Grazed from CIOToday. Author: Jef Cozza.

A new data backup and recovery service by Google is out of beta and ready for prime time. Google Cloud Storage Nearline, which the company first announced in March, is available to enterprises looking for online storage for data that does not need to be frequently accessed.

The company also said it would offer new customers a “Switch and Save” program, providing 100 petabytes of storage free for six months to companies that migrate their documents over from existing cloud storage services such as Amazon Web Services’ Glacier storage system…

Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: David Weldon.

Cloud computing adoption continues to rise, cloud costs continue to fall, and cloud savings continue to be available for those organizations that negotiate right. Those are the conclusions of three new cloud computing studies from 451 Research, Cloud Cruiser and International Data Corp.

Perhaps the best news for IT leaders is that the cost of cloud computing investments is dropping, even if only slightly. But the savings can be substantial for those organizations that "negotiate and commit," according to 451 Research. While the price of on-demand cloud services has fallen by a slight 2.25 percent since October, smart negotiators have seen price reductions of 12 percent, the research firm reveals…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

IBM is ramping up its commitment to open source technologies by releasing a new platform which enables developers to build cloud applications. The platform, called developerWorks Open, allows developers to not only download the code but have access to blogs and videos, comprising a global network to accelerate development projects.

IBM has had more than 20 years in the open source computing biz, becoming a main player in projects such as Apache, Linux and Eclipse. Big Blue is a platinum member of the OpenStack foundation, which announced a partnership with Google earlier this month. The company is also spearheading a project called Academic Initiative for Cloud, where the next generation of developers will be equipped with IBM’s platform as a service offering Bluemix…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Mike Butcher.

The scale of the opportunity in Cloud computing and SaaS was underlined today with the news that Notion Capital has closed its third fund with a first round of $120m, with a final close of $150m expected. Funds under management will therefore be over $300m. Partners and brothers Ben and Jos White formed Notion in 2008 after selling MessageLabs to Symantec for $700m, one of Europe’s largest B2B SaaS exits. But what is key to note here is the scale of opportunity for European enterprise startups.

For starters, the news makes Notion the biggest dedicated B2B SaaS fund in Europe with 33 investments including Tradeshift, NewVoiceMedia, CurrencyCloud, DueDil, AdBrain and Trustev. It’s already had European exits such as Shutl, to Ebay and Star, to Claranet. Its portfolio also includes many of hottest SaaS companies in Europe right now, including Adbrain, Brightpearl, Currency Cloud, Duedil, IOCS and MOVE Guides…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jaikumar Vijayan.

The full suite of Wowza Media Systems’ Streaming Engine functionality is now available to Google Compute Engine users. Google is aiming to make it easier for organizations to stream high quality, on demand video and audio content to users around the world using its cloud-computing platform.

The company on Wednesday announced the availability of Wowza Media Systems’ Streaming Engine software as a click-to-deploy option on Google Cloud Platform. All of Wowza’s functionality, including its technology for transcoding video to different formats to accommodate a variety of end user devices, is now available to Google Cloud Platform customers…

Grazed from InvestorsBusinessDaily. Author: Patrick Seitz.

Microsoft played up its cloud computing transition, but its June-quarter earnings report went over like a lead balloon with investors on Wednesday. Microsoft shares fell 3.7% to 45.51 on Wednesday after the company late Tuesday posted its fiscal fourth-quarter results. Microsoft’s sales fell 5% year over year to $22.2 billion in its fiscal Q4 ended June 30.

Excluding the impact of foreign currency exchange rates, Microsoft’s revenue would have fallen 2%. It was just the second quarter in at least the last four years that Microsoft’s sales have declined on a year-over-year basis. Microsoft earned 62 cents a share excluding items, up 11% from a year earlier…

COMPARE FIVE DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO ENTERPRISE DATA PROTECTION IN ONE PLACE: BACK-TO-BACK

Data protection – backup, replication, business continuity, monitoring – is not always considered an IT pro’s most exciting work, but it is one of the most critical services provided by the IT organization.

Making matters even more challenging is the fact that there are many different approaches to data protection and that different people even define “data protection” differently than others. Some see data backup as the definition while others see data protection as a spectrum of services rather than just one niche need.

Grazed from VirtualizationReview. Author: Dan Kusnetsky.

Dell recently announced a number of things it is relating to enterprise VDI and Azure-based cloud computing. The announcement included the release of Wyse 7000 and 5000 series Windows 10-based thin clients, Wyse vWorkspace 8.6 and the Dell Unified Communications Command Suite (UCCS). Let’s examine these one by one:

Wyse Windows 10-Based Thin Clients

Dell announced the Wyse 7490-Z90Q10 and 5490-D90Q10 thin clients. The devices will be available with the specialized "Windows 10 IoT Enterprise" operating system, starting July 29. The company says these thin client devices are "secure, highly scalable and provide a superb user experience." The devices are based on AMD G-Series quad-core microprocessors…

Grazed from NetComposites. Author: Editorial Staff.

Altair has formed a business collaboration with Microsoft to build and offer high-performance computing (HPC) solutions on the Azure cloud computing platform. This follows Microsoft’s decision to name Altair’s PBS Works suite as its preferred workload management solution for Azure manufacturing clients.

Altair says it will work closely with Microsoft to develop turnkey solutions allowing users to access cloud high-performance computing (HPC) resources in Azure from any web-enabled device. These solutions will leverage Altair’s PBS Works platform in Azure to enable intuitive web portal access and secure workload management for rapid, scalable access to Azure HPC resources…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Gillian Wong.

Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. unveiled plans Wednesday to protect user data on its cloud computing platforms globally, highlighting the e-commerce giant’s ambitions to expand its services in markets like the U.S. where it has plans to build a second data center. The Chinese e-commerce giant’s cloud computing unit, known as Aliyun, issued a “Data Protection Pact” promising that customers of its cloud computing platform would have “absolute ownership” over all of their data and the rights to access, share, exchange, transfer or delete their data at any time.

The pact promises customers ranging from developers to government agencies and consumers that their data cannot be altered or transferred by Aliyun in any way. It states that Aliyun is responsible for establishing management and internal audit systems for improving capabilities to protect against threats and the recovery of data in disasters…