the top challenges in moving applications into production is the limited availability of servers on which to test the app. Test backlog is often the single largest factor delaying new deployments. Generally, the root cause is the difficulty in properly deploying and configuring test environments on the available servers…

Grazed from MidSize Insider.  Author: Marissa Tejada.

For businesses of all sizes, deploying the cloud is a serious undertaking as it can change the shape of an IT budget and the IT personnel group needed moving forward. In the end, it means overall innovation in IT and a broader consideration of what skills are needed to compete today.

According to a recent Computerworld article, embracing cloud computing can be both a positive and negative force when it comes to looking at job security in IT today.

Generally for enterprises, it’s about cost savings because deploying the cloud means reducing the number of staff generally needed and therefore reducing budgets. The article cites a study by IT service provider CSC that claims 14 percent of companies reduced their IT staff head count after deploying a cloud strategy. Simply put, the cloud creates greater efficiencies, thereby reducing IT staff…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Jeff Norman.

It is now official: cloud computing now has serious gov cred. We recently learned that the Air Force was strongly considering the possibility of leaping into the cloud, as a strategy to slash the girth of maintenance and operations in their budget, as well as to tighten security measures. Many readers will wince at that last aim; cloud computing and great security are hardly synonymous, they will muse. The Air Force has nevertheless honed in on several of the cloud’s virtues from a military perspective.

These advantages may lie in cloud’s capacity for “zero” and “thin clients;” the former entails the classic cloud computing setup of just a keyboard, monitor, and mouse, no additional processor to be found. A “thin client” expands on the “zero client” with the addition of an integrated processor, ideal for graphics and media — which might come in handy for an everyday military operation, we think. (Wink, wink.)…