Grazed from CIO.  Author: Bernard Golden.

 Grazed from Yibada.  Author: Yen Palec.

Tech giant Google recently announced that it is joining the OpenStack Foundation in its plan to upgrade its own cloud computing platform.  OpenStack Foundation is the governing body that supervises the use of OpenStack, a free cloud-based program that counts some of the biggest names in technology as its member including Intel, HP and IBM.

Grazed from Forbes.   Author: Joe McKendrick.

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Steve Weissman.

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Mike Vizard.

One of the unfortunate tendencies when it comes to the cloud is trying to replicate the way everything that was done on premise within a public cloud computing environment. Rather than looking to consolidate layers of computing that over the years have emerged inside the data center, IT organizations often just wind up shifting the mess.

For that reason solution providers should be looking for new ways to deliver IT services via the cloud that actually transform how they are delivered. Case in point is Appcito, which this week announced that it is making its application delivery controller (ADC) available on the Microsoft Azure cloud…

Grazed from CloudTech.  Author: David Auslander.

If we think about the basic functionality that we take advantage of in the cloud, a whole set of possibilities open up for how we plan for disaster recovery (DR).  Until recently, disaster recovery was an expensive, process intensive service, reserved for only the most critical of corporate services. In most cases DR has been about large servers in two geographically distributed location and large data sets being replicated on a timed basis.

Many smaller or less critical services were relegated to a backup and restore DR solution although in many cases as these applications “grew up”, organisations realised that they too needed better protection. Unfortunately, the cost of standing up a legacy style DR environment remained prohibitive for all but the largest and most critical services…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Werner Vogels joined Amazon.com in 2004 and a year later became CTO. During the past decade he helped define the public infrastructure as a service cloud market. To do so, Amazon Web Services built a massive network of data centers around the world, which to this day continues to grow rapidly. This month at the AWS Summit in New York, Network World Senior Editor Brandon Butler spoke with Vogels about the state of the cloud industry, challenges facing AWS, its relationships with partners and customers, and what he’s learned from growing AWS into the business it is today.

Amazon Web Services is credited by many as the market-leader in the public IaaS market, but Microsoft is hot on your tail. One of the key differentiators for Microsoft Azure is its focus on the hybrid cloud. What are you doing to support hybrid cloud computing? Customers have made major investments in their infrastructure, so that will not disappear overnight…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

The technological and economic benefits offered by cloud services are accelerating enterprise migration from on-premise IT infrastructure solutions to hosted alternatives. This is driving rapid growth in the European infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) market. Cloud providers are also pursuing regional strategies such as setting up of local data centres to fast-track uptake among European customers.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of the European Infrastructure-as-a-Service Market (https://www.frost.com/mab4 [https), finds that the market earned revenues of 1.95 billion USD in 2014 and estimates this to reach 10.11 billion USD in 2019. For complimentary access to more information on this research, please visit: http://owl.li/PDhQC …

Grazed from MorningNewsUSA. Author: Sohini Auddy.

Microsoft and Rackspace are going to team up to provide a better experience to users with Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service. The Microsoft-Rackspace partnership will provide assistance to the companies using Azure. They will be presenting a guide to make them get the best out of data storage, processing, database and other services.

Microsoft needs no introduction to be precise. Rackspace Hosting Inc is a data center service company known for its top-tier technology support. The company is also known for its customer support. The reputation of the company can give Microsoft a significant boost while competing with Amazon as far as the latter’s web service is concerned…

Grazed from e-CommerceTimes. Author: John K. Higgins.

The U.S. Defense Department, often cited as a bit sluggish in taking advantage of the benefits of cloud computing, appears now to be emerging as a government leader in adopting the technology. In the short run, DoD has far outpaced other federal agencies in setting up cloud contracts. During the first quarter of fiscal 2015, the value of all federal contracts for cloud projects amounted to US$668 million, of which the overwhelming amount, $531 million, was attributed to the Defense Department.

The DoD upsurge in 2015 versus 2014 "is largely attributable to the award of the Defense Information Systems Agency’s Enterprise Storage Solutions II contract, which calls for a hybrid cloud data storage service, with vendors supplying hardware housed in the agency’s data centers," said Alex Rossino, a research analyst at Deltek…