Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Cameron Sturdevant.

The newly formed Open Data Center Alliance is using an array of usage models to weld cloud-using customers into a force that prevents vendor lock. At the same time, the group is promoting secure movement of virtual workloads from one provider to another. The organization is made up of more than 200 members including JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin and Marriott.

While there are other nascent cloud-user organizations forming, namely CSCC (Cloud Standards Customer Council), ODCA (Open Data Center Alliance) in June issued eight usage models that organizations can use today when specifying baseline requirements for cloud projects.

The formation of both customer groups comes at a seminal moment for data center design. Virtualization is driving compute, storage, networking, application and desktop IT managers to drastically increase the efficient use of costly resources. And the option to outsource some or all virtual workloads is a bell that cannot be un-rung…

Grazed from Boston Globe.  Author: Hiawatha Bray.

Grazed from TMCNet.  Author: PR Annoucement.

Sep. 13–15, 2011.  Austin, TX

If you are a communications professional, cloud communications fundamentally changes how your business will run, who purchases your goods and services, and how they pay for it. This event will provide you with a good grounding in the latest technologies, players and business models, and offer excellent opportunities to meet your peers and potential partners…

Grazed from InfoTech.  Author:  Rajani Baburajan.

Android malware and cloud computing-related data breaches are growing at an alarming rate. Social networking scams have become more sophisticated, and cybercriminals continue to instigate malicious schemes, according to Trend Micro’s (News – Alert) 2Q 2011 Threat Roundup report…

Grazed from TMCNet.  Author:  Narayan Bhat.

Telecom operators in Latin America should adopt cloud computing at the earliest to keep pace with their global competitors as well as to expand their service portfolio, suggests market analyst firm Pyramid Research…

Grazed from IDG.  Author:  Joab Jackson.

Now that Java 7 SE (Standard Edition) has officially been released, Oracle and members of the JCP (Java Community Process) have started mulling over what features to include in the next version of the programming language, Java SE 8. On the agenda for this new release: engineering Java for the cloud.

"Java 8 is supposed to set the scene for the cloud, for a wider deployment arena," said Mark Little, senior director of engineering for Red Hat’s middleware business, as well as Red Hat’s primary liaison for the JCP. Oracle left out many of the advanced features planned for Java 7 in order not to further delay the release, he noted. Those releases may very well be included in Java 8…

Grazed from PRNews Wire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Shares of Rackspace Hosting (NYSE: RAX) are trading higher in the after-hours following the release of the company’s Q2 earnings results. Currently, shares are higher by 0.16%, trading at $36.82; they ended the regular session lower by 7.05%, at $36.76…

Grazed from Business Times.  Author: Kamarul Yunus.

Hewlett Packard (HP) is investing some US$1 billion (RM2.97 billion) to set up at least six commercial data centres to offer cloud computing services in the Asia Pacific region this year.

HP Enterprise Services chief technology officer for Asia Pacific and Japan, Bradden Wondra said the company has identified six locations for the data centres, namely in Japan, China, India, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand…

Grazed from MountainXpress.  Author: Jeff Fobes.

The City of Asheville’s Information Technology Services Department is sponsoring "Asheville Cloud Computing Day 2011," a mini-conference scheduled for Aug. 10, from 9-11:30 a.m. in the Municipal Building (100 Court Plaza, 4th floor)…