Grazed from HotHardware. Author: Brandon Hill.

It’s been nearly two years since Satya Nadella swooped into replace longtime Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. Ballmer later resigned from Microsoft’s Board of Directors in August 2014 and has kept a relatively low [tech] profile since then. His most recent commentary about his former company was rather flattering, with Ballmer commenting in October, "Nobody else is really trying to compete with [Apple] anymore, really, seriously, in hardware. If there’s going to be any competition for Apple, it’ll come from Microsoft – and I believe that."

This week, Ballmer once again had some words to say about Microsoft, and this time he wasn’t so kind. At Microsoft’s annual shareholder meeting held yesterday, Ballmer, Microsoft’s largest shareholder, took issue with Microsoft’s failure to disclose its profit margins and sales figures for its cloud services and hardware business…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Clare Hopping.

A report by MarketsandMarkets has revealed the education-based cloud computing market is accelerating at an amazing pace, with researchers predicting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.8 per cent between 2015 and 2020. The research firm said the market will grow from $5.83bn in 2015 to $15.02bn by 2020, with the US continuing to demonstrate the biggest gains and Asia-Pacific (APAC), Europe, Middle East and Africa (MEA), and Latin America breaking out of the nascent stage.

"Cloud services in [the] education sector enable efficient management of business processes and effective knowledge delivery to students," MarketsandMarkets said. "This results in higher student engagement, better collaboration among stakeholders, and improved student performance."…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

Cloud computing is already cited by CIOs as one of the biggest contributors to IT complexity – now new research released by Trustmarque shows more than four in five CIOs struggle to identify and implement cloud services must suitable for their business. The complexity of existing IT infrastructure is a problem for moving to the cloud, according to two thirds (66%) of CIOs, while almost three quarters (74%) admitting interdependencies between different IT environments are another barrier for moving IT services to the cloud. (73%) see cloud services as making data governance more complicated.

A similar number (78%) say integrating different cloud services is a challenge, while two thirds (68%) say admit modernising or rearchitecting certain applications will slow their journey to the cloud, according to the research. It is not just integrating different cloud services which is an issue- the needs of employees also leaves CIOs with headaches…

Grazed from MinuteHack. Author: Daniel Keighron-Foster.

Technology is full of inaccessible jargon that sets business owners’ heads scratching. The cloud is no different. It’s time to put all that to bed as we outline five of the most common buzz phrases in cloud computing. Earlier in the year, an industry study revealed that more than half of all Americans believe storms affect cloud computing.

While that’s an amazing statistic, it’s also very telling – and perhaps a sign that we need to start talking about this huge technological movement in a way that’s straight-forward, tangible and accessible.The same article claimed that, while 54% own up to having never used the cloud, 95% of that same group use it regularly for their banking, shopping, social networking, storage and file sharing without even knowing it…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Clare Hopping.

A number of technology companies, including Google, have come together at the hearing of the Email Privacy Act, which specifies US governmental bodies must obtain a warrant in order to gain access to customer emails. These technology companies argue that putting measures in place to prevent official bodies from gaining access to the content of emails is essential to benefit the future of cloud computing.

At present, under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), law enforcement agencies are able to obtain emails from a provider without getting a warrant, as long as the information has been stored for more than 180 days However, a court ruled in 2010 that in fact, this legislation violates the US’s Fourth Amendment, which specifies a person has the right to "be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cloudpro.co.uk/leadership/5631/email-privacy-act-should-protect-cloud-computing

As the market for multi-cloud solutions continues to increase in adoption, the partnership bridges the gap for small and large organizations across industries ranging from government and education to healthcare. Based on analysis across 10 million users, 1 billion files and over 91,000 applications, CloudLock CyberLab found 1 percent of users are responsible for 75 percent of risk. With this partnership, their mutual customers can enable secure cloud adoption and data loss protection in a comprehensive solution by accessing CloudLock’s real-time, cloud cybersecurity-as-a-service offering.

ThreatSTOP delivers a highly scalable defense against advanced cyberattacks by using the power of DNS to better protect every device and workload across on-premises and cloud-based networks. More than 500 companies trust ThreatSTOP to protect their networks today. The ThreatSTOP service enables a physical or virtual firewall to deflect inbound attacks and enables both firewalls and DNS servers to help prevent infected hosts from communicating with threat actors trying to extract or alter data. The service is cloud-based, updates automatically and works with leading firewalls and DNS servers.

ManagedMethods, a new contender in the cloud access security space, today announced its latest release of Cloud Access Monitor, a software solution that gives companies visibility into the usage and potential risk associated with using both sanctioned and unsanctioned cloud applications. The software’s flexible architecture allows for deployment on premises, in the Cloud or a hybrid of both.

More than 80 percent of employees admit to using non-approved SaaS applications in their jobs according to Frost and Sullivan. A 2015 report from the Cloud Security Alliance found only eight-percent of companies know the scope of Shadow IT at their organizations and an overwhelming 72-percent of companies surveyed said they did not know the scope of Shadow IT but want to.

Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) today announced a new software release for its Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI) to enhance its comprehensive SDN portfolio built on open APIs, open standards and a broad ecosystem for customer choice and flexibility. New software capabilities enhance ACI with microsegmentation for both physical (bare metal) applications and multivendor virtualized applications (VMware VDS, Microsoft Hyper-V) and extend ACI across multi-site environments to deliver policy-driven automation across multiple data centers.

Cisco also added integration of Docker containers through contributions to open source, offering customers a consistent policy model and greater deployment flexibility using the Cisco Application Policy Infrastructure Controller (APIC).

Talligent, the leading provider of cost and capacity management solutions for OpenStack and hybrid clouds, today announced the general availability of Openbook v3 and is scheduling demos and evaluations of its new functionality.  Openbook is cloud management software that simplifies the tasks of planning, charging, and predicting capacity requirements for cloud services.  Talligent gives the administrator and tenant real-time visibility of resources and accrued costs, as well as the ability to scale up or down according to budget and resource requirements.

Enterprise adoption of OpenStack is growing quickly, driven by the interest in providing on-demand cloud services behind the firewall.  Private cloud deployments increase the agility of IT departments to respond to infrastructure requests, increase control of company digital assets, and reduce the need for shadow IT services from public cloud providers.  In response to this increase in market demand, Talligent has added functionality to support private cloud use cases such as chargeback, utilization tracking for sprawl control, single pane of glass view of hybrid clouds, and capacity reporting to improve resource and budget planning of cloud growth.