Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

The next big leap in both technology and business models around sharing elastic compute resources might be bidding for those resources at auction or acquiring them through a broker, according to a report issued Thursday from Forrester. The report argues that while the technologies aren’t here today, a business built on aggregating clouds from public and private networks and delivering capacity and services in an automated, on-demand fashion to companies will emerge by the end of this year, and standards will start appearing in 2012.

Forrester believes that today we have a simple cloud broker model where companies can buy access to infrastructure as a service on demand, things such as Enomaly’s SpotCloud fit this mold. However, in the future, it expects a”full broker” to emerge that automatically spans all clouds and acts as a “fixer” for companies seeking to deploy new apps or handle busy times of year. The fixers don’t just do this for compute resources, but also will one day do it for people, making the idea of hiring seasonal workers something the full cloud broker could do — providing both the IT resources to support those people but also the people themselves…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Year-old PHP PaaS hoster AppFog, née PHP Fog, has gotten an $8 million B round led by Ignition Partners with participation from new investors Simon Crosby, Citrix’ former data center and virtualization CTO, and VC Matt Ocko as well as existing investors, Madrona Venture Group, First Round Capital and Founders Co-Op.

That makes $9.8 million altogether…

 

Grazed from PR Web.  Author: PR Announcement.

NextComputing, a leading provider of portable workstations and dense, small-footprint servers, announces a new rugged portable server solution for forward deployed military environments or any remote location that requires enterprise computing resources. The Vigor EX-B is NextComputing’s first completely battery-powered and fully mobile rugged server, able to run on its own internal power for up to 4 hours. Designed to support tactical operations centers and other mission-critical environments, the Vigor EX-B is the ideal platform for delivering virtualized “local cloud” computing services to multiple users in a remote setting…
 

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Jennifer Hagendorf Follett.

Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Wednesday rolled out a new SMB partner program and encouraged partners to step up their move toward cloud computing.

Eric Martorano, senior director of the U.S. SMB channel group at Microsoft, launched the new Top VAR Program from XChange Americas, where he delivered a keynote address. The program provides a designated Telepartner account manager as well as increased incentives, MDFs and technical support to qualified partners committed to building Microsoft SMB practices…

Martorano also exhorted partners to “lead with the cloud” this year as they build their solutions sales strategies.

 

 “There is an opportunity for you to build, tell, sell and support the cloud. There’s opportunity out there, and that’s not going to change,” Martorano said. “Those partners that are leading with cloud get more on-premise revenue. Why? Because they are the trusted advisors,” Martorano said. “I say to every partner, lead with the cloud.”…

Grazed from IT ChannelPlannet.  Author: D.H. Kass.

Nearly a year after the federal government instructed agencies to opt for cloud-based technologies, about two-thirds have identified applications to move to the cloud, with half of those already commencing the migration process, according to a survey conducted by ScienceLogic, a Reston, VA-based provider of IT operations and cloud management software…

Grazed from PR NewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

A-Frame Technology Services today announced the availability of RentTheCloud.com, a brokerage service that matches companies seeking cloud services (SaaS, PaaS, IaaS) with cloud vendors.  Unlike the uncertainties and risks of conventional approaches to evaluating, selecting, and implementing a cloud service, RentTheCloud.com is 100% success-based, like a realtor. Fees are based on a "cloud brokerage agreement" modeled after a standard realtor agreement and equal to one or two months of the cloud rental fee…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

CoreMatrix Systems(TM), one of the country’s leading cloud computing consulting and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) deployment companies, today announced a new service offering called QuickCloud. With three variations (QuickCloud, QuickCloud with Campaigns and QuickCloud Data Plus), the new service helps companies get up and running on Salesforce.com in as little as five business days…

Grazed from The Register.  Author: Bryan Betts.

Cloud computing takes more than just a philosophical shift. It requires new skills, processes and architectures.  In particular, traffic patterns in cloud networks can be quite different from those of the familiar enterprise network and the scale of operation can be significantly higher.

Grazed from IDG News.  Author: Nicolas Zeitler.