Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Michael Vizard.

CSC today announced an extended alliance with Cisco and EMC under which the IT services firm will be touting the Cisco Unified Computing System and VBlocks as the ideal “purpose-built” platform for cloud computing.

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Andrew R. Hickey.

In a bid to show it hasn’t fallen behind the pack when it comes to cloud computing, HP (NYSE:HPQ) this week revealed plans to launch a set of self-assessment tools for customers to determine their cloud readiness. The tech giant also amassed a crew of cloud advisors to help shape its cloud plan of attack.

Grazed from BBC.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The move comes just hours after Dell agreed a deal to take over 3Par, having matched HP’s earlier bid of $1.6bn, tabled on Monday.

HP said its offer was "superior" and it was in a better position than its rival to execute the deal.

Observers are now waiting to see if Dell can again match HP’s offer.

HP said it expected the deal for 3Par to be completed by the end of the year.

"Not only is our offer superior to Dell’s proposal, HP remains uniquely positioned to execute on the combination given the number of synergies between the two companies," said the computer maker’s Dave Donatelli.

Grazed from ChannelPro SMB.  Author: Editorial Staff.

WAN optimization software developer NetEx is partnering with data protection and recovery solutions provider Veeam Software. The two companies are working to supply licensed users of Veeam Backup & Replication for VMware with free HyperIP software.
 

The companies are calling the agreement “exclusive,” entitling Veeam users to a free one-year subscription to the 2 Mb/s HyperIP (VM edition).

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Jeff Kelly.

You may think you know what business intelligence (BI) or data analytics in the cloud means, but think again.

Analytics in the cloud doesn’t refer to just a SaaS-based BI application or a hosted data warehouse (although it does include these things) but to any one of six critical elements, according to a new report by Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner.

Failure to understand the details of cloud analytics could mean disaster for future projects, said Gartner analyst Bill Gassman, co-author of the report.

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: John Storts.

The potential for increased agility and speedier deployment is what should drive an initiative to shift software development into the cloud, rather than strictly basing a decision on cost savings, according to Info-Tech Research Group. But, cost is a huge factor in this decision. Improvements to agility and deployment won’t mean quite as much if the expense of the move (or projected expense increases) outweighs them.

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Ben Kepes.

If cloud software is really going to provide the revolution that many of us predict, we need to see tools adopted by mainstream users. While we’ve seen some exciting tools at the infrastructure level that bring efficiencies for IT, and some application level tools that make sharing and collaboration easier for knowledge workers, we’ve yet to see much in the way of the cloud delivering benefits for mass-market businesses. A new startup from New Zealand aims to help with that by providing a retail point-of-sale (POS) solution that brings cloud benefits in an application designed for retailers.

Grazed from Destination CRM.  Author: Juan Martinez.

The Market

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author:  Bill Claybrook.

With a few exceptions, discussions around private clouds do not include IT Infrastructure Libraries (ITILs), configuration management databases (CMDBs) and service catalogs, but that is quickly changing. Steve Todd, in particular, has noted that when designing the software architecture for a private cloud implementation, one architectural component becomes central: the CMDB.