Grazed from Network Computing World.  Author: Esther Shein.

The Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee recently formed by OASIS (Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards), the not-for-profit open standards consortium, along with several IT vendors and consumer groups, will be good for facilitating cloud portability, industry observers say. The goal of TOSCA is to enable deploying cloud applications without vendor lock-in, while maintaining application requirements for security, governance and compliance.

TOSCA joins an already crowded field of standards and requirements principles for cloud computing that includes but is not limited to the Open Cloud Principles (OCP) from the Open Cloud Initiative (OCI), the Open Data Center Alliance standards for cloud providers, a guide to cloud computing from the Cloud Standards Customer Council, the OpenStack Compute for developing a cloud-based server environment and OpenStack Object Storage for cloud-based storage, the IEEE’s Cloud Computing Initiative and the Clouds Standards Customer Council (CSCC)…

Grazed from Private Equity.  Author:  PR Announcement.

Irvine, Calif.-based Numecent has raised $2 million of a planned $10 million Series A round. The company, which says it is developing “cloudpaging” technology, did not disclose the names of investors. The company said that it previously raised $7.5 million from investors.

Numecent™, a stealth startup pioneering next-generation “cloudpaging” technology, today announced it has received the first $2M tranche in a $10M Series-A funding round from unnamed corporate investors. This is in addition to the $7.5M of seed funding the company has so far received from private investors since its inception…

Grazed from SBWire.  Author:  PR Announcement.

4PSA, a leading-edge Cloud Computing software development company has announced today its participation at ITEXPO East 2012, the World’s Communications Conference and Expo. The event takes place on February 1-3, 2012 at the Miami Beach Convention Center in Miami, Florida.

During this year’s ITEXPO East, 4PSA’s President Mike Ross will be presenting in two highly engaging panels, exploring the increase in the adoption rate for Unified Communications as a Service and the synergies between Unified Communications and Social Media. "We’re always excited to attend ITEXPO. This event represents a wonderful opportunity to get together with top providers and industry experts, discuss the latest advancements in the field, and share insight", stated Mr. Ross…

Grazed from Talkin Cloud.  Author: Nicholas Mukhar.

SAP caught most of us by surprise at the end of 2011 by acquiring SuccessFactors, a Human Capital Management (HCM) and SaaS vendor, for $3.4 billion. Now, SAP President of Cloud On-Demand Sales and Go-To-Market Greg Tomb (pictured) is making some bold claims about SAP’s long-term cloud strategy.

“Three years from now, we will be the de facto leader in the cloud,” Tomb predicted as he outlined three ways through which SAP will accomplish that goal:

1. Acquisitions that deliver immediate value: Such as the SuccessFactors deal.
2. Software Development: SAP currently has roughly 3,000 cloud developers working on cloud-based business applications.
3. Sales: SAP is in the process of bringing aboard some 350 sales representatives just to sell cloud applications…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Ed Zwim.

That there is growing company demand for cloud or software-as-a-service solutions should come as no surprise.

Finance and IT professionals, facing the need for greater computing power for everything from operational management to hedge accounting are understandably tempted by SaaS, given the cloud’s relatively low startup costs and the fact they may lack the skills needed to build their own analytic solutions.

And the corporate migration to the cloud is in fact proceeding apace, with nearly one-third of organizations polled in a Gartner research study responding that they either already use or plan to use cloud SaaS offerings to augment their core business intelligence functions…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Rick Blaisdell.

While technology seems to be the cost and time efficiency driver in many industries, cloud computing is the emerging solution for the financial service industry, especially capital markets. In order for their assets to be used optimally by multiple consumers, financial organizations require ad-hoc access to significant computing resources, virtual desktops, shared data information, cost transparency, and “What-If” capabilities.

I will list some of the most important cloud changing perspectives that can benefit large corporations and SMB’s:

    * Resource Management – enables organizations to build agile, responsive data center infrastructures;
    * Pay per Use – organizations pay only for the computing resources they are using and not more;…

Grazed from Federal Computer Week.  Author: Camille Tuutti.

Despite mandates that direct federal agencies to transition to cloud-based services, federal IT managers express reluctance in making the migration due to security concerns, a survey reveals.

The 2011 State of Cloud Services in the U.S. Federal Government poll from Ponemon Institute shows that more than one-third of the managers surveyed cited safety concerns as one of the reasons for not using cloud services. An even bigger number of respondents (42 percent) said lack of suitable applications or services prevent them from using a cloud approach.

But security emerged as the primary fear. Nearly half the respondents said they were “not confident” about the overall data protection and security features of their current or prospective cloud service providers. Twenty-six percent chose “confident,” while only 17 percent stated they were “very confident.”…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

The news hit this week: "As of the end of 2011, there are 762 billion objects in Amazon S3 (Simple Storage Service). We process over 500,000 requests per second for these objects at peak times," blogged Amazon.com This represents an annual growth rate of 192 percent.

Pretty good for a cloud company still growing a retail business. The growth can be attributed to Amazon Web Services’ focus on building a successful cloud storage offering and the rapid adoption of AWS — including the S3 cloud storage service — as the cloud computing standard…

Grazed from Computer Business Review.  Author: Editorial Staff.

They will collaborate across other areas of the BMC Business Service Management platform

Business service management firm BMC Software and Virtual Computing Environment (VCE), a company formed by Cisco and EMC, have partnered to address the demand for converged infrastructures in cloud computing projects.  Under the partnership, BMC and VCE will enhance the interoperability and integration of their products and collaborate to promote and offer their offerings in the market.

The VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform is integrated with BMC’s business-centric cloud management offerings to help joint customers for BMC and VCE automate their management of comprehensive cloud infrastructures…

Grazed from Business Insider.  Author: Mark Fidelman.

Can someone tell Capitol Records that the music has stopped?

If you haven’t been following events, Capitol Records (EMI) has sued Boston-based Redigi (a used digital music marketplace) for what amounts to copyright infringement. 

Today, Google decided to enter the fray as a third party, and filed an amicus curiae brief (friend of the court) to ask the court to allow their participation in some key disputes.  In Google’s estimation, Capitol Records is attempting to blur the established fair use, copyright legal lines…