Grazed from Fortune. Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Cisco and Ericsson, two giants in the telecommunications gear sector, have teamed up to generate $1 billion in revenue for each company by 2018. The two companies will co-develop products, align customer service and share patents in a partnership that’s unprecedented in the industry.

The alliance, announced Monday, is a sign both of consolidation and competition in the market for telecommunications equipment as rival Alcatel-Lucent merges with Nokia, but also a symptom of the merging of both computing and communications as more business is conducted in the so-called cloud. Both companies are stuck in a mature industry providing equipment that underlies the backbone of both the wired and wireless Internet…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Paul Barsch.

The rise of public cloud computing is awe-inspiring. Companies like Amazon, via Amazon Web Services, are “turning virtual iron into gold” with exponential growth in revenues and operating income. However, as more companies turn to cloud computing, and use the same applications available from a specific cloud provider, there could be danger of losing competitive advantage wrought by technological advances.

These days, if your company smells of cloud, you’re in an enviable position. That’s because according to the New York Times, in October 2015, companies such as Google, Amazon, and Microsoft added more than $100B to their market capitalization, in part fueled by cloud growth. And while some companies are moving to the cloud to take advantage of cloud benefits of elasticity, pay per use, scalability and more, there are downsides to going “all in the cloud” that are sometimes missed…

Read more from the source @ http://www.smartdatacollective.com/paulbarsch/356174/cloud-sameness-dangerous-competitive-advantage

Grazed from DigitalTrends. Author: Gabe Carey.

When Microsoft announced earlier this week that it would no longer be handing out unlimited cloud storage to Office 365 subscribers via its OneDrive service, those affected were obviously not enthused. Users who were previously unbounded by the all-you-can-eat buffet that was endless cloud storage will soon be limited to a less satisfying 1TB.

Those latching on to the 100 and 200GB plans will see reduction to a dismal 50GB at the same monthly cost. Even free users will be affected, by a reduction from 15GB to a meager 5GB of complimentary storage. And that all goes without mentioning the 15GB camera roll feature, which is to be axed altogether…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Steven Russolillo.

The sky isn’t always the limit. Rackspace Hosting Inc. is finding that out the hard way. Shares in the cloud-services provider have lost nearly half their value over the past six months as revenue growth has slowed and competition has picked up. While it may be tempting to think the worst is over for Rackspace as it reports third-quarter results Monday, it probably isn’t.

Rackspace, a pioneer in the cloud market, has transitioned its business model in recent years to become more of a services provider, one that offers bundled computing and support. To combat rising competition and a price war from the likes of Microsoft Corp., Alphabet Inc.’s Google unit and International Business Machines Corp., Rackspace announced a partnership last month with Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-computing platform, Amazon Web Services…

Read more from the source @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/dark-cloud-hovers-over-rackspace-1447008964

Grazed from TechRadar.  Author: Jamie Carter.

"Hey Curiosity, be a pal and move north 10 metres to look at that big red rock, would ya?"  If the revelation that engineers at NASA’s Jet Prolusion Laboratory (JPL) use Alexa to control its Mars rovers wasn’t enough, consider this – its latest missions are conducted entirely using the cloud. Since adopting AWS eight years ago, data scientists at JPL and NASA have been on their own journey into the unknown, pioneering the exploration of cloud computing in all-new ways.

Grazed from BusinessInsider.  Author: Matt Weinberger.

The market for cloud computing continues to defy all expectations.   Even as the startup craze starts to cool in Silicon Valley, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google all reported bang-up earnings last quarter, not least because of their big bets on the cloud. 

Grazed from Datamation.  Author: Editorial Staff.

 Cloud storage has proven to be extremely popular, with multiple Exabytes of data already stored there and the total growing by double digit percentages every year.  And why not – with a cost as low as $0.01/GB/month from hyperscale cloud vendors such as Amazon, Google and Microsoft, it’s affordable and readily accessible.   But the big players are not the only game in town.  Since backup/bulk data storage is still the largest use of cloud storage, many traditional backup appliance vendors have decided to provide their own cloud storage solutions.

These smaller players, while certainly price competitive when considering the entire solution, have wisely chosen to focus on service and added-value functionality instead of competing on cost alone.  So you have two decisions to make: first, is the hyperscale cloud right for your data protection needs and second, if it is not, then how should you go about selecting the right cloud-enabled data protection vendor. Let’s focus initially on the first question…

 Grazed from MalayOnline.  Author: Editorial Staff.

 Grazed from Dell.  Author: Brian T. Horowitz.

To manage 50 billion market events — nearly a petabyte of stored data — the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) turned to the Cloudera Enterprise big data platform along with an Amazon Web Services infrastructure.  FINRA is an independent regulator overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission. Apache Hadoop, an open-source framework written in Java that enables storage and processing of large data sets, powers Cloudera Enterprise.

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Sujain Thomas.

Keeping data safe is important. The task is hard to start and even harder to manage, but it must be done. Anyway, if you are finding data management to be difficult, then you are probably using the wrong equipment. Technology has made it possible for you to store billions of records effortlessly without spending a fortune in the process. Personal data storage should not be a problem. The main problem often lies in the storage of business data. For every business, data is a crucial asset. Businesses that do not keep records of their customers or marketing campaigns are always bound to fail at some point.

Proper data storage

There are many ways that you can store your data nowadays. There are flash drives of large capacity, memory cards, hard drives and humongous-capacity servers available for your use. It all depends on how much space you need. However, storage of data on the ‘cloud’ is the most popular practice nowadays…