Grazed from Business Insider. Author: Julie Bort.

Snap, the company that makes the popular app Snapchat, just hired away Jerry Hunter from Amazon Web Services, Snap has confirmed to Business Insider. At Amazon he was responsible for Amazon’s data centers globally. At Snap he will be the VP of engineering, reporting to Snap engineering chief Tim Sehn, reports The Information’s Tom Dotan, who first reported the news.

Before Amazon, Hunter was running global data centers for another huge tech company. He was the VP of IT for Sun Microsystems which, before it got bought by Oracle, was also a pioneer in cloud computing (although the world didn’t call it that back in the day). The interesting thing about hiring a data center expert is that Snap doesn’t run it’s own data centers. It is, instead, a marque customer for Google’s cloud, its App Engine service…

Read more from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/snap-jerry-hunter-amazon-data-centers-2016-10

Grazed from CIO. Author: Paddy Padmanabhan.

The new guidelines recognize the growing importance of cloud computing in healthcare and are the right step in the bringing cloud service providers into the broader discussion on healthcare data security. But covered entities and BAs have to unpack the guidelines and address certain gaps. The cloud services market is growing exponentially, and research firm Gartner estimates the market for cloud services to be over $200 billion.

The healthcare sector has been getting on board as well, for enterprise IT workloads as well as cloud-based technology solutions. It’s no surprise that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has released a set of guidelines for cloud service providers (CSP), clarifying their role as business associates (BA) in the context of HIPAA and healthcare data…

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Barb Darrow.

You’ve got to give UBS analyst Steven Milunovich major props. During IBM’s earnings call on Monday, he asked whether IBM Watson, the company’s golden child, will run on rival Amazon Web Services—and he was promptly shot down. “No. Watson runs on our cloud, and our technology will run on IBM’s cloud,” IBM chief financial officer Martin Schroeter responded tersely.

Milunovich’s question wasn’t stupid. Just last week, VMware VMW -0.15% , another big Amazon AMZN -0.18% rival, said that its bread-and-butter VMware software will run on AWS, starting next year. Indeed, it seems that most of the world’s most important business software including SAP’s SAP 1.85% HANA databases as well as databases from Oracle ORCL -0.31% and Microsoft MSFT -0.35% , run on AWS…

Grazed from GeekWire. Author: Dan Richman.

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, a cloud, server and storage company that split from Hewlett Packard in late 2015, laid off an undisclosed number of employees today in North America. HPE spokeswoman Meghan Fintland acknowledged in an email that “previously announced restructuring changes took place today,” including “workforce changes that are part of a company-wide strategy to give HPE the needed workforce to be a more nimble customer and partner-centric company.”

A source with knowledge of the situation speculated this morning that the Seattle offices might be closed. But Fintland said that “HPE will not be shutting its Seattle offices” and didn’t respond immediately to a request for more details on the layoffs. Several HPE employees posted about the layoffs today on Twitter. Here’s a tweet from Vicky Brasseur, a senior engineering manager for HPE based out of Portland:…

Read more from the source @ http://www.geekwire.com/2016/struggling-keep-pace-cloud-hewlett-packard-enterprise-cuts-staff/

Grazed from FCW. Author: Bill Aubin.

We’re in an intense era of digital transformation in which every industry is experiencing a shift. And out of this shift we’ve seen the rise of a new digital economy. Some consider that economy — driven by the arrival of new computer technology and a generation of people dedicated to innovation — to be the next Industrial Revolution.

The proof is everywhere: the prevalence of sharing services such as Uber and Postmates, automated business solutions, chatbots and more. Government agencies are under increasing pressure to adapt to the new economy while also facing the challenge of being a growing target for cyberattacks…

Grazed from JDSupra. Author: Editorial Staff.

On October 7, 2016, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”), Office for Civil Rights (“OCR”), released a guidance document (the “Guidance”) on the HIPAA-compliant use of cloud computing technologies. The Guidance includes “frequently asked” questions and answers for covered entities and business associates who use cloud products and services.

The Guidance focuses on cloud computing services provided by third-party cloud services providers (“CSPs”). The Guidance notes that “CSPs generally offer online access to shared computing resources with varying levels of functionality depending on users’ requirements.” …

By leveraging CloudFAST’s Microsoft Windows based intelligent file caching technology, distributed enterprises are achieving unprecedented centralization and consolidation of unstructured data, enabling collaboration all while taking performance to new levels, even across global geographies. CloudFAST eliminates distributed enterprise storage complexity and backups allowing organizations to manage data at a single location in an enterprise datacenter or a cloud datacenter while delivering high performance, consistent file access and sharing at geographically dispersed locations. With CloudFAST, all remote users experience real-time access to corporate storage and file shares as if they were in the same office even if the actual data is stored in data centers thousands of miles away.

IT organizations know what a challenge managing a distributed data center can be. Many an IT Director has spent sleepless nights figuring out how to maintain – or fix – data-center infrastructure deployed at regional offices. While they serve a purpose for companies with specific needs, such as those with branch offices far from headquarters or manufacturing facilities spread across the globe, distributed data centers are notorious for being a drain on resources. They can be siloed systems running well below capacity, and they usually require expensive, on-site data-center support, often requiring IT admins to jet around the globe in direct, hands-on-support roles.

But times are changing. The old model of hardware-focused data centers operating as silos in various geographies has given way to a new technology: hyper-converged infrastructure (HCI). While HCI’s predecessor – converged infrastructure – combines compute, networking and storage capabilities on a single chassis in the data center, HCI goes a step further by integrating all of those functions in a software-defined environment. HCI involves running all of the functions of a datacenter as software on the hypervisor rather than on dedicated physical equipment. HCI is packaged in a compact, factory-integrated appliance, enabling data centers to scale by running compute, networking and storage in virtual building blocks and stacking those blocks to create a flexible infrastructure.  

Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Jason Miller.

Sometimes covering the federal IT community is like a bad roller coaster. The buildup when going up the big hill is exciting and stomach churning. But when the downhill falls flat, you feel a little cheated. That’s the feeling today when it comes to cloud computing. You can’t shake a stick at a conference without someone mentioning the need to the cloud. The crucial role software-, platform-, infrastructure-as-a-service play and will continue to play in the future of federal IT always is hot topic.

But then Deltek’s GovWin puts out a report that is like that flat roller coaster ride. GovWin, a market research firm, looked at preliminary federal procurement data for fiscal 2016 that shows spending on cloud computing hasn’t lived up to its hype. GovWin found civilian agencies have awarded $75.4 million in cloud contracts in 2016 and the Defense Department, its services and agencies awarded $45.3 million in 2016…