Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Paul Miller.

Microsoft announced last month that its Software as a Service (SaaS) offering, Office 365, will better comply with European guidelines to ensure that customer data is adequately protected. This move is certainly welcome, but the long-armed spectre of the USA PATRIOT Act continues to hang over Microsoft and other US companies, regardless of customers’ nationality or the country within which Microsoft might physically host a particular customer’s data.

The PATRIOT Act’s acronymic name may evoke harmless images of bunting, parades, and national anthems, but the reality is rather different. A product of America’s post-9/11 entrenchment, the Uniting (and) Strengthening America (by) Providing Appropriate Tools Required (to) Intercept (and) Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001 affords the Federal Government wide-ranging and far-reaching powers that show little — if any — respect for geographic boundaries or inconveniently contradictory local legislation. A US company (like Microsoft or Amazon) is subject to the Act’s powers all around the world. A US citizen’s data, stored in a US company’s data centre that is physically situated in the United States is subject to the Act, and everyone might be reasonably comfortable with that. But so is a German citizen’s data, stored in an Amazon data centre in Ireland; and German, Irish and European lawmakers appear almost powerless to intercede…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Andrew R. Hickey.

The demand for cloud computing skills has exploded, with hiring for cloud computing expertise growing 61 percent year over year, according to a recent report from Wanted Analytics, a talent research firm.

According to the report, over the past 90 days employers and staffing firms have placed more than 10,000 job ads that included cloud computing skills and experience as requirements. Those ads came from more than 2,400 companies in that 90-day period, which ultimately pushed cloud hiring demand 61 percent year-over-year.

The need for cloud computing skills has been pushing the market for months. Solution providers are seeking cloud-ready employees to bring their businesses to the next level. Additionally, a host of major IT companies, including HP and others, have launched cloud-specific certifications to arm the market with cloud skills and competence. And solution providers like Bluewolf have begun offering training programs, which in some cases are free, to deepen the cloud computing talent pool…

Grazed from MSP News.  Author: Carolyn J. Dawson.

Logicalis (News – Alert) is aleading global provider of integrated information and communications technology (ICT) solutions and services. They recently made an announcement that their Logicalis Enterprise Cloud (LEC) public cloud service has secured the VMware vCloud Powered status. This is a clear indication to its clients that the organization’s cloud services are underpinned by VMware’s virtualization and cloud computing technology. This technology is called VMware vSphere and VMware vCloud Director. As part of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), the Logicalis Enterprise Cloud brings together VMware vCloud technology and gives it the ability to expand its security and workload isolation. In turn, this gives Logicalis the ability to make available highly scalable cloud services to its customer base…

Grazed from SBTimes.  Author: Editorial Staff.

GuardTime ( http://www.guardtime.com ), creator of the Keyless Signature technology used to provide indisputable proof of time, origin, and integrity for electronic data, today signed an agreement with Tokyo-based NRI SecureTechnologies, Ltd., a one stop-solution provider for information security, to do business collaboration in the area of cloud computing security.

GuardTime developed and provides the solution code-named "DataConductor," which can detect changes and/or transfers of any data stored in the datacenter. By signing the data using GuardTime’s Keyless Signatures, ( http://www.guardtime.com ) DataConductor can automatically detect when and where the data was created or transferred, and if the datahas been tampered with or not. An alert is sent to the customer when an abnormal status is detected. DataConductor can assure the integrity of data and confirm the location where data exists, providing a full audit trail of data storage in the Cloud. DataConductor enables regulatory compliance for archiving with commodity cloud storage…

Grazed from The Register.  Author:  Timothy Prickett Morgan.

Being the touchstone for cloud computing, online retailing giant Amazon wants to brag about its compute, storage, and other cloud services that are sold under the Amazon Web Services brand. For whatever reason – probably to obscure the costs and possibly the profits of the AWS subsidiary – Amazon has not broken out the business, and still lump it into the Other bucket.

But sometimes, Amazon just can’t resist itself. As the new year got rolling, Amazon did a little bit of chest beating about AWS.

First, the company said that with the opening of its AWS data center in São Paulo, Brazil in mid-December, the company has doubled its AWS data-center footprint…

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Michael Vizard.

Application testing is one of those areas that many IT organizations give short shrift; only for it to invariably come back to haunt them in the form of some fix that usually needs to be accomplished quickly and at great cost.

It’s not that developers are fundamentally opposed to testing; it’s just that acquiring the equipment to set up the test is expensive and the amount of time needed to conduct the tests properly isn’t available. Worse yet, the applications are getting more complex than ever, which makes testing them an even more challenging task.

Grazed from CSNews.  Author: Cliff Duffey.

Running a convenience store operation means continuously finding new and innovative ways to improve the customer experience, maintain a competitive edge and manage the rising complexity of business. This is often compounded when an operator owns many different store locations. Investment in the latest technology plays an important role in solving all three of these challenges and cloud computing has become an increasingly popular approach to help highly distributed organizations, strapped with a minimal budget for technology and personnel, ensure they are up to date with Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI-DSS) compliance.

Security services delivered through cloud computing have many benefits over the traditional approach of buying, integrating, deploying and managing security technologies. Cloud-based security services can reduce costs, eliminate business operations complexities and ensure a business is always up to date with the latest protection. All of this can be done much in the same way a person at home orders cable or a phone service…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Dave Meizlik.

With the New Year having rolled in, you’ve probably had your fill of "This is the year of (pick your technology, fill in the blank)" predictions. After all, for how many years now have we heard, "This is the year for cloud computing?"

While there’s no doubt that the wave of cloud computing continues to swell, real-world IT organizations are clearly not as quick to jump aboard as prognosticators. That’s because there are a lot of unknown aspects of the cloud, and security is chief among them…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Stacey Collett.

It’s 2 p.m. Do you know where your cloud data is? Really?

Executives at one large Fortune 500 company thought they knew, but a routine audit of the cloud provider uncovered a serious problem.

"The cloud provider that we thought we had became merely a shell, and it outsourced the provision of the service to an offshore company that no one had even heard of and that the company would never have provided data to," recalls Brad Peterson, counsel for the company and a partner in the Chicago office of Mayer Brown LLC. ..