August 18, 2011 Off

Hitachi, Microsoft offer private cloud-computing

By David
Grazed from The Nation.  Author: Jirapan Boonnoon.

Watcharasit Santisuknirun, Thailand country manager of Hitachi Data Systems, said the first in a portfolio of converged data-centre solutions built on Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track and integrated with Microsoft Exchange 2010 would enable organisations to have virtualised, automated and optimised environments.

The system is designed to help organisations adopt cloud-computing at their own pace. The new solutions also combine innovation and expertise to optimise storage and networking as well as provide ready-to-deploy information technology for running multiple applications that simplify management and reduce cost and floor space…

August 18, 2011 Off

Cloud computing – a green opportunity or climate change risk?

By David
Grazed from The Guardian.  Author:  Pete Foster.

Cloud computing enables users to to share resources and carry out tasks remotely. Rather than using your own local PCs or servers to do the work, you connect to a remote data centre, often provided by an IT services or software company. It means more computing is migrating to purpose-built data centres.

From a low carbon perspective it’s no bad thing. Data centres tend to be more energy efficient than individual servers distributed around an organisation and, while there is still vast room for improvement, many companies are working to make their computing facilities more energy efficient. Software and IT services suppliers, for example, have been vying to be seen as the greenest provider – apart from the PR value there is a great deal of money to be saved in greater energy efficiency…

August 18, 2011 Off

Sustainable Energy Sources to Power Cloud Computing

By David
Grazed from Cloud Tweaks.  Author: Sourya Biswas.

Frankly speaking, the title of this article is somewhat optimistic, considering what I am about to write about is merely a study on the subject. However, considering the big names behind this research project, it is not too much of a leap of faith to expect some concrete directions towards the use of sustainable energy sources to power cloud computing.

Exploration of the relationship between energy consumption and cloud computing is not new on this website. Earlier, I had written on opposing studies that have feted and vilified cloud computing as regards its environment-friendliness (See: How Green Is Cloud Computing? and Environmental Challenges to Cloud Computing ). I had also discussed not only saving money on energy through cloud computing (See: Saving Money on Energy by Going on the Cloud  but actually earning money through the process (See: Harnessing Data Center Heat to Warm Houses). Today’s article explores the possibility of marrying renewable energy sources and cloud computing…

August 18, 2011 Off

Cloud Computing & Virtualization: Hot Trends Organizations Can’t Ignore

By David
Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Daniel Burrus.

The use of virtualization and cloud computing is growing quickly among companies of all sizes. Currently, 30 percent of servers are virtualized, and surveys show that by 2012, that number will grow to 50 percent.

Virtualization and cloud computing go hand-in-hand, and virtualizing servers is just the tip of the iceberg. The trend to virtualize everything from servers to processing power to software offerings actually started years ago in the personal sector. In the recent past, it was common for individuals within major organizations to use virtualized services or cloud computing when at home, but at work they weren’t using those services at all. Why? Because corporate IT didn’t trust the lack of security of the cloud and they weren’t sure it was a hard trend – something that was definitely here to stay. Today, we know better…

August 18, 2011 Off

Events: Cloud Standards Customer Council quarterly meeting – September 20, 2011

By David
Grazed from Cloud Standards Customer Council.  Author: PR Announcement.

CSCC Quarterly Meeting      
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Orlando, FL USA

The council will separate the hype from the reality on how to leverage what customers have today and how to use open, standards-based cloud computing to extend their organizations.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council is an end user advocacy group dedicated to accelerating cloud’s successful adoption, and drilling down into the standards, security and interoperability issues surrounding the transition to the cloud…

The Council will provide cloud users with the opportunity to drive client requirements into standards development organizations and deliver materials such as best practices and use cases to assist other enterprises.

The Council will complement existing cloud standards efforts and establish a core set of client-driven requirements to ensure cloud users will have the same freedom of choice, flexibility, and openness they have with traditional IT environments. The Cloud Standards Customer Council is open to all end-user organizations. The group will work to lower the barriers for widespread adoption of Cloud Computing by helping to prioritize key Interoperability issues such as cloud management, reference architecture, hybrid clouds, as well as security and compliance issues.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council will:

  • Drive customer requirements into the development process to gain acceptance by the Global 2000
  • Deliver customer-focused content in the form of best practices, patterns, case studies, use cases, and standards roadmaps.
  • Influence the standards development process for new cloud standards.
  • Facilitate the exchange of real-world stories, practices, lessons and insights.

