Many organizations are using VMware, OpenStack and other technologies to take their clouds in-house, building private cloud infrastructures to reduce their costs and dependence on providers like Amazon AWS.  Anyone who has already ventured on a private cloud project has more than likely encountered the enormous complexity of the field, at every level: business, architecture, infrastructure, virtualization, and workload management.

With that in mind, I recently spoke with the team at Stratoscale – the maker of Symphony, a tool that sets up a private cloud with AWS-like capabilities on your local machines in minutes – and found out that they have set out to make private cloud more accessible, not just for cloud infrastructure specialists, but also for ordinary IT and DevOps professionals who want to better understand how they can leverage this technology.  To do that, they have created something that has totally blown me away!  They have taken it upon themselves to build a Private Cloud Wiki.  After spending quite some time navigating it, I’m dubbing it a ‘must visit knowledge hub’ that collects all the relevant information on private cloud technology from around the world, and organizes it in a meaningful structure:

The OpenStack Foundation, the open infrastructure community comprised of 34,000+ voting members globally, has elected its 2017 Board of Directors. With 24 members across nine countries and 19 organizations, the Board represents a large, diverse and vibrant open source community.

According to a recent Forrester Research Report, "OpenStack’s Global Traction Expands for its Newton Release," OpenStack has "grown into a de facto standard platform for the private cloud market and now serves as the foundation for public clouds, particularly in Europe and China."

The OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors includes 24 board members-eight Individual Directors elected by the individual members of the OpenStack Foundation; eight Platinum Directors, each appointed by a Platinum Member of the Foundation; and eight Gold Directors elected by the Gold Members of the Foundation. The elected and appointed directors for 2017 will begin their terms on January 24.

Grazed from 1RedDrop. Author: Shudeep Chandrasekhar.

Infrastructure-as-a-Service, or IaaS, was the fastest growing cloud segment in 2016, and there are several indications that we could see a repeat of strong growth in 2017 as well. Early in 2016 Gartner projected that the Infrastructure-as-a-Service market will reach $22.4 billion in size.

That turned out to be another feather in Gartner’s cap, because Business Insider recently reported that the IaaS market hit the $22 billion mark for 2016. By 2015, the IaaS market was worth nearly $16 billion, and if the numbers by the two reputed sources are correct, then the cloud infrastructure market has recorded an eye-popping 38% growth in 2016…

Read more from the source @ http://1reddrop.com/2017/01/16/infrastructure-service-iaas-growth-critical-cloud-computing/

Grazed from Director. Author: David Stokes.

The Cloud has undoubtedly changed the way modern business operates, and in today’s digital economy there’s little room for error. Yet, with high stakes also comes a wealth of opportunity for the UK economy. 2016 saw many dynamic, political and socio-economic shifts, which will play out over the course of the next few years.

But ultimately the game changer remains the same: businesses are realising the significance of flexibility and choice when it comes to data and the cloud, and how this can help their business to accelerate growth, be successful, and stave off future competition. From Travis Perkins to Shopdirect and Dixons Carphone, brands are witnessing how cloud technology can transform their business to create a more seamless, personalised experience for their customers, and accelerate the digital transformation of a company…

ImageWare Systems, Inc., a leader in mobile and cloud-based, multi-modal biometric identity management solutions, has achieved certification for its GoVerifyID Enterprise Suite for Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2. GoVerifyID Enterprise Suite is also fully compatible with Windows Server 2008 R2 and 2016, and works seamlessly with Windows 7, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. 

This certification designates software products that meet Microsoft’s standards for compatibility and recommended practices with their Windows Server 2012 R2 operating system. GoVerifyID Enterprise Suite is also fully supported in Microsoft Hyper-V 2012 environments.

AS the dust settles on the recently-concluded Amazon Web Services re:Invent 2016, one thing is clear: cloud behemoth Amazon Web Services (AWS) Inc is far from done innovating and is once again gearing up for new battleground frontiers.

At its annual developers’ and users’ conference held in Las Vegas in Dec 2016, AWS executives were not only busy selling the idea of its version of the cloud but were also pushing new boundaries in making cloud technologies ubiquitous in the life of the enterprise.

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: Editorial Staff.

200 HPC cloud experiments, 80 case studies, and a ton of hands-on experience gained, that’s the harvest of four years of UberCloud HPC Experiments. This article summarizes major findings, a discussion of roadblocks and how they have been resolved, and offers three examples from the latest 2016 Compendium of HPC cloud case studies.

HPC cloud experiments demonstrate progress in HPC cloud computing

After four years and 200 cloud experiments we are now able to measure cloud computing progress, objectively. Looking back four years at our first 50 cloud experiments, 26 of them failed or didn’t finish, and the average duration of the successful ones was about three months. Four years later, in 2016, looking at our last 50 cloud experiments, none failed; and the average duration of these experiments is now just about three days…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing — on-demand, internet-based computing services — has been successfully applied to many computing functions in recent years. From consumer-facing, web-based productivity apps like Google Docs to enterprise database management suites, the tools businesses rely on are increasingly moving to the cloud.

But developing a cloud strategy is no easy task. Public cloud solutions will likely come to dominate the market over the next decade, but business constraints, such as security concerns and the limitations of existing infrastructure, make it difficult for companies to fully adopt the public cloud right now…

Read more from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/the-cloud-computing-report-an-introduction-to-cloud-solutions-and-their-use-cases-2017-1

Grazed from CodeStone. Author: Paul Williams.

Every industry has its own buzzwords – concepts and ideas that get thrown around, and often become overhyped – primarily by those that have a vested interest in selling you certain products. You could be forgiven for thinking that ‘cloud’ was one such buzzword. After all, it’s difficult to get through a conversation about IT without it sounding like an abstract weather report! But, the truth is that the cloud has fundamentally reshaped the information technology landscape. Cloud redefines how we procure, consume and pay for digital services. For small and medium-sized businesses, this is particularly important.

WHERE IT ALL BEGAN

Surprisingly, the origins of cloud computing can be traced back to the 1950s. Mainframe computers were prodigiously expensive and were, therefore, reserved for large corporations and respected learning institutes. To facilitate growing demand for computer resources, these institutions allowed multiple users to access the central mainframe through ‘dumb terminals’…

Read more from the source @ http://www.codestone.net/our-thoughts/a-brief-history-of-cloud-it/