Grazed from CIO. Author: Thor Olavsrud.

C-suite executives in mid-market firms are increasingly involving themselves in technology decision-making, and they are focusing on cloud and analytics, according to a new report by Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services. "In the middle market, technology really has become a C-suite issue," says Stephen Keathley, national technology leader of Deloitte Growth Enterprise Services and principal of Deloitte Consulting.

"The numbers are way up for executives that are actively involved in their company’s technology decisions." Between May 29 and June 15 of this year, market research firm OnResearch polled 500 executives at mid-market companies on Deloitte’s behalf. The poll focused on the role and value that technology plays and how it influences business decisions in the middle market…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

In a digital economy business models are constantly in a state of flux. Other than the fact that they generally involve some form of subscription revenue no one is ever quite sure how to best price a particular good or service. As a result, there tends to be a lot more reliance on analytics applications to make sense of the overall digital economy.

Aria Systems today announced that it is making it a lot simpler to take advantage of those analytics by embedding Aria Revenue Analytics software inside its cloud service for managing billing. Designed to make it simpler to support multiple types of billing models, Adeeb Shanaa, senior vice president of products and engineering for Aria Systems, says Aria Revenue Analytics will provide a way for organizations to more easily discern, for example, which customers have the greatest lifetime value…

Grazed from EnterpriseTech. Author: Tenko Nikolov.

Containers have made quite the splash of late, with the rising popularity of Docker, the formation of the Open Container Initiative, and the launch of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. However, with alternative options like virtual machines dominating the cloud industry, the landscape of what technology should be used when and in partnership with what can become confusing.

Enterprises must fully understand each piece of technology to effectively decide which solution is the best fit for its needs. This means answering questions such as: What does the technology involve? How is the technology used? Who uses the technology?…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Tom Nolle.

While there are many advantages to cloud computing, there are also drawbacks, including shadow IT. Driven by cloud’s low-cost, as a service model, shadow IT shifts traditional IT and CIO functions to a business’s line departments. And while shadow IT risks have been discussed before, a new risk is emerging, specifically within hybrid clouds.

To many companies, shadow IT is a way of decoupling a business’s response to a problem or opportunity from a high-inertia IT world. A line department buys compute services from a cloud provider, and adjusts the services to fit business needs. The shadow IT model may not work for every application, but it works well for at least some applications in every enterprise — and it’s only going to expand as cloud adoption grows…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

Cloud computing has become such an integral part of the average consumer’s life, and the technology is quickly becoming a mainstay in the workplace. Because of the growing expectation of convenience, the workforce is turning to public cloud solutions for greater access to company data. The public cloud puts your valuable data at risk of malicious threats, but the issue is inevitable. While cloud-based file sharing presents limitless scalability, unparalleled flexibility, and greater agility, you need to be prepared for the security concerns you’re bound to encounter.

What’s so bad about the public cloud? The common thought throughout the business world is that the public cloud presents major security issues. Speaking about the complexities of the cloud, Former U.S Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield once said: There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know…

Read more from the source @ http://mspmentor.net/infocenter-cloud-based-file-sharing/extending-enterprise-cloud-security

Grazed from FierceGovernmentIT. Author: Molly Bernhart Walker.

The vast majority of federal IT workers value security over employee convenience, and even though many believe cloud computing improves employee productivity, it’s not enough of a benefit to trump the related security challenges. According to a new survey from Dimensional Research and Dell, 89 percent of survey respondents said they valued security versus 11 percent of employees who said they prized convenience.

Seventy-one percent think cloud improves productivity, while 79 percent think the cloud’s security challenges prevent greater adoption. The poll, published Sept. 9, surveyed 150 federal IT professionals with more than 1,000 employees at their organizations. It was part of a broader global IT study that included public and private sector IT professionals…

Grazed from StorageAsia. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is being touted by many, especially vendors, as the path to take as businesses grow. Cloud advocates say that the elasticity that cloud provides is difficult to replicate in on-premises networks and sooner than later, businesses will be considering using services in the cloud.

Major vendors are developing data centers in many countries to alleviate concerns regarding the data leaving the country. However, the benefits of using services in the cloud usually out perform any concerns. In an interview with Networks Asia, Aravindan Anandan, Consulting Systems Engineer, Asia Pacific, Barracuda Networks (India) Pte Ltd. talks about the benefits of cloud computing and its role in storage management, such as disaster recovery and backup…

Grazed from DataCenterJournal. Author: Editorial Staff.

Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), is proud to announce it has been listed among the world’s Top 100 Cloud Service Providers (CSPs), according to Penton’s fifth-annual Talkin’ Cloud 100 report. The Top 100 CSPs generated more than $30 billion in combined cloud services revenues in 2014, up nearly 29 percent over what they reported the previous year. The full report is available now by visiting http://www.talkincloud.com/tc100.

Logicalis assists clients in determining the right cloud solution for their specific business needs, offering options ranging from private and hybrid cloud to public cloud offerings. The solution provider also offers task-specific cloud services including disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS), Cloud Storage for Backup, and backup as a service (BUaaS), as well as a Multi-Cloud Management Portal that allows IT pros to see, upload and control all of their cloud resources from a single point of view…

Grazed from Microsoft. Author: Editorial Staff.

I’m pleased to announce today that Microsoft has acquired Adallom, an innovator in cloud security and a leader in helping customers protect their critical assets across cloud applications. This acquisition is the latest example of Microsoft’s commitment to delivering innovative identity and security capabilities to our customers, across both on-premises and multiple clouds.

With more frequent and advanced cybersecurity attacks continuing to make headlines, customer concerns around security remain top of mind. These concerns pose real challenges for IT, who are charged with protecting company data in this rapidly evolving mobile-first, cloud-first world. In this world, identity is a critical control plane for managing and protecting access to applications and data…

Grazed from ThePlatform.net. Author: Thomas Prickett Morgan.

The only number you need to remember about Intel’s Data Center Group business for the next three years is this one: 15 percent. That is the annual growth rate that general manager Diane Bryant says that the company can deliver, on a compound annual growth rate basis, “out through time,” although the presentations that the top brass from Data Center Group only did comparisons between 2014 and 2018.

To deliver such growth – and consistently year after year, given the uncertainties of the global economy and the tectonic shifts taking place in the datacenters of the world – would be a truly remarkable feat. Assuming that Intel makes its numbers for 2015 and grows Data Center Group revenues by 15 percent, the company has averaged 17.7 percent growth, with a few blips up and down from that average, and even more significantly, has been able to grow its operating income at nearly twice that rate…