Grazed from eWeek. Author: Sean Michael Kerner.

Cloud vendor DigitalOcean today announced that it has raised $83 million in a Series B round of funding led by Access Industries and with the participation of Andreessen Horowitz. The new funding, according to Ben Uretsky, co-founder and CEO of DigitalOcean, will help finance his company’s growth, buying new servers and investing in the facilities and assets that are needed to move the company forward.

"We’re trying to look two to three years ahead to understand what the capital needs of the business are," Uretsky told eWEEK. "When you go out to raise capital, what you’re doing is balancing the valuation against the time horizon." To date, DigitalOcean has raised $123.4 million in venture capital, with a $3.2 million seed round of funding in July 2013 and a $37.2 million Series A round in March 2014…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

MSPs build trust with customers and prospects by providing transparency in their approach to cloud data storage and cloud-based file sharing. Because many businesses are cautious about making the transition to cloud computing. When customers move their data and applications to the cloud, they’re relinquishing some of their control. Of course, many find this disturbing. In this environment, how can you alleviate stress and establish trust?

Transparency

One critical component of building trust is transparency. Merely claiming your services are secure and reliable isn’t enough. Transparency gives customers information about not just what you can promise, but also how you’re going to fulfill that promise. How can you achieve transparency? How can you tailor your cloud approach to build trust?…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bernard Golden.

It’s easy to despair about the cloud computing industry and its seemingly endless navel-gazing. It often seems that the cloud crowd is more interested in internecine warfare than actually helping customers realize the benefits of this emerging platform. The prime example of this tech narcissism is the ongoing industry slugfest regarding private/public/hybrid cloud and what the “right” solution is.

Out in the real world of enterprise IT, however, organizations are adopting cloud computing with enthusiasm, which was displayed in full force at London’s Cloud World Forum in June. One of the strengths of this conference is how it’s able to entice end users to present case studies of their actual experience; this is a refreshing change from other cloud events that seem to serve primarily as opportunities for vendor marketing departments to pitch their products…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Jim O’Reilly.

Public cloud adoption has grown significantly over the past few years, as even the most skeptical IT pros admit the technology is right for certain use cases. Spending on public cloud services is expected to exceed $127 billion in 2018, up from $56.6 billion in 2014, according to industry analyst group IDC.

But, even as adoption grows, many organizations still question whether they can use public cloud to run all mission-critical workloads. The answer, however, depends on several factors. To protect data, a business’ most mission-critical applications are kept close. In fact, by law, certain data must be protected…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Editorial Staff.

Towards the middle of January, the Defense Information Systems Agency – a subdivision of the United States Department of Defense – released a new cloud computing security requirements guide, which we first heard talk of back in November. The primary purpose of this SRG is to make the process of acquiring commercial cloud services more efficient for DoD agencies (without undermining security, of course). Not surprisingly, this means that the SRG effectively renders obsolete the DoD’s original Cloud Security Model, under which only a few select vendors received authorization.

“In plain language, the new guide explains that components “remain responsible for determining what data and missions are hosted” by cloud service providers,” writes Frank Konkel of Nextgov. “Each use of cloud services will also require an enterprise IT business case analysis, with each analysis required to consider DISA-provided cloud services such as DISA’s milCloud offering.”…

Grazed from BizJournals. Author: Editorial Staff.

ProfitBricks opened an office in San Antonio last year expecting big things in the cloud computing industry. So far this year it has not been disappointed. “2015 is proving to be the year where cloud computing becomes the norm,” said William Toll, vice president of marketing for Boston-based ProfitBricks.

The company, which also has an office in Berlin, Germany, provides its clients with access to cloud servers, storage and networks using its own platform. The company uses a drag-and-drop data center design and management tool giving customers the ability to customize their cloud environment…

Grazed from TheRegister. Author: Chris Mellor.

Facebook’s Open Compute Project testing is sub-standard and doesn’t follow well-established industry procedures, according to The Register’s sources. The Open Compute Project (OCP) was formed in 2011 and involves the Facebook-initiated design of bare-bones computer equipment that can supposedly be built, installed and operated at a lower cost than branded servers. A product certification lab was opened at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) in January 2014. There is another lab at the Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI) in Taiwan. UTSA said it would:

• Conduct OCP certification and deliver the certification logo
• Develop OCP certification quality assurance tools and methodologies
• Research, build and publish OCP-based cloud and Big Data reference architectures
• Support Open Compute events by providing educational opportunities…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Bob Violino.

Without proper analytics in place, many cloud services customers are wasting resources, struggling with compliance and suffering from outages and unexpected costs, according to a new study from Forrester Research. The study, sponsored by enterprise cloud hosting provider iLand, shows that all of the 275 IT decision makers and senior business executives surveyed in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore said they’ve experienced at least one negative financial or operational impact due to missing or hidden metadata.

These negative business impacts include outages, wasted resources, unexpected costs and challenges reporting to management. “Companies aren’t just using the cloud—they depend on it,” the report says. “Nevertheless, cloud providers fail to keep cloud users happy. As companies expand their use of cloud services, they need to be confident that their cloud providers aren’t holding anything back, and are committed to their success.”…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Lisa Beilfuss.

Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced a deal to buy privately held MaintenanceNet for $139 million, the latest acquisition for the network giant. Carlsbad, Calif.-based MaintenanceNet, which was founded in 2004, operates a cloud-based platform that uses data analytics to help automate sales processes.

The companies have partnered since 2009, whereby MaintenanceNet’s software alerts Cisco clients to service contracts that are coming up for renewal or overdue and enables automated quoting and online ordering. In a blog post, Cisco said MaintenanceNet will join its global customer success organization and called the ability to easily track and manage contracts “critical” as more information technology business models shift to a recurring revenue model for products and services…

Read more from the source @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-plans-to-buy-cloud-platform-maintenancenet-1436281361

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Amazon (AMZN) is providing Cloud Drive users with the ability to access files via smartphones and tablets. The technology giant this week launched Cloud Drive applications on iTunes, Google Play and the Amazon Appstore. So what do the new apps mean for managed service providers (MSPs)?

These apps offer a simplified folder list and a way to view and share files that could make it easier for sales representatives and service technicians to access files on the go, according to TechCrunch. The Cloud Drive apps allow users to view files stored with Amazon and navigate through directories, InformationWeek noted…