Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Bill Claybrook.

Mobile devices will soon be driving cloud computing — and vice versa. Here’s why: It’s very sensible to use a private cloud for security, management and other aspects of mobile applications. But getting there will require planning and investment by IT.

Some have already moved in this direction. In a December 2011 survey of 3,645 IT decision-makers in eight countries, a third of the respondents said that providing information access to multiple devices was their top reason for implementing cloud computing. The survey, fielded by researcher TNS and funded by service provider CSC, said that cutting costs was the third most popular reason for implementing cloud, with only 17% of respondents choosing that option…

Grazed from Backup Technology.  Author: Editorial Staff.

There are obvious advantages of Cloud Computing such as the huge savings in staff salaries, software licensing and power charges.

However close attention must be paid to risk management. Principally it is critical to recognise that data being hosted in the Cloud does not necessarily replace the necessity of a solid Business Continuity plan.  It is crucial to ensure that companies establish how responsibility for their data is being handled.

To be competitive in the market Cloud providers must therefore be open to probing questions ranging from queries over access controls to data encryption…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Larry Dignan.

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Radware, a leading provider of application delivery and application security solutions for virtual and cloud data centers, today announced that TMC, publishers of Cloud Computing magazine has named Radware’s ADC-VX™ application delivery controller (ADC) virtualization platform winner of its 2011 Cloud Computing Excellence Award.

Radware’s ADC-VX is the industry’s first ADC virtualization and consolidation technology, specifically designed to combine ADC hardware devices into fewer hardware units. Cloud service providers benefit from Radware ADC-VX’s functionality as a delivery model for on-demand ADC services that can be offered to their end-user customers. It enables real-time provisioning of virtual ADC (vADC) instances while ensuring the resilience and performance predictability needed to provide application delivery offerings backed with high service level agreements (SLAs). Radware’s ADC-VX also delivers fully isolated ADC services to support the cloud provider’s customer or their applications, in solutions containing the industry’s highest density of vADCs to support a wide range of cloud service cost models…

Grazed from PR Web.  Author: PR Announcement.

Thought leaders from around theworld will convene in Northren Viginia on April 18, 2012.It has been confirmed that Scott Paisley, the Americas Technology Director at JouleX, will be speaking at the Green IT | Cloud Computing 2.0 Summit hosted by the Green IT Council. The venue is located at the Sheraton Premiere near Washington DC on April 18th, 2012. The Green IT Council is a leading Green and Sustainable IT, and cloud computing association dedicated to the energy efficient computing across the enterprise, data center, and society.

JouleX is the leading innovator in sustainable energy management systems for the enterprise. Its flagship solution, the JouleX Energy Manager (JEM), provides the Global 2000 and government agencies with the ability to monitor, analyze and control energy usage for all network-connected devices and systems across the enterprise, including in distributed offices, data centers and facilities. Importantly, JEM is the first network-based energy management system that works without the use of software agents, dramatically reducing installation time and removing the maintenance burden associated with similar technologies. JEM decreases energy costs by up to 60 percent while ensuring availability and provides robust reporting that enables compliance with emerging carbon monitoring requirements…

JouleX was founded in 2009 and since has been distinguished with recent awards and accolades including Gartner Cool Vendor in Green IT and Sustainability, GE Ecomagination Award, BT Green Economy Success for Future Award and Clean Tech Media Award. The company is headquartered in Atlanta with worldwide offices located in Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, Munich, and Kassel, Germany and throughout the United States.

Grazed from Wired News.  Author: Mike Barton.

While the nation’s employment picture has been looking up in recent months, jobs in the cloud are looking positively skyward, according to the talent intelligence firm Wanted Analytics. However, a skills gap is also on the rise.

More than 5,000 cloud computing job ads were posted online in the U.S. in February, with hiring demand for cloud skills up 92% versus February 2011 and 400% compared with the same time in 2010, Wanted Analytics reported last week. But with demand for cloud skills growing so quickly, the gap between demand and talent supply is making it harder to source candidates, the firm said...

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Michael Vizard.

Thanks to the rise of cloud computing services and the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) phenomenon, there’s a lot more nuance these days involving the securing of mobile computing devices.

While many organizations are still debating the merits of BYOD, companies that have embraced BYOD are finding that BYOD presents a number of challenges that go well beyond access. For example, should an end user be able to access personal applications such as games over the corporate network? And should organizations apply different levels of granular policies across different classes of devices owned by the same user?…

Grazed from InternetEvolution.  Author: Mary Jander.

In an online forum over the last few days, a group of IT executives has debated the "real value" of cloud services. Here is the note that prompted the chat:

Will cloud computing deliver us genuine business benefits or is it a clever technology looking for a home? In the long term could it negatively impact our business?

Several forum participants weighed in, agreeing that they’d read and heard all the "hype" from cloud providers, only to be left still pondering the actual value to their businesses of adopting clouds. In some cases, it was clear that upper management and boards would view a move to cloud simply as an infrastructure upgrade — and an insecure one at that…

Grazed from Talkin’ Cloud.  Author: Joe Panettieri.

In the cloud computing storage market, EVault — a wholly owned subsidiary of Seagate — is taking aim at Symantec Backup Exec and other client-server data protection platforms. The EVault effort, led by EVault President Terry Cunningham, is loaded with irony.

After all, it was Cunningham who helped to build the Veritas Backup Exec business before Symantec acquired Veritas in 2004. During the glory days of client-server, Veritas helped to position Backup Exec as popular platform for Windows NT Server data and application protection. The Backup Exec team made the Windows NT bet before Microsoft gained critical mass on the server, so the move was a gamble at the time…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Jack Vaughn.

Cloud providers lead you to believe you can take your existing applications and put them on the cloud with no fuss or muss. It is true, the applications can run; but you may find the performance is not what you expected. The fact is that application integration is one of the more complicated aspects of cloud computing, as Christopher M. Moyer told us recently while we discussed issues of iPaaS and application integration.

Moyer, vice president of technology at content aggregator Newstex LLC is the author of the recent Building Applications in the Cloud (Addison-Wesley, 2011). The book focuses on real world experiences with the Amazon cloud using Amazon Web Services (AWS). It discusses the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (ED2), Simple DB, how to properly construct Software as a Service, designing an architecture that takes good advantage of the cloud platform, patterns for executing actions on data and much more…