Webscale drives application delivery and web performance far beyond the confines of the traditional application delivery controller (ADC) appliance (either hardware, software or virtual), to become truly cloud-enabled. The first cloud-enabled platform of its kind, Webscale delivers complete application control to any web application owner, from bloggers, to mid-market e-commerce companies and enterprise DevOps groups. Webscale is available to try and buy online (no sales person required), at a range of price points and with no long-term contracts.

Grazed from TheRegister. Author: Richard Chirgwin.

Australia’s wildly-enthusiastic adoption of cloud computing is providing the rest of the world a crucible in which a host of security challenges can be cultured, according to F5 security researcher David Holmes. Speaking to The Register’s networking desk while visiting the antipodes, Holmes said that “Australia is becoming the great laboratory” of cloud-first strategies, and along the way, encountering a fair amount of first-adopter security pain.

The pain is especially acute, Holmes said, for a customer that wants to spread the same service across different clouds (which is a sensible resilience strategy). “Customers want to spin up the same service on different clouds, but at the same time, they want to encrypt everything”, he said…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jim Duffy.

Linux network operating system vendor Cumulus Networks this week named a new CEO while its current CEO and co-founder takes over as CTO. Josh Leslie, formerly Cumulus vice president of sales, takes over for founder JR Rivers. Rivers becomes CTO, and says transition was his idea with board approval.

Current CTO and co-founder Nolan Leake will still be involved in the company’s technical direction, working with Rivers, Rivers said. Leslie is an 18-year veteran of the technology industry. He was vice president of sales at Cumulus for less than a year but is credited by the company for doubling the Cumulus customer base and expanding its footprint within the Fortune 100…

Grazed from BiometricUpdate. Author: Rawlson King.

Cloud computing provides many benefits including ease of use, time savings, security, convenience, versatility, and scalability. For these reasons, cloud computing has become an emerging offering in the biometrics industry, and according to Frank Barret, Director of Cloud Services at MorphoTrak, LLC, it enables a new service paradigm known as “identification-as-a-service.”

MorphoTrak has developed its own identification-as-a-service solution entitled Morpho Cloud. Barret describes the service as a secure and flexible offering for the public security market that incorporates multi-biometric modalities such as friction ridge biometrics, facial biometrics, and iris recognition…

Grazed from GoCertify. Author: Tim Warner.

Information technology has never moved faster. With the widespread adoption of virtualization, cloud computing, and the DevOps methodology, it’s far too easy to let technical skills get old. If that happens, then you’re on your way to making yourself obsolete in today’s job market.

Today I’ll share with you five core skills that I feel any IT professional needs to have in his or her proverbial toolbelt. I’m using the term "IT professional” to embrace anyone whose full-time job role exists within the realm of information technology. Here are some representative titles:…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Natalie Gagliordi.

Small business domain host GoDaddy is entering the cloud business. On Monday, the Arizona-based company announced the launch of Cloud Servers and Cloud Applications — a suite of Amazon-style cloud computing services that enables small businesses to build, test and scale cloud solutions on GoDaddy’s infrastructure.

The service is aimed at smaller businesses making at least a partial move to the cloud. More specifically, this new toolset is geared toward the individual developers who work for small businesses as they look to spin up raw virtual machines to run software. "We’re looking to make it easy for developers to serve small businesses with the technology they want," said Jeff King, SVP and GM hosting and security at GoDaddy…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Experience plays an important role in a developer’s decision to create cloud applications, according to a study of more than 13,500 developers conducted by market analysis firm VisionMobile. The VisionMobile "Cloud and Desktop Developer Landscape" study, released last month, indicated experienced developers are more likely to create cloud apps than others, and almost half of cloud developers who are contracting earn more than $2,000 a month.

Other study results included:

• Lowering build times (64 percent) was the top reason that cloud developers said they used application programming interfaces (APIs).
• Over 95 percent of cloud developers said they use a developer program.
• 54 percent of developers are hosting their own cloud servers and prefer to control the development platform they are using.
• 49 percent of developers are utilizing both cloud and desktop apps.
• 31 percent of cloud developers using public clouds are leveraging Amazon Web Services (AWS) as their development platform…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-research/why-are-developers-considering-cloud

The stored XSS flaws in vRealize only affect some versions, but could lead to the compromise of user workstations

VMware has patched two cross-site scripting issues this week in several editions of the company’s vRealize software.  The flaws reportedly could be exploited in stored XSS attacks and lead to remote code execution and the compromise of business workstations.  

A VMware security advisory was posted on Tuesday, citing issues with Linux versions of VMware vRealize Automation 6.x prior to 6.2.4, and VMware vRealize Business Advanced and Enterprise 8.x prior to 8.2.5.

Linux users operating affected versions are urged to patch their environments as soon as possible to address the problem.  According to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the vulnerability could allow "remote authenticated users to inject arbitrary web script or HTML via unspecified vectors."

“Selecting SoftNAS has enabled us to expand our storage to the cloud, giving us greater flexibility, agility and resiliency. We are shifting more of our processes to the cloud and are quickly able to provision and manage storage. In addition, we do not have to deal with storage limitations and downtime which has contributed to a hassle-free experience,” stated Keith Son, Director of Infrastructure, iNDEMAND.

Technology has developed at an astounding rate in the last decade, so it is no great surprise that businesses are beginning to recognize the benefits of cloud software. Software can be used to automate business processes and streamline HR management. However, choosing the right system is important.

Important Questions to Ask

There are many things a business needs to consider before investing in HR software, cloud based or otherwise. Functionality is important, especially if a wide range of different employees will be accessing the system. Budget will no doubt be a key consideration for businesses with a keen eye on the bottom line. You should also consider how long it will take to implement the software, and whether training is included as part of the package.