Grazed from Technology Review.  Author:  Kristina Grifantini.

Google is the first major Web company to reveal exactly how much energy it uses—information that will help researchers and policy makers understand how the massive explosion of Internet usage and cloud computing is contributing to global energy consumption…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author:  Ben Kerschberg.

Grazed from OpenCirrus.org.  Author: PR Announcement.

Organizers are pleased to announce the 6th Open Cirrus Summit, October 12-13 2011, in Atlanta, Georgia. Current and prospective members of the Open Cirrus community are invited to participate in this important event, designed to build a sense of community among members and foster discussion and dialogue about relevant research topics…

 

Grazed from Coated.  Author: Editorial Staff.

At a time when competition between Microsoft and Google are at an all time high for cloud based office products, Redmond sees another outage for their Office 365 cloud service. Unfortunately for Microsoft, this outage was not just limited to Office 365, but also included other Microsoft properties including SkyDrive and Hotmail…

Grazed from Computer World.  Author:  Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing discussions invariably begin with the "IPS" taxonomy: Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and Software as a Service. This taxonomy has the virtue of being comprehensible and neatly partitioning assessment requirements:

• Want an application? Look to a SaaS provider for a single purpose application (HR, financials, printing, etc.)
• Want to write your own application? Look to an IaaS provider that lets you create your own custom application.
• Want to understand the concept of leveraging someone else’s software smarts to manage the plumbing while you focus on application functionality? Then look at something like Google App Engine to get an idea of what PaaS could be…

Grazed from NetworkComputing.  Author: David Hill.

As with any large trade show, the vast multitude of attendees at the recently-concluded VMworld 2011 were exposed to a cornucopia of products and services that staggers the imagination. Making sense of how those solutions fit into the modern world of IT is more difficult, although virtualization and cloud computing are two useful categories. Still, the big picture that VMware continues to emphasize is that a trio of disruptive trends is simultaneously transforming IT: infrastructure renewal, applications development and end-user computing. Understanding these trends is necessary not only to comprehend what new products and services can do today, but also to get a better perspective of what is likely to happen in the future…

Grazed from CIO.  Author:  Sandra Gittlen.

When auto parts supplier Inteva Products LLC spun out from its parent company Delphi in 2008, CIO Dennis Hodges was left standing in a heap of legacy ERP equipment.

Inteva’s global manufacturing facilities, engineering sites and Troy, Mich.-based headquarters were each running multiple stand-alone servers. As Hodges explains, "the servers were anywhere from five to eight years old and difficult to keep running and patched."…

Grazed from VentureBeat.  Author:  Sean Ludwig.

Cloud phone service RingCentral has raised an additional $10 million in funding, with a goal of expanding its size and scope.

RingCentral offers cloud computing-based business phone systems to more than 200,000 customers. The service essentially makes small businesses appear larger than they are and gives them less-expensive tools to compete with bigger companies when it comes to phone services. RingCentral offers things like multiple voicemail boxes, call routing, auto-receptionist, extension dialing, call transfers and smartphone integration…

Grazed from CMS Wire.  Author:  Geoff Spick.

HP in the Clouds

HP this week announced a private beta program for HP Cloud Services. Aiming to offer HP Cloud Compute and HP Cloud Object Storage to users, based on HP’s hardware and software combined with OpenStack technology, the company will be looking to take on the likes of Amazon and others in the cloud space…

Grazed from The Escapist.  Author:  Brian Albert.

Nolan Bushnell believes cloud computing can fix the "nightmare" that is modern education.

In what might be confused as a doomsday prophecy, game industry legend Nolan Bushnell described some glaring faults of contemporary American education, including broken computers and maladjusted teachers. The fix, he recommends? A unique, game-based education program delivered via cloud computing technology, similar to what’s being used on the modern videogame landscape…