The Cloud Standards Customer Council’s mission, strategies, and tactics center on the following premises:

  • Cloud computing adoption is a key enabler for the 21st century enterprise
  • Achieving the benefits of cloud computing requires significant changes for both IT and business executives
  • Cloud computing is perceived by business executives as an IT integration and productivity story, rather than a business agility story
  • Cloud computing practitioners would greatly benefit from a vibrant practitioner community to drive local, business-driven, cloud success, and to spur broader enterprise, and industry-wide, cloud adoption.

Cloud Standards Customer Council founding enterprise members include IBM, Kaavo, CA Technologies, Rackspace, Software AG.

More than 100 of the world’s leading organizations including Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, State Street and North Carolina State University have already joined the Council.

Agenda:

08:00 – 09:00 Continental Networking Breakfast 
09:00 – 09:15 Welcome 
09:15 – 10:00  Maximizing Return-on-investment and managing risks from cloud computing initiatives
Steven Woodward, CEO 
Cloud Perspectives
10:00 – 10:15 Break
10:15 – 11:00 The Challenge of Deploying and Managing Distributed Business Applications and Workloads in the Clouds
Sponsor Presentation: Kaavo
11:00 – 12:00 Business in the Cloud: Mitigating Risk
Joe Basirico,  Director of Security Services
Security Innovation
12:00 – 13:00 Lunch
13:00  – 13:45 Security in the Cloud
Adam Vincent, CEO
CyberSquared
13:45 – 14:15 Break
14:15 – 16:00 Working Group Presentation of Deliverables
16:00 – 17:00 Next steps, New business, and Closing
For registration, visit: http://www.cloudstandardscustomercouncil.org/092011/registration.htm
 
August 18, 2011 Off

Microsoft Office 365 outage a disaster or false flag

By David
Grazed from IT Wire.  Author: Stan Beer.

Some may argue that the recent outage of the Microsoft Office 365 online service on Wednesday across major centres in the US was a major embarrassment for the software behemoth. But was it really or was it a vindication of the company’s legacy in-house software model?

Let’s face it, software as a service (SaaS) aka cloud computing should be anathema to a company that dominates the global market in productivity software sales. For more than two decades Microsoft has been making tens of billions selling software that companies and consumers are forced to buy and load on their local hard disks.

All of a sudden along comes a thing called the Internet. Until relatively recently – say 10 years ago – no problem. Neither the bandwidth nor the applications were there…

August 18, 2011 Off

Amazon Exec Predicts Cloud Computing Revolution

By David
Grazed from Business News Daily.  Author: Mike Wall.

Cloud computing will bring about an IT revolution akin to the industrial shift ushered in by the centralized electrical grid, experts say.

Before the grid was set up in the 19th century, American businesses typically generated their own electricity. Similarly, many companies today manage and maintain their own data centers to collect, store, analyze and share information…

August 18, 2011 Off

Five Golden Rules for a Secure Cloud Migration

By David
Grazed from Virtual Strategy Magazine.  Author: Phil Lieberman.

Survey after survey has revealed that security is the top concern voiced by prospective customers about cloud computing and its outsourced, on-demand business model. Worries over data privacy may prove to be service providers’ greatest roadblock to new business. In addition, the risks of a data breach seem certain to grow as a service provider’s infrastructure expands and its IT staff becomes more numerous and decentralized…

August 18, 2011 Off

Cloud Links: Nimbula, Cloud Cruiser, nScaled, enStratus

By David

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge.  Author: Rich Miller.

There were a number of announcements today of new products and features for the cloud computing sector. Here’s a roundup with links to the news announcements:

Nimbula Powers Distributed Clouds – Nimbula today introduced Nimbula Director 1.5, the newest release of its cloud operating system that helps enterprises and service providers build private, hybrid and public cloud infrastructure. Providing a one-stop virtual data center management solution, Nimbula Director isolates customers from the operational and hardware complexity associated with deploying a private or public cloud. With version 1.5, Nimbula Director is now capable of supporting a geographically distributed cloud, an industry first. The software can manage many geographic locations of a multi-site cloud from a single view. This dramatically improves the cloud experience for end users as they now have a single login from which they can access any resource world-wide and deploy their workloads to any site in a self-service manner…

August 17, 2011 Off

Microsoft ‘streaming storage’ patent maps OS future

By David
Grazed from PhysOrg.com.  Author: Nancy Owano.

Microsoft might be planning a future where Windows open to something far bigger, the next time you push your power button on. A patent filed by Microsoft points to its plan for an operating system environment beyond Windows 8 that depends on cloud computing, not locally installed software. The patent suggests your computer will be booted through remote storage in a cloud computing construct, where software services control your digital work...