Grazed from FedScoop. Author: Greg Otto.

It’s not enough for people like Jerry Johnston to simply publish the abundance of geospatial data that belongs to the federal government — he wants the public to be able to derive value from it. That’s where cloud computing comes in. Johnston, director of the Interior Department’s Information and Technology Management Division, is using Amazon Web Services to turn the government’s geospatial data into robust, functional content for anyone interested in using it.

Through his work with the Federal Geographic Data Committee, Johnston has leaned on AWS to support Geoplatform.gov, a repository for people to find, search for and share various geospatial data sets. “Using AWS, we built our own platform and software offerings that agencies are using right now,” Johnston said Monday during a session at Amazon Web Services’ Public Sector Summit. “It’s been a huge advancement in making things available.”…

Read more from the source @ http://fedscoop.com/cloud-computing-open-data-amazon-web-services-2016

Grazed from Engineering. Author: Editorial Staff.

Samsung Electronics recently announced its plans to acquire the public and private cloud provider Joyent. While Joyent will continue to operate as an independent company, Samsung hopes to soon be able to take advantage of Joyent’s cloud technology to further its own Internet of Things (IoT) and cloud-based initiatives.

Though the acquisition is yet to be finalized, both companies can expect to benefit from the partnership. Joyent offers several cloud solutions, including Node.js production support, containers as a service and scalable object storage. On the other hand, Samsung’s brand, capital and global scale offer Joyent plenty of room to grow…

Grazed from WebWire. Author: Editorial Staff.

Company CTOs are increasingly considering more robust, holistic solutions to their company’s data management needs. With the move to cloud storage and access, there are now new challenges regarding data security, access, analytics strategies and IT service delivery. Computacenter is one company that is tackling this from the top down, with services to help companies overhaul or upgrade their backend systems for a secure front-end management by staff and customers alike.

The European General Data Protection Regulation has recently placed further responsibility on companies to meet compliance for securing personal data. This downloadable white paper explains the steps towards compliance and approach to big data management. Computacenter has assembled a team of highly experienced experts in data system design, cloud security, and analytics architecture, to ensure that a company can rely completely on IT systems to deliver their service seamlessly…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Blair Hanley Frank.

As the head of Amazon Web Services, Andy Jassy has seen a lot of big organizations start using the public cloud. The biggest indicator of success for a cloud transition is simple, he says: Has the business’ senior staff bought into it? In his view, organizations will usually stick with their status quo on-premises data centers unless leaders are ready to promote the use of public cloud services.

"And it sounds a little bit simple, but the reality is that there’s so much inertia all over these organizations in continuing to things the same way they’ve been done for the last number of years, for a variety of different reasons," Jassy said at the AWS Summit in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Rick Delgado.

Did cloud computing once seem out of this world? If you remember a world before the Internet, or even the years it was first starting to come into people’s homes, many cloud concepts were probably once unfamiliar as well. Not only can information be gathered from distant sources. Your own data and computing services can be based thousands of miles away. Companies have been talking about moving the cloud to space, and now Cloud Constellation Corporation has announced it is planning to build a cloud storage network that is truly out of this world.

A Space Cloud Plan In the Works

The company plans to implement its SpaceBelt network soon. It will include orbiting satellites and ground networks. Businesses, government entities, and cloud service providers will be able to store data securely in the space-based infrastructure. At least seven satellites should be in place by 2019…

Grazed from CCI. Author: Editorial Staff.

Among other solutions to help customers manage and secure the open source software in their applications and containers, Black Duck conducts audits of customers’ software, both for companies on the “buy” or “sell” side in mergers or acquisitions. Typically, our audits are of commercial software that has been in the market for a number of years. During a six-month period from late 2015 through early 2016 Black Duck conducted a study of over 200 applications reviewed by our On-Demand team. Here are the highlights from the study…

You’re using open source more than you think

For all intents and purposes, everyone is using open source. Black Duck finds open source code in over 95% of the applications we analyze for clients. In our study, we found open source code comprised over 35% of the average commercial application we reviewed. If we were looking at code developed for internal use, the percentage was much higher… as high as 75%…

Grazed from TopTechNews. Author: Jeff Cozza.

A new enterprise offering introduced by Oracle today is designed to enable independent software vendors (ISVs) to transition their businesses to the cloud, the company said. The new platform, called the Oracle Cloud Platform Ready for Independent Software Vendors, will allow ISVs to quickly register and publish their Oracle Cloud-compatible applications on the Oracle Cloud Marketplace, allowing them to fast-track new business opportunities in the cloud.

Oracle’s new cloud platform is part of its Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN), a partnership program designed to help market products through a tiered participation program. The new platform will provide PartnerNetwork members benefits at the Silver level or higher and allow them to create initial application listings in the platform and infrastructure sections of the Oracle Cloud Marketplace in minutes…

Read more from the source @ http://www.toptechnews.com/article/index.php?story_id=111003H0N253

Private clouds are a waste of money and hybrid clouds are mistaken investments.

That’s what Lydia Leong of Gartner says anyway.

With no published end-user research other than a conference straw poll, the Gartner cloud myth is that there is just one way to "cloud." If it’s not a public cloud (and presumably an AWS public cloud) then you are just wasting your time and money drinking the Kool-Aid of legacy vendors.

Just last week, Red Herring announced the winners of its 2016 Top 100 North America award, which recognizes the leading private companies in the region, celebrating startups’ innovations and technologies across their respective industries.

It’s interesting to see that many of the winners fall in the IT space, and three in particular fall specifically in the storage category: SwiftStack, Zadara and Igneous. Virtualization, public cloud and other relatively recent changes in the datacenter have turned the storage world upside down, creating a market for fresh, new, innovative solutions that save time, money and resources. Many new companies have formed over the past several years, jumping on the opportunity presented by the need for better, more modern storage. But what is it about certain solutions and vendors that make them stand out amongst the others?

Grazed from Investors. Author: Brian Deagon.

Amid its major shift to cloud computing, longtime database leader Oracle (ORCL) is set to report quarterly earnings after the market close Thursday. Analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expect Oracle to report a 4% year-over-year increase in earnings per share minus items, to 81 cents, for its fiscal Q4 ended on or near May 31.

That would reverse four straight quarters of EPS declines. Analyst expect revenue to fall 2%, to $10.47 billion, the fifth straight quarter of declines. Oracle is transitions to selling more of its business software on demand via the internet cloud, a huge change for a company built by selling billions of dollars of traditional, on-premise software that clients license for the long term…