Grazed from Barron’s. Author: Isabella Zhong.

E-commerce giants Amazon (AMZN) and Alibaba (BABA) have been making an aggressive push into public cloud computing services but smartphone maker Huawei now wants to give the pair a run for their money. Huawei has announced plans for a new business that will focus on turning the Shenzhen-based company into a global provider of cloud computing services that will rival Amazon and Alibaba.

The company has previously offered private cloud services. Sijia Jiang of Reuters has more on Huawei’s cloud strategy. Public cloud computing is big business. Morgan Stanley analyst Grace Chen sees a $300 billion market opportunity today that could grow to around $340 billion by 2020. But the potential could be even greater if the public cloud becomes a transformational technology like electricity…

Read more from the source @ http://blogs.barrons.com/asiastocks/2017/04/11/watch-out-amazon-and-alibaba-huaweis-coming-to-the-public-cloud/

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Allen Leinwand.

I believe that cloud-based services can offer enterprise organizations significant value. From a cost, maintenance and deployment standpoint, the cloud can deliver applications and data to help organizations move faster and be more competitive. However, this "anytime, anywhere" access to applications and data can also cause business headaches in terms of compliance. Data must be managed and controlled according to the various laws, rules and regulations of each country — and different countries demand something different from an organization. As well, these data sovereignty initiatives need to be transparent to users.

Data Sovereignty As A Barrier To Cloud Adoption

Over and over again I hear from potential customers that one of the biggest barriers to their organization adopting the cloud is the compliance of data sovereignty laws. Enterprises work in so many different locations and with so many different vendors that it becomes difficult to guarantee the data sovereignty of information…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Clare Hopping.

Businesses are prepping to expand their cloud usage over the next 12 months, with the majority of businesses focusing on hybrid offerings, research by the Cloud Industry Forum (CIF) has revealed. “We are entering an unprecedented time of change as digital technologies disrupt entire industries and customer expectations," said Alex Hilton, CIF’s CEO.

"Cloud is critical in enabling companies to cope with this change and this research highlights how organisations are increasingly and consistently warming to the cloud delivery model, especially as they begin the realise the benefits to be had from migrating their apps and infrastructure to the cloud."…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

For those at the coalface of the security industry, the feeling of metaphorically banging one’s head against a brick wall, of continually educating, re-educating and correcting misinformation, mischievous or otherwise, will feel all too familiar. Take the comments from Home Secretary Amber Rudd around WhatsApp following the terror attack in Westminster.

Following the disclosure that the messaging service was used moments before the attacker struck, Rudd’s remarks – “there should be no place for terrorists to hide” – were met with a certain level of dismay in the industry. Graham Cluley, a long-standing independent security analyst, put it this way. “There is a danger that politicians will take ghastly incidents of terror as a platform to push forward their agenda of weakening encryption,” he wrote…

Application modernization is critical to success in today’s digital economy. This transformation requires enterprises to evolve IT infrastructure, processes, and architecture. Organizations in every industry need to replace legacy hardware with cloud resources, implement agile and DevOps processes, and adopt new application architectures, including containers. Executing this transition enables faster, safer, and more efficient software delivery, which is the cornerstone of on-demand digital services that customers expect. Skytap Container Management equips enterprises with a single application modernization solution that takes core business applications trapped in data centers to containers in the cloud. 

Grazed from Acquia

Acquia, the digital experience company, today announced the launch of Acquia Cloud CD, a continuous delivery service that enables developers and DevOps teams to automate processes for code building and testing on production-like environments. With the addition of Acquia Cloud CD, development is faster, more efficient and better integrated than when using standalone continuous integration tools. It provides continuous integration and a delivery automation service within Acquia Cloud to accelerate production.

"Acquia Cloud CD turbocharges DevOps capabilities for our Acquia Cloud customers," said Christopher Stone, Acquia chief products officer. "The automation benefits of ready-repeatable building and testing orchestration and self-service environments, all tightly integrated with Acquia Cloud, greatly reduce code and versioning inconsistencies for Drupal DevOps teams."

The Basics of Cloud Computing

There is a high probability that you have been using cloud computing for a while without even knowing it. The cloud powers things like webmail for Yahoo and Google, social media sites, blogs, Google Docs, online gaming, and online storage.

Grazed from DarkReading. Author: Kaushik Narayan.

If you think you’ve finally gotten control of unsanctioned user apps, think again. The next wave of rogue apps is on its way from your data center to the cloud. Over the years, the consumerization of IT has spurred a free-for-all in the adoption of cloud services. As employees found unsanctioned applications to help them do their jobs, overwhelmed security teams took a head-in-the-sand approach, giving rise to a serious problem dubbed "Shadow IT."

But how big of a problem is Shadow IT, really? That depends who you ask. Based on my personal conversations, CIOs estimate the number of unsanctioned cloud apps to be around 100. But in a tally based on an analysis of network logs, Shadow IT totals are much larger –averaging roughly 1,000 cloud services in use since early 2015…

Read more from the source @ http://www.darkreading.com/cloud/the-new-shadow-it-custom-data-center-applications/a/d-id/1328590

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Mary Jo Foley.

Microsoft has refreshed the third (and said to be final) Azure Stack technical preview with lots of new features and fixes. Don’t call it Azure Stack Technical Preview (TP) 4. But given the many features and fixes in the April 6 update, you might be excused if you do. Today’s update includes previews of the Azure App Service (web apps, API apps, and mobile apps), Azure Functions server-less computing, and updated version of of SQL/MySQL database services.

In addition, according to Microsoft’s blog post on the update, "Based on feedback and several ongoing improvements/bug fixes, we’ve also updated the Azure Stack TP3 software for a better deployment and operational experience." In order to try out the new Azure Platform-as-a-Service services introduced today, users must first move to the updated TP3 software, which includes refreshed features for both administrators and tenants…

Read more from the source @ http://www.zdnet.com/article/microsoft-refreshes-azure-stack-preview-adds-new-cloud-services/

Tintri, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise cloud platforms, today announced it is working with Plan B Technologies, Inc. (PBT), a Tintri partner and IT solutions provider in Annapolis, MD, to help customers improve management and performance of their virtualized environments and enterprise cloud.  

As a Tintri partner, PBT delivers a complete lifecycle of professional services, including project management, consultation, assessment, design, deployment, support and staff augmentation delivered by consultants and integrators cross-trained with more than 300 technical certifications. PBT selected Tintri as the standard for customers operating highly virtualized environments and building enterprise cloud. They needed a solution that would integrate with other infrastructures as a building block and greatly reduce customers’ management efforts.  

"We consider ourselves first and foremost an engineering firm, not just a reseller," said Zach Breckin, Plan B Technologies account manager. "Before we became a Tintri partner, we went through a very strenuous technical approval process involving multiple engineers. We poked and prodded around the Tintri platform before we even thought about recommending the solution to any of our customers. Tintri was able to step up to the challenge-we confidently recommend their platform to our customers."