Grazed from MarketRealist. Author: Editorial Staff.

Previously in this series, we discussed how Amazon (AMZN) had started 2016 with its decade-old strategy of price cuts, and Microsoft (MSFT) has followed its lead, by cutting prices for Azure. Amazon is, unquestionably, the leader in the overall cloud space. However, Microsoft is catching up fast in the cloud and holds the second position after Amazon.

According to research company FBR & Co., Microsoft Azure is likely to reach an annual run rate of $8 billion in 2016, compared with AWS’s (Amazon Web Services) annual run rate of $7 billion in 2015. Wall Street also believes Amazon’s AWS is likely to face stiff competition from Microsoft’s cloud computing platform, Azure, in 2016…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: John Dix.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) changed a rule in December that will make it harder to capitalize the cost of cloud set-up and implementations expenses, a change that may encourage some enterprises to opt instead for traditional on-premise software.

The FASB Accounting Standards Update to “Intangibles – Goodwill and Other – Internal-use Software (Subtopic 350-40)” addresses “Customer’s accounting for fees paid in a cloud computing arrangement.” And while the update didn’t set out to address how to account for cloud migration costs, the new rules, combined with the FASB’s decision “not to provide additional guidance on the accounting for upfront costs,” will mean enterprise shops can no longer depreciate some fees involved in a cloud migration…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

If you’re worried about how secure your Microsoft Office 365 deployment is, Barracuda Networks (CUDA) might have a solution for you. The network security provider recently announced the launch of Barracuda Essentials, a cloud services suite for Office 365 that contains three of the company’s enterprise security solutions.

While Office 365 already comes equipped with its own assortment of security solutions to protect enterprise assets, Barracuda essentials acts as an add-on product, and is designed to be attractive to those who are particularly security-conscious, according to the company. The suite includes Barracuda Email Security Service, Barracuda Cloud Archiving Service and Barracuda Cloud Backup…

Grazed from NoJitter.  Author: Vadym Fedorov.

Among the Google results for "cloud trends 2016," spotting a repeatedly mentioned prediction for this year doesn’t take long: the growing popularity of the so-called "cloud-first strategy, which, in turn, is expected to accelerate enterprise cloud adoption. So what is this cloud-first strategy about, and what is its role in the cloud market?

Grazed from Trak.in.  Author: Arnand Karwa.

The cloud computing industry is getting more and more competitive day by day. It has become a race between the leading cloud providers like Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft Azure, and IBM SoftLayer.

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Darryl K. Taft.

 IBM’s strategic initiative led the way in 2015, with cloud now a $10 billion business and security a $2 billion unit. Systems and analytics also grew.  Despite another quarterly revenue slide, IBM sees a silver lining in its strategic imperatives as these key focus areas—cloud, analytics, mobile, social and security—show significant growth and indicate Big Blue is committed to succeeding in its transformation.

In the fourth quarter of 2015, IBM saw its revenue decline 9 percent to $22.1 billion; however the company’s strategic imperatives revenue grew 26 percent (adjusting for currency and the System x divestiture) to $28.9 billion and now represents 35 percent of the company’s overall revenue…

Grazed from ScientificComputing.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Adaptive Computing, provider of workload and resource orchestration software, announced it has set a new record in high throughput computing (HTC) in collaboration with Supermicro, a provider of high performance green computing solutions. Supermicro SuperServers, custom optimized for Nitro, the new high throughput resource manager from Adaptive Computing, were able to launch up to 530 tasks per second per core on Supermicro based low latency UP (SYS-5018D-MTF) SuperServer and over 17,600 tasks per second on its 4-Way based (SYS-8028B-C0R3FT) SuperServer.

This record-breaking throughput can accelerate EDA regression tests, life sciences research, financial risk analysis and other data analysis-driven projects. It can expedite the process of gaining critical insights, thereby delivering products and services to market faster…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge.  Author: Arthor Cole.

 At this point, it doesn’t make much sense to talk about whether IT infrastructure will change in the cloud, or even how it will change, but how data and business processes will change to suit the new reality.  Infrastructure, after all, is merely a means to an end, so the real measure of the cloud is how it will alter the things we do, not the resources we use to do them.

"Our integration with Arista empowers joint customers to guarantee application Quality of Service on any cloud," said Endre Sara, VP, Advanced Solutions at VMTurbo. "At enterprise scale, deciding what workloads to run where and when is complex beyond human control. Our solution not only improves workload mobility but enables customers to guarantee performance in their private data center and the public cloud."

The new tool will be available within the RightScale product suite, as well as accessible via http://cloudcomparison.rightscale.com.