Grazed from Computer Technology Review.  Author: Derick Townsend.

There’s a fundamental blind spot many organizations experience when adopting clouds. This blind spot is the failure to properly govern the people, processes and management systems that deploy applications and data to the cloud. The impact goes well beyond basic risk management, and actually extends into successful cloud adoption and realizing the full cost and agility benefits from cloud initiatives.

Cloud Risks at your Doorstep
For many business units, the desire to rush into the cloud seems irresistible, and publicly available, credit card-accessible cloud services add fuel to this fire. However, reckless on-ramping to cloud computing doesn’t sit well with corporate IT. IT managers know there are very real and dangerous consequences when data gets exposed, services go down, regulations get violated, backup plans are overlooked and a myriad of other IT safeguards get ignored. Insufficient control over who can provision a workload to the cloud, where it can be deployed, for how long and at what cost or capacity is a recipe for disaster…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Jack Clark.

IBM designed the Secure Enterprise Desktop technology for businesses that want to secure employee-owned devices while making sure that all the company’s data is backed up to a corporate or IBM-operated datacentre. Bring your own device (BYOD) is an thorny topic for IT managers under pressure to allow corporate use of devices owned by employees.

IBM’s Secure Enterprise Desktop technology was shown to ZDNet UK at CeBIT in Hanover on Wednesday. It uses a USB stick with its own HTTPS stack, bootloader and proprietary code to create a secure connection between a partitioned drive on the client computer and a remotely located server. IBM was hoping to find businesses at the show to test the prototype and ultimately buy the service…

Grazed from PR NewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Industry analyst firm Gartner Inc. has positioned Savvis, a CenturyLink company (NYSE: CTL) and global leader in cloud infrastructure and hosted IT solutions for enterprises, in the Leaders quadrant in both the Magic Quadrant for Managed Hosting and the Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure as a Service.

The cloud-focused reports can be accessed at http://www.savvis.com/en-US/Advantages/Pages/gartner-magic-quadrant-leader.aspx.

"Many of the world’s largest and most well-known companies rely on Savvis’ enterprise-class cloud solutions, and we believe these Magic Quadrant recognitions speak loudly to the reasons our clients see us as a global cloud leader," said Bill Fathers, president of Savvis. "Our focus on cloud will continue as demonstrated by our recently accelerated investment in our cloud offerings. We deliver cloud-based solutions that improve business agility and reduce costs."…

Grazed from InfoBoom.  Author: Sharon Hurley Hall.

Cloud computing is changing the way that midsize enterprises do business, says John Engates. In a recent interview on BBC News, Mr. Engates described some of the ways in which small and midsize enterprises (SMEs) have used this technology to their advantage. Some of the key benefits of the technology include enabling midsize businesses to compete effectively with even bigger businesses, thanks to the ability to harness increased computer power. This, he says, has both industrial and economic benefits…

 

Grazed from CloudTimes.org.  Author: Irmee Layo.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) recently released a report last February 22 that stated cloud computing may be restrained in the European region. This is as the European Union (EU) data protection laws threaten to curtail the cloud once it is approved.

European commissioner for Justice Viviane Reding authored the proposed data protection law and was criticized for it. The law entitled BSA Global Computing Cloud Scorecard suggested that companies with more than 250 staffs should have a data protection officer within the company. This suggestion was received negatively as it appeared too rigid…

Grazed from Computer Technology Review.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Nexsan, an independent provider of disk-based data storage systems, announced Thursday that the company has formed a Technology Alliance Partnership with Veeam Software, a provider of data protection, disaster recovery and management solutions for virtual data center environments. Together, Nexsan and Veeam will deliver storage, backup and replication solutions which enable highly scalable, advanced data protection optimized for hypervisor-independent cloud computing.

Nexsan simplifies storage management in a virtual infrastructure (VI) with disk arrays built on a flexible and efficient architecture capable of being tightly integrated into a range of operating environments. Veeam combines backup and replication in a single, cohesive solution. Veeam Backup & Replication v6 offers a unified approach to data protection along with capabilities that enhance reliability such as streamlined failover and real failback…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

RightScale, the leader in cloud computing management, is taking its cloud knowledge to South by Southwest Interactive in Austin. The company will be participating in two discussions at the conference and is also hosting a cocktail party fit with an indie rock band and renowned graffiti artists.

The cloud is no longer a trend — it’s the way business is done. And with the cloud explosion, RightScale has seen tremendous growth over the past year, including customer and partner momentum. With RightScale, users now have access to 10 public clouds across the globe, and can also build private clouds with the help of three leading private cloud partners. The company has increased the number of registered users per account by more than 80 percent since 2008, and this past fall, reached the three million server milestone…

Grazed from CBR.  Author: Steve Evans.

You can now run a website for $250 a year, says Amazon.  Amazon has announced it has dropped the price of its Web Services cloud computing platform. The company says it is the 19th price reduction in the last six years.

The price drop will be one Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2), Amazon Relational Database Service (RDS), Elastic MapReduce and ElastiCache, the company said.

In a statement Amazon said the new prices mean that running a website on an m1.small instance with a High Utilisation Reserved Instance can cost $250 per year, whereas a website on the same set-up six years ago would have cost nearly $900…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

In light of its globally-distributed workforce, translation agency Acclaro has redoubled its investments in cloud-computing technologies this last quarter. They announced the most recent development in this trend today—the internal launch of a new portal for Acclaro companywide communications, collaboration, training and data access.

“This SharePoint site is just one of many web-based business applications that our internal teams leverage to efficiently manage projects across time zones,” says Acclaro President Michael Kriz. “The flexibility, mobility and accessibility of these technologies have changed how we do business.” One advantage has been increased ease in supporting and centrally managing application environments for Acclaro’s global employees and partners. With translators, project managers and production staff located across all time zones around the globe, having central information, file sharing and workflow is critical to seamless communication and timely service…

Grazed from Careers Portal.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Rarely a week goes by without news of new jobs being created within the cloud computing industry.  Cloud Strong currently employs five people and is recruiting two more in their sales department. And the company expects to create at least 15 new jobs over the next two years.

For those who may not be familiar with the term, Cloud Strong Technical Director Daryl Byrne explains that cloud computing is:

    * a way of delivering IT services via a web browser. It allows business owners to remove themselves from the ownership of their IT infrastructure, so that they can focus on their core business. “Business owners should see cloud computing as a service such as your phone line,” says Mr Byrne…