Grazed from Forbes. Author: Kalev Leetrau.

Science Magazine’s first issue of 2016 includes a discussion chronicling how the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is re-exploring how it manages funding for the many biomedical database products it supports. In particular, the NIH National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI) is expected to close out its funding of the Online Mendelian Inheritance in Man (OMIM) database, one of the oldest genomic databases that has run continuously for 50 years. What does this mean for the future of scientific big data hosting?

Today the NIH spends more than $110 million a year on its largest 50 databases, excluding those hosted by the National Library of Medicine (NLM). OMIM, supported by NHGRI, costs $2.1 million a year and draws more than 300,000 unique users a month and 23 million page views a year, while the Gene Ontology Consortium draws 36,000 users a month at a cost of $3.7 million a year…

Cloud computing has totally transformed the way organizations operate and professionals access technology resources. In less than a decade, the move to the cloud has revolutionized the entire IT sector. Companies are now moving away from hardware and licensed software purchases towards software-, platform- and infrastructure-as-a-service (SaaS, PaaS and IaaS).

Before getting into the growth prospects, it might be helpful to understand what exactly cloud computing represents…

Grazed from Barron’s.  Author: Tiernan Ray.

Grazed from SysCon. Author: Pavan Kumar.

The future of data centers looks very exciting. Data Centers are turning out to be increasingly important in today’s connected world as we can store and process a lot of consumer and commercial data. Data centers seem to be either becoming huge or very small. In general, marketing cloud storage and cloud computing services are likely to increase the profit margins and favor the large players. There is an increasing need for superior Data center competence as we are more dependent on cloud-based applications and huge Data center services.

The companies will view data as a resource to be extracted for insight, innovation and opportunities are extracted from the future Data centers. The future Data centers can be used as infrastructure as a service (IaaS) with pay-per-use model. It will help companies to meet the business requirements and to control the cost, scalability and service level objectives…

Grazed from DataInformed. Author: Andy Thural and Mac Devine.

The year 2016 will be exciting in terms of applied technologies. We see a lot of technologies maturing and moving from lab exercises to real-world business technologies that solve real-life customer problems – especially in the areas of digital transformation, API, cloud, analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT). In particular, we see the following areas evolving faster than others:

Year of the Edge (Decentralization of Cloud)

Cloud has become the ubiquitous digital platform for many enterprises in their quest to provide a single unified digital platform. Integrating the core IT with the shadow IT has been the main focus for the last few years, but in 2016 we anticipate the next step in this process. We started seeing companies moving from the central cloud platforms toward the edge, or toward decentralizing the cloud…

Grazed from Dataversity. Author: Charles Roe.

Mega-clouds and “the economies of scale?” Such a topic is enough to keep smaller Cloud Computing vendors up at night wondering if their businesses are going to be able to keep up with the pricing demands of the market, “a year ago RedMonk analyst Stephen O’Grady dubbed such economies as “daunting” for traditional data center vendors, in one of the most polite understatements ever uttered.

After all, a year later we’re seeing mega-cloud vendors – Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft – drive server costs to lows impossible for any enterprise data center to achieve. Oh, and they’re doing it while retaining significant margins for themselves – all of which means we may be on the verge of seeing a complete changing of the guard in enterprise IT that will play out over the next decade.”…

Read more from the source @ http://www.dataversity.net/the-new-mega-clouds-of-cloud-computing/

Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Scott Maucione.

A new Defense Department Inspector General’s report found problems with the Pentagon’s cloud policy that may have monetary and cybersecurity risks. DoD does not maintain a comprehensive list of cloud computing service contracts because the department’s chief information officer failed to establish a standard, department-wide definition for cloud computing. In addition, the DoD CIO did not develop an integrated repository that could provide detailed information used to identify cloud computing service contracts, the report stated.

As a result, DoD has no way of determining if it is actually saving money by migrating to the cloud and may not be able to effectively identify and monitor cloud computing security risks, the report stated. “DoD’s ability to track cloud computing cost savings, and benefits is greatly limited if DoD is not aware what cloud computing service contracts exist within DoD … [and] unless DoD Components accurately classify their information systems as using cloud computing services, DoD CIO will not be aware what security risks are specific to those services,” the report stated…

Read more from the source @ http://federalnewsradio.com/defense/2015/12/dods-cloud-policy-rains-risks/

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Jeremy Daniel.

The year 2015 will largely be remembered as the year when cloud computing went mainstream and companies that had invested early were able to reap the benefits with the promise of much more to come. Industries which for so long had worked as an independent, players began the scramble to connect with each other in previously unheard of ways.

The internet of things, as it has become known, is gathering speed and momentum and nowhere was that more apparent than in the auto industry. Innovation is everywhere. Consider, for starters, the new BMW 7 Series which boasts tech straight out of the future, like ‘’touchless” control of the audio system’s volume control, wireless phone charging and a world-first remote control parking feature. We can’t wait to see those hitting the streets…

Read more from the source @ http://cloudtweaks.com/2015/12/auto-industry-internet-of-things/

Grazed from PlanetBiometrics. Author: Editorial Staff.

Apple has patented a method for iPhones to store fingerprint information, upload to the cloud, and then download it on another iPhone. The patent “Finger Biometric Sensor Data Synchronization VIA A Cloud Computing Device And Related Methods" was published by the USPTO on December 17, 2015, reports Slash Gear.

Filed in August, this envisioned process would allow Apple devices to collect fingerprint information, as they do today, but also upload that information to the cloud for storage. Previously, Apple has shied away from storing biometric data in the cloud – and its security policy states: “An image of the fingerprint itself is never actually retained…