Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Kurt Johnson.

To many enterprise organizations cloud computing looks – appropriately enough – heaven sent. When a company has a business opportunity that demands more processing capacity, or new applications, or adding hundreds of new users, they can dial it up through their cloud computing service provider with slightly more effort than it takes to get lunch delivered. No capital expenses, no vast spikes in maintenance costs, no resource and skill requirements. The cloud is an IT service that helps business move faster, cheaper and smarter.

So persuasive is cloud computing that companies have been known to plunge into it with gusto while turning a deaf ear to warnings from information security officers, who see gaping holes in the corporate data security fabric where business managers see agility and economic benefit. The security officers are usually right. Then again, so are the business managers…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Alan Priestley.

The annual Cloud Expo Europe (CEE) has been and gone, and as a marker of the industry’s pulse it threw out some interesting insights. CEE is a growing event and each year it features an increasing number of industry heavyweights keen to hold forth on their cloud experiences and how they see the cloud moving forward.

This year was no exception, and if there were any differences from last year’s event, it was that more cloud users were on hand to offer their experience and more vendors were on hand to display their understanding…

Grazed from Silicon Republic.  Author: Gordan Smith.

More than two-thirds of European IT decision makers rate cloud computing as a priority today, but the same old challenges remain: 45pc say security is a barrier to adoption and 40pc are wary of being locked into a single provider.

The findings are from research by the data centre operator Interxion, which polled responses from IT decision makers and influencers at 292 companies in 11 European countries, including Ireland…

Grazed from 4-Traders.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), a global, integrated media company, has named Internap Private Cloud a recipient of the 2011 Cloud Computing Excellence Award presented by Cloud Computing Magazine. Internap is one of only 30 award winners out of more than 200 entries to be selected for innovation and progress in advancement of the cloud.

TMC recognized Internap’s private cloud service based on its deployment with Digital Technology International (DTI), a market-leading news media software company. DTI was looking to construct a private cloud service to support its transition from an on-premise software delivery model to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model. The cloud-based delivery model enables DTI’s news media customers to quickly and efficiently deliver premium content and advertising, as well as closely track audience data and manage circulation and billing. By delivering these services via private cloud, DTI is able to consistently improve these revenue-generating solutions to support their customers’ evolving online business models…

Grazed from Cloud Tweaks.  Author: Cenon Gaytos.

Cloud computing has been universally recognized as a critical component in the field of education. This is more so in the higher education sector where more advanced tools are necessary for data sharing, teaching, and protection, as well as for advanced instruction.

Generally, most countries in the world experience a decline in higher education budgets. Because of this, and because of the fact that universities need to be able to continue to deliver quality services in spite of the limited budget, the role of IT has tremendously arisen to a whole new level (Mircea, 2011). Of course, IT is a complicated technology to operate and maintain by itself. With cloud computing, however, things become more easily manageable (Tout, 2009)…

Grazed from Network Computing.  Author: Robert Mullins.

Cloud computing is evolving to the point where unique clouds will be developed for specific industry verticals such as health care, government or financial services, predicts a Cisco Systems executive speaking at the CloudConnect 2012 conference this week in Silicon Valley. This runs contrary to what some have called the Coke versus Pepsi rule, that companies would not want to be in multi-tenant cloud environments with their competitors.

"Banks would very much like to go to service providers and have financial services-based clouds, and they are fine with sharing the multi-tenant environment with other banks," says Lew Tucker, VP and chief technology officer for Cisco’s cloud computing business. He was one of the keynoters at CloudConnect, held in Santa Clara, Calif., and hosted by United Business Media, which publishes Network Computing and other publications…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Kevin Fogarty.

Cloud computing is such an attractive, all-encompassing integrated enterprise, data-center-quality, dynamic computing paradigm that every company seems to want to jump on board.

They’re doing it, to be sure, but not nearly as quickly or enthusiastically as most analysts expected even a year ago (when adoption rates were, similarly, a disappointment from the previous year).

The issue isn’t how big or complicated the company or its IT is. In a report comparing spending on software by SMBs vs. enterprise (big) companies, Gartner estimated SMBs are adopting cloud at a higher rate than enterprises. About 34 percent of SMB software budgets go for cloud-based apps or services; only 27 percent of enterprise budgets swing that way…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Stuart Johnston.

Enterprises with big Citrix Systems installations will see fleshed out features in the new version of its public and private cloud computing platform, but it may not be enough to help Citrix break from the crowded pack of cloud vendors. 

Citrix said recently that the first fruit of last summer’s Cloud.com acquisition, CloudStack 3, is now generally available in beta and the production version will be out by the end of March. It’s the first release of CloudStack since Citrix disclosed the purchase in July 2011…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.

EMC and VMware are going into the cloud business with Atos, the big, publicly owned, Paris-based global IT services firm, intending to take an equity position in Canopy, an end-to-end cloud company Atos is setting up using EMC and VMware technology.

The companies said Wednesday when Canopy was announced that their shareholder agreement wasn’t set in stone yet and wouldn’t be until early Q2 but the Americans are talking about kicking in tens of millions of dollars. At least EMC is.  The object of the game is to cash in on what is projected to be a $267 billion cloud market by 2020, up from $59 billion this year…

Grazed from ITPortal.  Author: Ravi Mandalia.

Microsoft seems to be keen on exploiting the boom in enterprise cloud computing industry by taking advantage of its unique standing in the market that very few of its competitors can dare to come even remotely closer to.

According to the group of analysts, it is Redmond’s influence on both the public as well as private cloud domains that will be giving it an edge over other rival forces. Being equally capable in both public and private cloud sectors would allow the software giant to attract all those businesses that were previously unsure about shifting full time to public cloud platforms…