Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Sharon Gaudin.

Microsoft is working to help its enterprise customers move their data, apps and operations to the cloud – specifically the hybrid cloud. At its first Ignite conference in Chicago today, the company unveiled Microsoft Azure Stack, a collection of the company’s hyper-scale public cloud technologies that it uses for its own data centers.

The new Azure Stack software makes both the Azure infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS) software available so enterprises can use it in their own on-premises clouds. Microsoft also took the wraps off what it’s calling the Microsoft Operations Management Suite, a group of hybrid tools and software focused on managing enterprises’ workloads, regardless of where they are – on the Azure platform, Amazon Web Services, Linux, VMWAre, Windows Server or OpenStack…

Grazed from FederalTimes. Author: Robert Ferrell.

Secretary of Defense Ash Carter unveiled the new Department of Defense Cyber Strategy in an address at Stanford University in Silicon Valley, California, April 23, 2015. An update to the original strategy released in 2011, it identifies specific cyber missions for DoD and sets strategic goals to achieve over the next five years and beyond.

These missions and goals will guide the development of DoD’s cyber forces and strengthen our cyber defense and cyber deterrence posture. I encourage all to familiarize themselves with the new DoD strategy to gain a better understanding of how it will inform the Army’s mission, priorities and way-ahead…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimesberger.

VCE, a highly successful company conceived by EMC, Cisco Systems, Intel and VMware five and half years ago, made news May 4 at EMC World 2015 here by announcing a new line of hyper-converged data center systems called VxRacks. The company said these new server-storage packages will enable enterprises and service providers to more easily manage the deployment of next-generation scale-out cloud, distributed and mobile Tier 2 applications.

VCE VxRack systems enable users to start with dozens of servers and scale to thousands with up to 38 petabytes of storage capacity while delivering high performance/value per IOP. Most importantly, VCE offers its proven methodology of pre-engineered, preconfigured factory-built infrastructure with single-call lifecycle support to VxRack Systems, providing owners with the same VCE customer experience…

Read more from the source @ http://www.eweek.com/storage/vce-launches-new-vxracks-for-cloud-mobile-apps.html

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Judy Ko.

“Cloud makes everything so easy.” “Cloud computing is the great democratizer.” “Simplicity is the essence of cloud.” These are among the tried and true benefits that are trotted out in praise of cloud computing, and in many senses they have proven true. Hence, the now very mainstream adoption of cloud applications and computing platforms that we see all around us.

But the laws of physics cannot be ignored, no matter how amazing the technology is. Recalling your high school physics class: things that begin in a state of simplicity and order devolve toward complexity and disorder, unless you apply work. (Witness Saturday mornings in my house as neatly organized toys and LEGOs inevitably evolve into a disaster zone—apologies for the not entirely accurate yet highly representative analogy.)…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Don Reisinger.

Today, enterprises can offload a wide range of computing services and applications from internal servers and data centers to the cloud. In fact, it is entirely feasible and possibly even cost-effective for a large enterprise to run all of its computing resources in the cloud. So it is no surprise that companies are taking a close look at what internal computing services it can offload to a cloud platform.

These services range from Web storage to full business productivity suites that include email, word processing, presentations, online meetings and sales management applications. Companies can buy as much data processing capacity as they could possibly need, whether it is for a single big project that requires a lot of data processing muscle or to run all the applications for an entire enterprise…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Sean McGrath.

It may surprise you to learn that the roots of cloud computing were planted well before the term made it into everyday speech. J.C.R. Licklider, one of the key developers of ARPANET, envisioned a global network capable of computation, while Professor John McCarthy said at MIT’s centennial celebration in 1961:

"Computing may someday be organized as a public utility just as the telephone system is a public utility. Each subscriber needs to pay only for the capacity he actually uses, but he has access to all programming languages characteristic of a very large system … Certain subscribers might offer service to other subscribers …

Grazed from UCMerced.edu. Author: Editorial Staff.

A UC Merced researcher has come up with a new, super-efficient encryption system for smart phones that lets users secure data being sent to and retrieved from the cloud. Encrypting data on your phone or tablet — including pictures, documents and videos — protects against the kinds of leaks and hacks that seem to be in the news almost every week. But those devices have energy and storage limits, and encryption systems can be costly.

In the Cloud LabOpens a new window at UC Merced, graduate student Mehdi Bahrami, who works with Chancellor’s Professor Mukesh Singhal in the School of Engineering, devised a new lightweight data privacy method for mobile clients to store data in one or multiple clouds without using a lot of a mobile device’s resources…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

FOR MANY, DOCKER is the next big thing in cloud computing. But some big names—most notably Google—are now backing an alternative to this enormously-influential technology. In December, one of Docker’s earliest supporters, the Silicon Valley startup CoreOS, unveiled an open source project called Rocket.

CoreOS founder and CEO Alex Polvi felt that Docker had strayed from its original mission, and with Rocket, he and his colleagues hoped to bring that mission back to the fore. Five months later, Google has put its considerable weight behind this effort, officially joining the Rocket open source project and rolling the technology into one of its cloud computing tools…

Grazed from FT. Author: Richard Waters.

Cisco Systems on Monday brought the curtain down on one of Silicon Valley’s longest-running chief executive acts as it announced that John Chambers would step aside after 20 years. However, in an unusual division of power that leaves him at the centre of the networking equipment company’s leadership, Cisco said Mr Chambers would stay on as full-time chairman.

Mr Chambers, who built Cisco from a small maker of internet routers into the world’s biggest networking equipment company, will hand the chief executive title to Chuck Robbins, head of the company’s global sales division, on July 26. In an apparent attempt to head off concerns about what his involvement would be in the company’s management after the reshuffle, Cisco said Mr Chambers would “devote his time to supporting Robbins”, as well as dealing with the company’s customers and governments around the world…

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Barb Darrow.

Given the hype, you might think that all applications and data in the universe are now sitting in someone’s cloud. But you would be wrong. The corporate world is at the beginning of the cloud computing era and tons of applications—especially those at the largest businesses—still run in server rooms or data centers operated by the companies in question.

And, that fact, along with pre-existing relationships with information technology (IT) pros who manage all of it, give Microsoft MSFT -0.08% a big advantage over born-in-the-cloud providers, according to CEO Satya Nadella. Thousands of companies run Microsoft SQL Server databases, SharePoint file sharing, Exchange email, System Center management, and other services on their premises…