Grazed from MarketWired. Author: Editorial Staff.

CloudVelox, a pioneer in cloud automation and orchestration software, today announced it is publishing an e-book to help businesses create a strategy for adopting cloud computing. The e-book, Cloud Migration Best Practices: Understand What (and How) to Move to the Cloud, is available for free download at http://www.cloudvelox.com/lp-cloud-migration-best-practices-cloudvelox

A company’s decision to migrate to the cloud usually is based on the strategic advantages of such a move, including streamlining processes, increasing agility, and lowering CAPEX. Various business triggers and tactics drive this decision, inform the cloud strategy necessary, and provide a general blueprint for moving forward with the process…

Grazed from BlastingNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft is all set to stage big spring event on May 2 with most anticipating a new laptop. Most anticipate a new #Microsoft Surface Pro 5 coming though the improvements could disappoint. Except for the possible upgrade to an Intel Kaby Lake chipset, the word out is that the Redmond company has hardly changed most of the components. With the Surface Pro line doing well, critics believe that bumping up the SoC would be enough.

Compared to Apple, Microsoft does not really need hardware sales to keep its business afloat. Rather, the Redmond company has been known to focus on the software side. Hence, the changes that the Microsoft Surface Pro would have to offer could be in the #Windows 10 Cloud…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Zeus Kerravala.

In the early 1600s, one of my favorite historical figures, Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei, championed the works of one Nicolaus Copernicus and postulated that the universe was heliocentric. The term was named after Helios, the Greek god of the sun, indicating that everything revolved around him.

In the IT world, the cloud has become the center of the universe. And since Zeus is the Greek god of the sky, which includes thunder and cloud, it makes sense that CIOs should adopt a Zeus-centric faith. The cloud has indeed become the center of most organizations’ IT strategy, as it provides the unique combination of on demand scale, elasticity and agility that organizations need to execute on digital initiatives…

In this article, however, we’re going to focus more on how cloud tools and services can be used to help sales. There are some interesting resources and solutions designed specifically to help a business’s sales department become more effective.

Cloud-Based CRM

Customer Relationship Management or CRM is a great platform to use for managing customers. The use of CRM allows corporations to offer more personalized services to each customer through the method of collecting data and the history of interactions within the system. I say "history of interactions" because a good CRM platform can record more than just purchases and invoices.

A10 Networks introduced a new strategic solution that offers multi-cloud, multi-service management that brings to life its ongoing vision of harmonizing application delivery and security.

The new developments center on the A10 Harmony Controller, built on microservices and container technologies, offering a multi-tenant, highly scalable controller architecture that incorporates real-time analytics at a per-app level and central management and orchestration of secure application services across hybrid environments – from physical data centers to public, private and hybrid clouds.

The new A10 Harmony Controller and analytics capabilities fundamentally change the way secure application services are delivered, protected, and managed. Because the A10 Harmony application delivery and security controller uniquely spans traditional data centers and clouds, it is now the industry’s only controller-based platform that can deliver analytics, configuration and orchestration across such hybrid application environments.

Neustar, Inc., a trusted, neutral provider of real-time information services, today announced its Cloud Security Partner Program, a channel partnership program for a select group of strategic business partners and cloud service providers. The Neustar Cloud Security Partner Program enables its channel partners to capitalize on the growing adoption of cloud security solutions by delivering Neustar Security Solutions to its customers. Neustar Security Solutions offer flexible deployment methods for a variety of industry-leading cloud services, including DNS and DDoS mitigation.

According to IDC FutureScape: Worldwide IT Industry 2017 Predictions, "Many enterprises have shifted to a ‘cloud first’ strategy over the past several years. Over the next several years – as two-thirds or more of IT spending shifts to the cloud – many organizations (and IT suppliers) will get steadily closer to ‘cloud only.’"

The Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC) has published a new whitepaper, Cloud Customer Architecture for Securing Workloads on Cloud Services, that outlines security services and corresponding best practices for deploying a comprehensive cloud security architecture. The aim of this new guide is to provide a practical reference to help IT architects and IT security professionals architect, install, and operate the information security components of solutions built using cloud services. It is available for download at http://www.cloud-council.org/deliverables/cloud-customer-architecture-for-securing-workloads-on-cloud-services.htm

Many cloud services are now available, covering infrastructure, platform and application capabilities. Building business solutions using cloud services requires a clear understanding of the available security services, components and options-allied to a clear architecture- which addresses the complete lifecycle of cloud solutions covering development, deployment and operations.

The following security components are covered in detail:

A key takeaway from the survey was that companies are planning to spend more money on those AWS cloud native services in 2017 than they did last year. According to the survey results, 35 percent of respondents said they plan to spend 10-20 percent more on these services this year than last, while 13 percent said they would spend 21-30 percent more. The ramp-up in spending is occurring as companies are realizing the value of previous investments in cloud-related products and services. Thirty-six percent of survey respondents said they are gaining their expected return-on-investment from the use of cloud services, and another 30 percent said they had not yet achieved their anticipated ROI but soon would.

Faction, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud provider, today announced that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has granted Faction a new US Patent #9,621,374, which extends the functionality of hybrid and multi-cloud to new protocols including Virtual Extensible LAN (VXLAN) and Software Defined Networking (SDN). The new patent further reinforces Faction’s place at the forefront of hybrid and multi-cloud solutions. 

Faction’s new patent allows customers to leverage two key innovations in the networking and cloud arenas: VXLAN and SDN. VXLAN technology is attractive to enterprises as it works to improve scalability challenges associated with large cloud deployments. SDN technology enables networks to add agility and flexibility, while allowing administrators to respond quickly through a centralized control location.