Grazed from FierceCIO.  Author: Caron Carlson.

Large enterprises continue to have reservations about the security of cloud computing, and apparently the FBI does too. The agency made it clear this week that any cloud providers who want to do business with U.S. law enforcement agencies must abide by its Criminal Justice Information Systems security requirements–which is a very high bar, reports Jaikumar Vijayan at Computerworld.

"The FBI remains committed to using technology in its information-sharing processes, but not at the sacrifice of the security of the information with which it has been entrusted," Stephen Fischer Jr., a spokesman for the FBI’s CJIS division, told Computerworld…

Grazed from Reuters.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Oracle Corp said it will buy web-based recruitment software maker Taleo Corp for about $1.9 billion to expand its line of cloud computing products, one of fastest growing areas of the technology market.

The move will allow Oracle to better compete with rivals including SAP AG, which said in December it would buy cloud human-resources software maker SuccessFactors Inc for $3.4 billion to jump start its expansion into cloud computing.

The Taleo deal value of $46 a share offers an 18 percent premium to Taleo’s Wednesday close of $38.94…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Symform, a revolutionary cloud storage and backup service, today announced that it will be sponsoring and exhibiting at leading industry events in the coming two months, including Cloud Connect, MVP Nation and XChange 2012. Symform executives will also be featured speakers at the conferences, discussing cloud computing, data center efficiencies and distributed architecture.

Cloud Connect Conference & Expo

What: Conference exhibitor When: February 13 – 15, 2012 Where: Santa Clara Convention Center, booth #619 Details: Symform will be demonstrating its revolutionary, global peer-to-peer cloud storage network which is available on Windows and Mac (beta) operating systems, as well as QNAP Network Attach Storage (NAS) devices. Cloud Connect attendees are invited to visit booth # 619 for a product overview from one of Symform’s cloud storage experts…

Grazed from Venture Beat.  Author: Sarah Mitroff.

Cloud computing and desktop virtualization are rapidly growing trends in the tech world, and one company has spent a considerable amount of time developing this technology. Nivio, which started as an idea in 2004, announced today it has received $21 million in its first round of venture capital funding.

Nivio lets you store up to 10GB of your documents, music, and movies in the cloud for free with nDrive. Your files sync across all of your devices — tablets, desktops, and laptops. And when you make changes to a document, Nivio saves bandwidth by only sending the changes you made, not the entire file.

But file storage isn’t all Nivio has up its sleeves. Its break-out product is nDesktop, the most current version of Windows that lives in the cloud and can be accessed on Macs, PCs, or tablets…

Grazed from InfoBoom.  Author: Douglas Bonderud.

Cloud computing has grown from buzzword to a range of real-world applications over the last four years, and many midsized businesses are now using at least one cloud service in their day-to-day IT admin. But while surveys show that clouds are on the rise both in already virtualized First World countries and developing nations, cloud adoption doesn’t always take the smartest route.

Survey Says… 

A recent InformationWeek article talks about the site’s 2012 State of the Cloud Computing Survey, where they asked 511 IT pros about their cloud use. Currently, one-third of companies are using the cloud in some form and 40 percent are considering a move. Only 27 percent of those surveyed weren’t interested in putting their heads in the cloud–a significant improvement over a similar survey conducted four years ago, when there was no agreement on what the term cloud computing even meant; 21 percent of those asked in 2008 said that "the cloud" was "pretty much a marketing term used haphazardly."…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Stuart Conner.

The group has been tasked with progressing the technical reports that were the output of a previous focus group on cloud computing towards formalisation as ITU-T recommendations.

The ITU announced last month that the ITU-T Focus Group on Cloud Computing would be replaced by a new joint coordination activity on cloud computing (JCA-Cloud) to be lead by ITU-T Study Group 13, which covers future networks including mobile and NGN.

Jamil Chawki of France Telecom Orange has been appointed chair of the WP. It will take responsibility for existing SG 13 work on cloud computing as well as three new questions:..

Grazed from PC World.  Author: Ian Paul.

Google’s long-rumored GDrive that would let you upload and store files to its servers and be able to access them from anywhere you have an Internet connection may finally be close to launching in the coming weeks as a more cheaply priced Dropbox rival.

The new product, reportedly called "Drive," will be free to consumers up to a certain size limit, and would also be folded into Google Apps for enterprise customers, according to The Wall Street Journal. The newspaper cited "people familiar with the matter."…

Grazed from The Host Review.  Author: PR Announcement.

SunGard Availability Services today announced the company has been honored with a 2011 Excellence in Cloud Computing Award from TMC’s Cloud Computing magazine for its Enterprise Cloud Services. SunGard has distinguished itself in the market by delivering a fully managed cloud environment with enterprise-grade application availability and security.

The Excellence in Cloud Computing awards were created to recognize companies that demonstrate innovation and strive for enhancement in cloud computing solutions.

SunGard’s Enterprise Cloud Services are a fully managed Infrastructure-as-a-Service offering where SunGard manages availability and security of compute, network and storage resources.  This approach delivers higher efficiency, reliability and availability for production applications. SunGard provides customers a 99.95 percent infrastructure uptime Service Level Agreement…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Bob Gourley.

NSF’s guidance on Cloud Computing will inform research dollars in the near future

The National Science Foundation released their report on cloud computing. It can be found here. The intent of this report is to provide information that guides funding programs. The NSF used NIST’s guidance on cloud computing to inform their research and decision making. This report will be instrumental in informing Federal decision makers and cloud investment. It is important to pay attention to such documents as they can help businesses align with Federal government priorities.

The NSF has identified the following areas as research areas worthy of financial support from the federal government:…

Grazed from CNBC.com.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cisco‘s better-than-expected revenue growth was from more than "routing and switching," CEO John Chambers told CNBC Wednesday, it was also data centers, cloud computing and $1 billion in cost-cutting measures.

"It goes way beyond routing and switching, which was also good. It goes into collaboration, it goes into cloud, data centers and architecture," Chambers said after Cisco’s earnings and revenue handily beat analyst expectations. "So we were pleased with the quarter. It’s a journey but it was a good start."…