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Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Author: Jamie Davies.

Microsoft has filed a new lawsuit in federal court against the United States government arguing the right that customers should have the right to know when the state accesses their emails or records. Under current law, the government has the right to demand access to customer information, while also issuing orders to companies such as Microsoft to keep these types of legal demands secret.

Microsoft claim these orders are becoming too often common place; rather than common routine, these secrecy issues should be the exception not the rule. “We believe that with rare exceptions consumers and businesses have a right to know when the government accesses their emails or records,” said Brad Smith, President and Chief Legal Officer at Microsoft on the company blog…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Tal Frankfurt.

The recent announcement of the BlueWolf acquisition by IBM surprised many people in the technology industry, in the same way the announcement of the Cloud Sherpas acquisition by Accenture shocked people back in September 2015. Personally, I don’t think these acquisitions should catch anyone in our industry off guard. Global technology giants are trying to have a greater appeal to their customer bases.

These customers are demanding skilled consulting firms who can provide value by implementing widely adopted cloud based applications such as Workday and Salesforce in a matter of months. Large scale implementations have, at times, taken years and this is no longer acceptable with the rapidly changing technology space…

Grazed from EnterpriseTech. Author: Doug Black.

Organizations are racing to the cloud at an accelerating pace – with growing anxiety. Concerns about cloud security is the core finding of a new study from Intel Security that reveals a variety of conflicting cloud adoption perceptions. Even as most IT managers point to compliance as the biggest concern with cloud adoption (some admit they don’t know if sensitive data is stored with a public cloud provider), an even larger number said they have more trust in the cloud than a year ago.

One of the more eye-opening findings of the survey (“Blue Skies Ahead? The State of Cloud Adoption”): in the next 16 months, 80 percent of respondent IT budgets will be dedicated to cloud computing. “Even if that outlook overestimates cloud spend it still shows a dramatic shift in mindset,” said Rolf Haas, enterprise technology specialist, Intel Security, in a blog post accompanying the survey, “ and it’s often the business, rather than the IT department, that is driving that shift. In today’s digital world the pull of the cloud and its benefits of flexibility, speed, innovation, cost, and scalability are now too great to be dismissed by the usual fears.”…

Read more from the source @ http://www.enterprisetech.com/2016/04/14/cloud-perceptions-conflict-survey-finds-concerns-cloud-growing-along-trust/

Grazed from SysCon. Author: Sanjay Zalavadia.

In recent years, quality assurance teams have become accustomed to a variety of new technologies. It has been a big change for the many quality assurance analysts who came of age at a time when waterfall development methodologies and PC-centric applications were their front and center concerns.

Now they have to adjust to the realities of cloud computing and the ever-expanding mobile device ecosystem. A lot of infrastructures, development platforms and applications are being shifted off-premises to public and private clouds, while the device mix at many enterprises is becoming more diverse. Let’s consider some of the developments that are currently afoot:…

VMTurbo’s Application Performance Control Platform Enables Customers to Guarantee SLA Performance While Eliminating Risk of Exceeding Budgets Due to Over-Provisioning in Any Cloud

VMTurbo, the only application performance control platform, has been mentioned as a representative vendor in Gartner’s recent "Innovation Insight for Dynamic Optimization Technology for Infrastructure Resources and Cloud Services."

Hybrid-cloud infrastructures are designed to accommodate multiple applications, a shared or converged physical layer and a software-defined layer, all of which expose the dynamic data centre to higher risk of unpredictable performance problems and resource inefficiency. But conventional infrastructure monitoring solutions are silo-specific and application unaware, while application performance management (APM) solutions alone are inadequate as they are largely infrastructure unaware.

The introduction of cloud computing has brought about huge changes for businesses of all sizes. In recent times, the benefits and advantages of migrating to the cloud have been recognised by companies all over the world, from Silicon Valley tech giants to small-town local businesses. Today, at least 37% of businesses in the U.S.A have made the switch to cloud computing, with more and more expected to follow. If you’re considering jumping on the bandwagon and also taking your business over to the cloud, here are just some of the main reasons why it’s a good idea.

Cloud computing has changed the way many organisations do business. Today’s business owners understand that cloud computing saves a lot of money and has the potential to make any organisation much more efficient. However, every technology has a downside and security is sometimes the Achilles heel of cloud computing. Below are some of the security threats you should be aware of and should address.

Hijacking User Accounts

A range of hijacking activities such as phishing have existed for many years. This practice is now being attempted on cloud based systems too, where hackers attempt to gain access to a business or individual’s account. Once these hackers access an account, they can do serious damage, which has serious repercussions for the business or individual involved.

Grazed from CSO. Author: Rolf Haas.

Cloud use continues to grow rapidly in the enterprise and has unquestionably become a part of mainstream IT – so much so that many organizations now claim to have a “cloud-first” strategy. That’s backed up by a survey* we commissioned here at Intel Security that questioned 1,200 cloud security decision makers across eight countries. One of the most startling findings: that 80% of respondents’ IT spend will go to cloud services within just 16 months.

Even if that outlook overestimates cloud spend it still shows a dramatic shift in mindset, and it’s often the business, rather than the IT department, that is driving that shift. In today’s digital world the pull of the cloud and its benefits of flexibility, speed, innovation, cost, and scalability are now too great to be dismissed by the usual fears…