Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

At first, it’s all about cost savings — avoiding up-front fees, hardware costs, and ongoing maintenance and software upgrades. But looking beyond the operational concerns with cloud computing, things get much more interesting. Cloud really begins to shine when it becomes an enabler for increased business opportunities, and expanded horizons.

The challenge is measuring, or at least understanding, the gains. Incremental savings from moving an application off a local server to a cloud site are easy to capture and document. But how do you measure increased agility? How do you measure the ability to pivot to new business opportunities? How do you measure an increased capacity for innovation?…

According to a new survey from CompuCom Systems, Inc. ("CompuCom"), a leading technology infrastructure services company, nearly half of IT professionals surveyed (47 percent) believe that cloud security is the most important technology for their organization this year, over Internet of Things (IoT), data analytics, third-party software support and robotics process automation (RPA). The online poll collected responses from 662 IT professionals across multiple industries from November 9, 2016 – January 12, 2017.

The cloud computing market is susceptible to threats including data breaches, data loss and insecure application programming interfaces (APIs). The world cloud security market is expected to reach $8.9 billion by 2020, according to a report by Allied Market Research, with a CAGR Of 23.5 percent from 2015 to 2020.

TEKsystems, a leading provider of IT staffing solutions, IT talent management expertise and IT services, today announced it has achieved AWS Service Delivery Partner status for Amazon Redshift and Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR).

The AWS Service Delivery Program was recently launched to help AWS customers find qualified Amazon Partner Network (APN) members that provide expertise in a specific service or skill area. To qualify, partners must pass service-specific verification of customer references and a technical review, meaning customers can be confident they are working with partners that provide recent and relevant experience.

Grazed from CCI. Author: Editorial Staff.

Depending on your source, UK cloud adoption rates are currently anywhere between 78% and 84%, and whilst cloud is no longer a new phenomenon, its importance to not only the CIO but also the full c-suite of decision makers such as CEOs, CMOs and CFOs, is paramount as they jostle to gain a competitive advantage over competitors.

It has been argued that cloud adoption heralds the largest disruption in enterprise computing since the advent of the PC, with many industries embracing cloud-based platforms to not only cut costs but also drive efficiency. Despite this, there has been a certain amount of trepidation from the financial services sector to make the transition and fully embrace cloud and its many advantages…

Kaseya, the leading provider of complete IT management solutions for Managed Service Providers (MSPs) and small to midsized businesses (SMBs), today announced the general availability of Kaseya VSA 9.4, the industry’s only second-generation remote monitoring and management (RMM) solution. Available both on-premises and in the cloud, the new technology delivers cross platform support for Windows, macOS and Linux, allowing for comprehensive IT systems management across any environment.

The latest release of Kaseya VSA features next-generation innovations developed specifically for advanced MSPs and enterprise IT departments. New features promote policy-based automation with proactive remediation all to increase overall team productivity. The Kaseya automation framework allows companies to securely take charge of their infrastructure by transparently and remotely managing servers, desktops, mobile devices, home-based desktops and network devices — all from a single central management console. Built on a foundation that promotes the best user technician experience in the industry, Kaseya VSA is the ideal RMM solution for growing IT departments.

New features and functionality in Kaseya VSA 9.4 include:

Bluelock, provider of Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service (DRaaS) for complex environments and sensitive data, is expanding its IT security footprint with a new series of features to enhance clients’ overall security posture. The first of these initiatives is the launch of a comprehensive dashboard that increases visibility and auditability across clients’ security services.

As cybersecurity threats continue to grow in the digital age, Bluelock Portfolio provides clients visibility into the depth of security with which their applications and services are guarded, with the ability to easily add additional protection services. Clients can access a comprehensive, searchable log of those who have accessed and modified systems, as well as quickly request documents for response to auditors.

Armor, a leading provider of managed cloud security, has been named by Momentum Partners, an advisor and dealmaker in cybersecurity, to Momentum’s Watch List: Q4 2016. Each quarter Momentum identifies ten companies after carefully weighing feedback from their industry network and considering a variety of growth and innovation factors.

"Last year was significant in terms of expanding our product set to encompass an offering that would help our customers fulfill their shared security obligation on public cloud platforms," said Jared Day, president, Armor. "In addition to our secure hosting offering, we now provide a comprehensive approach to protecting a variety of cloud and virtualized environments. Being included in this list reinforces Armor’s strategic direction and we look forward to sustaining and accelerating this momentum even further as we enter 2017."

Riverbed Technology, the application performance company, today announced that Riverbed SteelConnect, an app-defined SD-WAN solution that simplifies networking for the cloud-centric enterprise, now offers instant and easy provisioning of SD-WAN connectivity into Microsoft Azure cloud networks. SteelConnect is transforming legacy hardware-based approaches to networking with a software-defined and application-centric solution that delivers the agility, visibility, and performance that businesses need to deliver real business impact in a cloud-first world.

As applications continue to move to the cloud, performance and security remain critical concerns for the enterprise. SteelConnect delivers automated, secure connectivity to Azure cloud networks with a single click. As a result, enterprises can be more agile, while maintaining the same level of performance delivered from the cloud across the entire hybrid network.

"Riverbed has a long-standing relationship with Microsoft to provide fast and secure access to users’ applications and data, wherever it resides," said Paul O’Farrell, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Riverbed’s SteelConnect, SteelHead, and SteelFusion business units. "With the seamless integration of Microsoft Azure with Riverbed SteelConnect, we’re taking this a step further, ensuring that connectivity to the cloud itself is simple, instant and secure."