Grazed from TopTechNews. Author: Jennifer LeClaire.

IBM isn’t wasting any time leveraging the strengths of its Blue Box acquisition. Big Blue has integrated the private cloud software into its broader portfolio of OpenStack-based solutions less than 90 days after buying the firm. IBM made the announcement today at the OpenStack Silicon Valley event in Silicon Valley.

Blue Box Cloud Dedicated blends private cloud performance and cost management with public cloud provisioning and operations support. The technology offers a single management tool for OpenStack-based private clouds in any location for more consistency with public, private and hybrid cloud operations…

Grazed from TopTechNews. Author: Shirley Siluk.

Backing up large volumes of physically stored data Relevant Products/Services onto the cloud can take days, weeks or even months, depending on the speed of a user’s Internet connection. Rather than asking clients to take on that task on their own, Google is offering its Cloud Storage customers the option of sending physical storage media to partners that will upload it for them.

Google’s new Offline Media Import/Export service is similar to Amazon Web Services’ Import/Export, which was first launched in 2009. Google is offering the service to North American customers in partnership with Iron Mountain, a Boston-based storage and information management company…

Grazed from CIOToday. Author: Jeff Cozza.

After nine months in preview, Google has finally rolled out a commercial release of its container management service. Called the Google Container Engine, the new service aims to provide enterprise clients with the ability to run their most complex workloads in the cloud.  Containers are a new type of virtualization technology that aim to streamline the process of running workloads in the cloud by allowing multiple isolated user-space instances.

Each instance, or container, appears to have all the characteristics of a normal server from the perspective of the end users. The technique provides better security and helps limit the impact of one container’s activities on other containers. Many applications take advantage of multiple containers. A Web application, for example, might have separate containers for its Web server, cache, and database…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cio-today.com/article/index.php?story_id=1220020U1SBS

Grazed from CFR. Author: Adam Segal.

In December 2013, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) served Microsoft with a warrant requiring the company to hand over the e-mails of a Microsoft customer suspected of drug trafficking. Microsoft refused to turn over the e-mails on the basis that they are stored in servers at a data center in Ireland and that the warrant did not apply to overseas data.

Instead, Microsoft argued the DOJ should work with Irish authorities to obtain access to the data. In July 2014, a U.S. district court ordered Microsoft to turn over the e-mails, but Microsoft appealed to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which will hear arguments on September 9. In light of the significance of this case for U.S. consumers and businesses, and the impact that its outcome could have on the privacy of digital communications, Brad Smith, executive vice president and general counsel for Microsoft, took the time to answer some questions regarding the case and what its outcome might mean…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Barclay Ballard.

Even in computing terms, the cloud is relatively new and as with any new phenomenon there are stumbling blocks and naysayers. For cloud computing, this has often centred on security issues and claims that it is less secure than local storage. While it is true that, when poorly implemented, the cloud can be at the root of some nasty security headaches, to state that on-premise solutions are always more secure is an oversimplification.

Improvements to cloud security, including the implementation of end-to-end encryption, has been one of the key reasons why more and more businesses are taking advantage of third-party suppliers. The flexibility provided by cloud computing is often used to explain productivity benefits, but it is also at the heart of recent security improvements…

Grazed from NewsFactor. Author: Editorial Staff.

Businesses Worldwide Can Now Easily Store and Manage Unlimited Data Through SoftNAS On CenturyLink’s Cloud Marketplace — SoftNAS Cloud accelerates enterprise performance on any hardware through an easily and rapidly deployed full-featured, software-based Network-Attached Storage (NAS) appliance.

SoftNAS, the #1 best-selling software-based network-attached storage (NAS) in the cloud, today announced its participation in the CenturyLink Cloud Marketplace Provider Program. With SoftNAS’ inclusion in the program, CenturyLink Cloud customers now have secure file sharing and storage capabilities on the CenturyLink Cloud platform…

Grazed from PaceToday. Author: Editorial Staff.

Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) has been named a winner of the TMC 2015 Cloud Computing Excellence Awards for its advanced Hitachi Content Platform portfolio, including Hitachi Content Platform, Hitachi Content Platform Anywhere and Hitachi Data Ingestor. Presented by Cloud Computing magazine, the Cloud Computing Excellence Awards recognise companies that have most effectively leveraged cloud computing in their efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market.

The Hitachi Content Platform portfolio is the only portfolio that offers integrated solutions and a single architecture for private and hybrid cloud, OpenStack support, cost-effective erasure-coded dense storage, elastic cloud gateways, file sync and share, and mobile access to enterprise NAS file shares…

Read more from the source @ http://www.pacetoday.com.au/news/hitachi-data-systems-wins-cloud-award

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Despite all the advantages the cloud offers, it’s important to realize that the cloud itself is not magic. Cloud computing is simply a method for consuming IT as a service rather than building that infrastructure in house. It can offer significant cost savings in the right instances, but not all cloud services are created equal. According to Logicalis US, an international IT solutions and managed services provider (www.us.logicalis.com), there is a growing misperception that data that resides in the cloud is automatically protected just because it’s in the cloud. This, the company warns, is absolutely not the case.

"There’s a common misconception that placing your data in the cloud solves all problems, and that’s just not true," says Eric Brooks, Cloud Services Practice Manager, Logicalis US. "Not all cloud providers are built to accommodate enterprise-level IT needs; many don’t provide the kind of advanced networking, backup or disaster recovery services you would expect to find in an enterprise IT organization. Don’t assume the cloud is somehow magic…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Barclay Ballard.

Alibaba is launching a new artificial intelligence platform, which boasts enhanced data mining and analytics features that could prove useful for enterprise customers. DT PAI uses complex algorithms alongside machine and deep learning techniques in order to analyse client data. Despite its complexity, the platform will present information in a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface.

The platform is based on Aliyun’s Open Data Processing Service (ODPS) technology, which is capable of processing 100 petabytes of data in six hours. It could help find hidden trends within data or recommend products to customers. Alibaba’s cloud computing business Aliyun also believes that DT PAI can help developers predict user behaviour without having to write new code…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Ian Moyse.

“We change our behaviour when the pain of staying the same becomes greater than the pain of changing. Consequences give us the pain that motivates us to change” – Dr. Henry Cloud and Dr. John Townsend Successful businesses require the ability to change and increasingly to adapt quickly, to be agile to new approaches and technologies and be flexible to the needs of the business and customers.

We are at the wake of monumental change and how businesses service and engage with the customer and employee alike are under upward pressure from users and customers who are driving a higher expectation on their provider where brand loyalty can wane quicker than ever before. Of the Fortune 500 firms in 1955, come 2015 89% of the list has changed, having either gone bankrupt, merged, or exist but have fallen from the Fortune 500…