October 6, 2011 Off

Facebook Shares Its Cloud Designs

By David

Grazed from MIT Technology Review.  Author: Tom Simonite.

If you invented something cheaper, more efficient, and more powerful than what came before, you might want to keep the recipe a closely guarded secret. Yet Facebook took the opposite approach after opening a 147,000-square-foot computing center in rural Oregon this April. It published blueprints for everything from the power supplies of its computers to the super-efficient cooling system of the building. Other companies are now cherry-picking ideas from those designs to cut the costs of building similar facilities for cloud computing…

October 6, 2011 Off

Congress to examine Obama’s “Cloud First Policy” for computers

By David
Grazed from GantDaily.com.   Author: Tom Ramstack.

The Obama administration says switching some federal computer networks to cloud computing will save taxpayers money but members of Congress are worrying about the security risks.

Cloud computing refers to computer networks that are hosted by outside vendors and are accessible over the Internet…

October 6, 2011 Off

Microsoft: how cloud computing can make buildings more efficient

By David

Grazed from TechFlash.  Author:  Greg Lamm.

Cloud computing, analytics software and other IT technologies can help dramatically lower the energy costs in buildings, which account for about 40 percent of the world’s carbon emissions.

That’s the conclusion of a Microsoft pilot program looking at ways to us technology to dramatically cut building energy costs for far less than it would cost to retrofit buildings…

October 6, 2011 Off

The Small Business Forecast for Cloud Computing

By David
Grazed from Small Business Computing.  Author:  Laurie McCabe.

What’s changed about cloud computing since 2009, when I wrote What is Cloud Computing, and Why Should You Care? In terms of the basic definition and benefits of cloud computing, not much. But in terms of market trends and adoption, the landscape has changed considerably.

Status Quo: Cloud Computing Basics

Here’s the definition that I provided in 2009: Cloud computing is a computing model in which you access software, server, storage, development and other computing resources over the Internet, in a self-service manner…

October 6, 2011 Off

Salesforce.com CEO says Oracle’s ‘Proprietary’ Systems Miss Cloud Computing Mark

By David
Grazed from CRN.  Author:  Steven Burke.

Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff Wednesday attacked Oracle (NSDQ:ORCL) for what he called its "proprietary mainframes" and "closed systems" that ignore the cloud computing and social network revolutions that are reshaping the technology landscape.

Benioff’s comments came after he accused Oracle of canceling his keynote session at 10:30 a.m. PST at the Novellus Theatre at the massive Oracle OpenWorld conference because his cloud message was not in line with what he called Oracle’s proprietary and closed systems theme…

October 6, 2011 Off

Oracle poised to expand cloud offerings

By David
Grazed from Reuters.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Oracle Corp (ORCL.O) is preparing to expand its offerings in cloud computing, one of the fastest-growing areas of the technology sector, the company said on Wednesday ahead of a speech by Chief Executive Larry Ellison…

October 5, 2011 Off

Why choose one cloud computing provider over another?

By David
Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Tom Nolle.

We’re probably less than half a percent into the full realization of public cloud, yet there already are more cloud computing providers in the market than users can count. So how are you supposed to settle on the right cloud services provider when the multitude of types and choices is dizzying? We’ll tell you how…

October 5, 2011 Off

Rackspace gives up the OpenStack reins

By David

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author:  Derrick Harris.

Rackspace announced Wednesday via a blog post that it will be giving up control over its OpenStack cloud computing project to an indepedent foundation. OpenStack is the open-source cloud computing platform that Rackspace and co-founder NASA began pushing in July 2010 as an alternative to cloud software and services from VMware, Amazon Web Services and other providers, but it has been somewhat plagued by concerns over Rackspace’s control of the community…

October 5, 2011 Off

Cloud Security Remains Top Business Worry

By David
Grazed from eWeek.  Author:  Nathan Eddy.

The Cloud continues to vex and challenge most businesses, with security leading their list of concerns

Businesses have mixed feelings when it comes to security, according to a new survey from Symantec, with the majority ranking it as a top concern when moving to the Cloud.

Symantec’s 2011 State of Cloud Survey examined how organisations are adopting cloud computing and dealing with the changes it can impose on their approach to managing IT.

The survey revealed that IT organisations may not be adequately prepared for the move to the cloud, as almost half of the respondents said their IT staffs are not ready at this time…