Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Larry Loeb.

During its history, Amazon has managed to conquer the book market, traditional retail, and, through Amazon Web Services, cloud computing. Now, thanks to two patents it was awarded on Dec. 1, it seems the company has more plans for your living room than just its Echo voice-controlled device.

The US Patent and Trademark Office granted the Seattle company a patent for technologies that can project an augmented reality representation into a room (#9,204,121) and another patent that provides a way to navigate that world (#9,201,499). The patents were submitted by Rawles LLC of Wilmington, Del., in February 2013 and officially assigned to Amazon this week…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Jennifer Klostermann.

For those in the tech arena – and let’s face it, we’re all in the tech arena somehow – a few abilities are topping all of the must-have skills lists. Inc. points to the growth of Big Data, Cloud Computing, and Data Virtualization as three of the six major trends we should all be keeping up with, supported by countless other industry analysts.

Data and Cloud technologies have effectively transformed both our personal and business landscapes, so skilling up in these areas is a necessity. This year, the Cloud will become the “new normal”, reports TechRadar. Dramatically cutting cost by digitizing information-intensive processes, it’s been predicted that the end of 2015 will see a world of hybrid deployments…

"Recovering cloud data can be time consuming, complicated and sometimes impossible," said SkyKick’s Vice President of International, Eric Jewett. "Research shows over 50 percent of organizations incur cloud data loss and 75 percent of the time this happens because employees accidentally delete mission critical information. While Microsoft provides robust geo-redundancy for critical data loss, our partners told us they needed an easy way to recover their customers’ data instantaneously, as well as the ability to provide an extra layer of control and independent data ownership."

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Editorial Staff.

China’s market for enterprise IT is huge, but the share that goes to cloud computing is still comparatively small. Sales of cloud computing hardware and services amounted to about $4 billion in 2014, only about 5 percent of China’s total IT market. That’s much lower than the 11 percent of global IT spending on the cloud.

However, we expect China’s spending on the cloud to grow much faster than its overall IT spending, reaching as much as $20 billion by 2020 — an annual growth rate of 40 to 45 percent. Several recent announcements underscore the momentum toward the cloud in China. Tencent announced in September that it would invest $1.57 billion in its cloud business, including in data centers in China, Hong Kong and North America…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Dan Kobialka.

What could revamped development and operations (DevOps) mean for independent software vendors (ISVs)? MSPmentor 501 honoree Logicalis has identified several ways the cloud can enhance the development process for ISVs. The New York-based managed service provider (MSP) noted the cloud "can facilitate DevOps changes and accelerate innovation within the software developer’s organization."

"Developers and their IT counterparts are polar opposites in their business lives," said Brian Day, senior director of cloud services at Logicalis US, in a prepared statement. "But with the help of a savvy cloud or SaaS partner, software providers are realizing significant productivity gains in the people, tools and overall culture of their organizations — changes that give them a competitive edge in today’s fast-paced software development world."…

Read more from the source @ http://mspmentor.net/cloud-computing/how-can-devops-accelerate-innovation

Grazed from ComputerDealerNews. Author: David Yin.

It’s not everyday that a single announcement can bring three household names together in one room, but that is just what happened Tuesday. At a small gathering in downtown, the Telus announced that it is partnering with the software and networking giants to provide cloud aimed at the mid-market and large enterprise.

The managed Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offering will include public, private and hybrid clouds, and is enabled both by its own, as well as Microsoft’s new data centres that are coming to Toronto and Quebec city in the new year, and Cisco’s Cloud Architecture. “What we’ve essentially done here… is the Telus Hybrid Cloud,” said Tom Jolly, vice president of IT and cloud services at Telus. “We are interworking Microsoft’s and Cisco’s technologies into the Microsoft Azure platform, as well as providing the ability to integrate customer on-premise data centres.”…

Grazed from JournalOf Commerce. Author: Richard Gilbert.

A locally developed cloud-based technology is helping construction labour unions across North America with office administration and membership management. "When we started many years ago, the internet and e-mail were pretty weak in terms of being a common fixture," said Reg Cawston, who is responsible for business development with Delta, B.C.-based QTrades.

"So, the software has progressed to provide internet access, which allows contractors and business agents on the road to gain access and use the information they need. They don’t have to be at a desk. All they need is a mobile device." QTrades is launching a membership database system for the Construction Maintenance and Allied Workers (CMAW) Canada, which enables local offices, business representatives, contractors and members to have up-to-date information on jobsites…

Servosity, Disaster Recovery for Managed Service Providers (MSPs), today announces their newest version of Servosity DR Server featuring Hyper-V Instant Recovery.

Servosity DR Server is the easiest way for MSPs to protect clients’ Windows or Linux servers from potential business interruptions. DR Server allows you protect data On-Premise, in Microsoft Azure, or any other major Cloud Provider. DR Server includes Servosity’s unique technology as well as StorageCraft’s ShadowProtect SPX software. With the new release, we now support Instant Recovery directly into Hyper-V.

Zadara Storage, the provider of enterprise-class storage-as-a-service (STaaS) today announced that Lawter has replaced their IBM storage with the Zadara Virtual Private Storage Array (VPSA) architecture to support their SAP applications worldwide. By working with Zadara’s partner Dimension Data, Lawter has been able to upgrade their aging IT infrastructure to address immediate performance, security and cost challenges, and also position themselves for future growth.

Zadara’s partner Dimension Data, a global provider of IT solutions and services, has successfully completed the first phase of the modernization of the ICT infrastructure of resin producer Lawter. Lawter, a subsidiary of the Japanese company Harima Chemicals Group, was looking to replace their older infrastructure with a more scalable, higher performing, and easier to manage environment.