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."…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: J. Nicholas Hoover.

The General Services Administration on Tuesday released extensive new details on FedRAMP, the federal government’s new standardized approach to vetting the security of cloud computing services, taking an important step toward launching the program.

The GSA-led FedRAMP is a soon-to-be-mandatory government-wide program that standardizes the government’s approach to authorizing cloud services for use by federal agencies and monitoring those services to ensure that they continue to meet federal cybersecurity requirements.

Once a service goes through the initial FedRAMP authorization process, it gets a stamp of approval that any agency can use to sign off on the service’s ability to meet federal security requirements. This is much more efficient and standardized than the historic approach to security authorization, which required each agency to do its own authorization. Federal CIO Steven VanRoekel has estimated that FedRAMP could save federal agencies between 30% and 40% on their security assessments and cloud procurement processes…

Grazed from The Drum Opinion.  Author: Matt Healy.

Innovation is, by definition, disruptive. Disruption, by definition, has a destabilising effect that challenges industry incumbents more than new entrants and challengers.

The information and communication technology (ICT) industries have propelled new entrants that have turned entire industries upside down, such as Amazon’s ongoing reshaping of publishing. But within the ICT industries themselves the idea of innovation has swept companies in and out of favour, from the displacement of IBM and the mainframe by the personal computer, to the subsequent challenges brought by the internet and the rise of new giants in Google and Facebook.

The latest force for revolution, the rise of cloud computing, has so far been seemingly embraced by all, even those who might have been expected to be in histories cross hairs. Phone companies, IT equipment builders and software developers from the copper era have had to respond to a world where cheap and reliable broadband means companies can "rent" software, applications and storage space, rather than owning it on their own servers. Australian operators like Macquarie Telecom, Fujitsu and Infoplex have thrown themselves at the cloud opportunities and are leading advocates…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.   Author: James Carlini.

If you are a corporate executive contemplating adding some applications in a cloud computing network, be very aware of the vendors as well as your own internal system architects and Chief Technology Officers (CTOs) when they start talking about cost-effective networks, cheaper components and saving you money.

What many network pseudo-experts don’t know is that you don’t build cheap networks. There are no "Fire Sales" on quality, especially when it comes to network infrastructures. Like anything else, you get what you pay for when it comes to buying the pieces for your network just like when you buy the parts for your car or materials for your house…

Grazed from iHotDesk.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Contrary to what some people believe, cloud computing can work as an additional security measure.

Despite security issues being one of the biggest concerns brought up by businesses since cloud computing platforms began to take off a few years ago, John Dunn, security editor of Techworld, believes that the technology can actually help protect your company if used correctly.  Indeed, he feels that many people merely get the jitters when they think about off-site application hosting because, on the face of it at least, it does sound like a hacker’s dream.

"The security layer the companies have, the security software and products they buy and the infrastructure they run means there is a real move to actually buy that as a service," Mr Dunn said. "So all of the traffic that goes in and out of your company will come through a layer that’s run by a cloud company – it will be filtered and looked at…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Sourya Biswas.

This is the ninth in a continuing series on startups raising funding.

You can read the series here:  Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8

Today, there are two startups in focus – AppDynamics and ShopKeep.com.

AppDynamics (http://www.appdynamics.com/)

Top VC firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers led a $20 million Series C round for cloud-based performance management company AppDynamics. Previous investors Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also participated, bringing to a total the funds raised by the San Francisco-based startup to $36.5 million. The company specializes in application performance management and claims over 50,000 customers including Priceline.com, Netflix, Swisscom, TiVo, Fox News, and Taleo…

Grazed from CIO Today.  Author:  Editorial Staff.

A report from Apple that 85 million people have signed up for its iCloud service is an indication a significant number of computer users are willing — even happy — to entrust their personal data, from documents to music to last summer’s vacation snaps, to other digital hands.

While not a new concept, Apple’s iCloud and its undeniable success shows the extent to which people are willing to trust "the cloud" — servers in a dedicated facility possibly thousands of miles away — to hold their data, not as a backup of what’s on their own hard drives but as the sole repository of their digital lives.

In addition to Apple’s offering, Microsoft says 17 million people a month use its SkyDrive service, and Dropbox reportedly has more than 50 million users…