Grazed from The Street. Author: Eric Jhonsa.

In the fast-growing and rapidly changing world of cloud infrastructure services (IaaS) such as cloud computing and cloud storage, Amazon (AMZN) , Microsoft (MSFT) and Alphabet’s (GOOGL) Google are quickly distancing themselves from the pack. That spells trouble for the long list of would-be rivals who typically don’t have as much scale or offer as many features as the leaders.

As was the case in its 2015 report, the 2016 edition of research firm Gartner’s closely read IaaS Magic Quadrant report places only Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure in the report’s "Leaders" quadrant, which features cloud platforms receiving top marks both for the completeness of their vision and their ability to execute…

Grazed from Barron’s. Author: Tiernan Ray.

Tired of hearing about the handful of tech names everyone must own? Consider roaming a bit farther afield for cloud computing. This column has relentlessly talked up the potential of cloud computing for Amazon.com (ticker: AMZN), Alphabet ’s (GOOGL) Google unit, and Microsoft (MSFT). But there are also opportunities for newer, younger companies and turnaround stories among established names.

One good place to look is software tools—programs that computer engineers use to make their own software programs. As history has demonstrated, buying the makers of picks and shovels can be a good way to ride a gold rush. This is one of the most vibrant areas of technology today, as companies shift from selling software programs on a compact disk to selling code that runs on server computers inside Amazon Web Services or other public cloud facilities…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Frank Konkel.

Infrastructure-as-a-service offerings dominate the federal cloud computing market, according to a new report. The federal government spent $3.3 billion on cloud computing in fiscal 2015, up almost 25 percent from a sequestration-driven 5-year low of $2.6 billion in fiscal 2012, according to analysis from big data and analytics firm Govini released this week.

IaaS providers benefitted the most from federal agencies beginning to modernize IT infrastructures. Agencies increased IaaS spending by 53 percent to $897 million in fiscal 2015 from $585 million in fiscal 2012. From an industry perspective, the biggest beneficiaries were IBM – the market leader in IaaS offerings, with $1.1 billion in cloud revenue since fiscal 2011 – and cloud resellers DLT Solutions and InfoReliance…

Read more from the source @ http://www.nextgov.com/cloud-computing/2016/08/iaas-growth-drives-federal-cloud-market/130530/

Since launching its ground-breaking SaaS-based network traffic analysis platform a year ago, Kentik has been making nice progress in the industry.  The company provides Kentik Detect, a cloud-based network visibility and analytics solution that delivers unprecedented depth of insight into any network.  Kentik processes tens of billions of data records per day, equipping service providers and enterprises network operations teams with actionable insights that enable them to make quick, cost-effective decisions.

The company just announced a Series B round of funding — a nice sum of $23 million.  To dig in a little deeper into that funding news and to find out what they have planned going forward, I spoke with Kentik’s co-founder and CEO, Avi Freedman.  

OpenStack Days East is expected to draw some 600 attendees bringing IT professionals, developers and OpenStack supporters together to share case studies, trends, and plans for the world’s fastest-growing open source project. It gives those interested in learning more about the project opportunities to share experiences and talk directly with OpenStack community members.

Science Applications International Corp. launched today Cloud Migration Edge, a multi-tiered methodology that migrates and transforms customers’ current IT applications and systems to a cloud environment securely and effectively. As a cloud services integrator, SAIC teams with the best cloud technology providers to engineer solutions that meet customers’ individual needs. 

Cloud Migration Edge is a holistic, five-step approach that encompasses specialized tools, processes, and best practices to guide the cloud migration life cycle and provide ongoing improvement. This formalized framework supports the step-by-step implementation of a mission-centric cloud computing environment by breaking down the cloud migration process into standardized components at each layer of the IT service life cycle.

According to Spiceworks’ study Diving into IT Cloud Services, only 25 percent of IT professionals believe cloud services are more cost effective than on-premises infrastructure, potentially due to a lack of visibility in how their cloud services are being utilized and the impact on monthly costs. Cloud Cost Monitor is designed to help IT professionals overcome the challenges of keeping their IaaS costs under control by enabling them to track how their usage and costs are trending over time.

"Enterprises are continuing to adopt a public cloud strategy, however adoption has yet to reach its potential, given the complexity and risk of data loss or downtime during the actual workload migration period," said Terri McClure, senior analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group. "By decoupling the storage from compute and allowing these components to migrate independently, while maintaining performance and availability, Velostrata is taking out a lot of the complexity and risk, enabling enterprises to make that leap to the cloud quickly and simply."

SolarWinds, a leading provider of powerful and affordable IT management software, today announced significant updates to its SolarWinds Database Performance Analyzer (DPA). With the enhancements, SolarWinds DPA is the only tool available on the market capable of providing Multi-Dimensional Performance Analysis to improve Software as a Service (SaaS) application performance for MySQL- and Linux-only IT organizations, helping them reduce costs and improve overall organizational effectiveness.

Specifically, SolarWinds DPA now supports MySQL database repositories, enabling SaaS companies  running MySQL- and Linux-only infrastructure whether on-premises or in the cloud to fully leverage the award-winning tool, whereas a Microsoft SQL Server or Oracle repository were required previously.

Additional significant new features in the latest release of SolarWinds DPA include visualization and analysis to help DBAs optimize for and resolve blocking, locking and deadlock issues, and support for Microsoft SQL Server 2016.

Today Particle, the most widely-used Internet of Things platform, announced Particle Cloud, its enterprise IoT platform, already being used by Fortune 500 companies to ship secure, reliable, and easy-to-use IoT products in as little as six months.

"The Internet of Things is a new industry with huge potential. However, the unfortunate reality is that many businesses’ IoT initiatives flounder or fail," said Zach Supalla, Particle co-founder and CEO. "The strongest business case for building an IoT product is irrelevant if you can’t execute. Companies who work with Particle actually ship their products."