Grazed from TheRegister. Author: Simon Sharwood.

Notable tech companies from China and Russia are taking strides into the heart of the global technology community. Aliyun, the cloud computing offshoot of Business-to-business tat bazaar Alibaba, has become an Advisory Board member of the Xen Project, maker of the popular (if frequently-perforated) open source Xen hypervisor.

The Xen project says Aliuyn “has been contributing vulnerability fixes to the project for some time.” Xen Project Advisory Board members have the right to “propose and vote upon changes and additions to Xen Project test and validation infrastructure” and enjoy access to project leaders and the chance “to share technical and marketing priorities, and endorse new strategies for the project.” Financial contributions aren’t required…

Grazed from Stuff.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: Don MacVittie.

 Grazed from LATimes.  Author: Daina Beth Solomon.

Hendrik Hamann is into cloud computing — as in real clouds, those puffy things in the sky.  Working at IBM alongside some of the computer giant’s most advanced systems, Hamann and his team seek a breakthrough in cloud-cover forecasting. They’re aiming to help ease the introduction of solar electricity into the nation’s major power grids, as solar-generated power is increasingly being loaded onto the grid, propelled by government mandates and solar-technology price declines.

There’s a big problem with solar power that the IBM team is trying to solve: You can’t pump out much electricity on a cloudy day.  But the demand for electricity doesn’t decline when a solar plant can’t produce energy. Another source of power has to take its place. So utilities keep coal and natural-gas power plants humming, ready to pitch in when solar can’t do its job. That burns more fuel and costs more money…

Grazed from Mondaq.  Author: Steve Gold.

Grazed from ScientificComputing.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Grazed from BusinessFinanceNews. Author: Jason Graul.

Netflix, Inc. is planning to close down its remaining data centers by the end of this summer, becoming the first big corporation to completely run its information technology through the public cloud, according to The Wall Street Journal (WSJ). Netflix told WSJ’s CIO Journal through an email: “For our streaming business, we have been 100% cloud-based for customer facing systems for some time now, and are planning to completely retire our data centers later this summer.”

Although corporate utilization of the public cloud is increasing, many companies still use sensitive software in their private cloud or data centers. While public clouds allow users to share a service provider’s resources, privates ones only dedicate cloud resource within their own premises or from a third-party. Majority of companies use all of these assets together under a hybrid arrangement…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Matt Asay.

In one of the most colossal understatements ever, Cloudera co-founder Mike Olson declared, "It’s pretty hard to build a successful, stand-­alone open source company." Having spent 15 years trying to do exactly that, I would go one step further: It’s impossible. Yes, we have Red Hat.

But that’s all we have. Investor (and former open source executive) Peter Levine insists that "we will never have another Red Hat," and he’s right. But this may be because the Amazons of the world are increasingly eating the Red Hats of the world — one SaaS business at a time…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Thor Olavsrud.

With cloud computing maturing, the competitive advantages provided by cloud adoption are declining, but not being in the cloud is turning into a serious disadvantage, according to a new report by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services. "The benefits are starting to flatten out," says Abbie Lundberg, contributing editor at HBR.

But that’s because CIOs and their peers are no longer debating the benefits of cloud as they once did. With ‘everyone’ now leveraging cloud, you have to use cloud in imaginative ways to get a leg up on the competition. But as one respondent told HBR, cloud computing may no longer give you the competitive advantage it once did, but not using cloud can put you at a significant disadvantage…

Grazed from TopTechNews. Author: Jef Cozza.

As headlines about corporate hacks and data leaks have continued to dominate technology news sites, companies have moved to offer more security features to worried users and enterprise clients. Today, Dropbox announced that it is introducing support for open standard FIDO Universal Second Factor verification (U2F) to provide better account security to its users.

The cloud storage service has already been offering two-step verification for years, requiring users to provide both their usual usernames and passwords, plus additional security codes sent to their phones. The use of a second factor helps protect users from a variety of methods hackers can use to access passwords…