Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

When the open source OpenStack cloud management framework first launched, there appeared to be a lot of overlap with an open source CloudStack project that Citrix took over when it acquired Cloud.com way back in 2011. Ever since then there has been a fair amount of sniping going back and forth between proponents of the two open source cloud management frameworks.

Citrix today announced it wants to put an end to the war of words between the two camps by formally becoming a member of the OpenStack Foundation. Nand Mulchandani, vice president of product marketing for the Cloud Platforms Group at Citrix, said that over the years the scope of the OpenStack project has expanded well beyond the ambitions of the CloudStack project, which he said is designed to provide a fairly simply to standup cloud management framework…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Editorial Staff.

While you can easily access your cloud data from any spot in the world, you must be rather cautious when using it within your business. You must keep your access plans for your cloud network in check so you will not be at risk of having your data becoming compromised at any point.

1) Manage your passwords the right way.

As useful as passwords can be for your cloud access needs, you must be careful when going anywhere with such passwords. In addition to having complicated or detailed passwords that are hard to predict, you must also use several passwords within your cloud. You can add different passwords for specific access points or even have different passwords for specific accounts that want to reach your cloud setup…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

My first job out of college was as a decision support application analyst, and it allowed me to work with systems using early versions of artificial intelligence. The idea was compelling to me then, and it remains compelling to me today. The systems learned as they processed information. The objective was predicting the future, aka predictive analytics. This is still the objective today in larger enterprises.

The problem with these systems in the past was that to really analyze all the relevant data, they needed a huge amount of processing power and storage. Thus, businesses seeking to use the so-called learning systems for tasks like predictive analytics had to shell out major bucks for hardware and software — or do without…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

Cloud computing’s ever-expanding footprint is good news for IT vendors, particularly HP and Dell. In the fourth quarter of 2014 (4Q14), cloud data center operators snapped up $8.0 billion worth of servers, disk storage and Ethernet switching equipment worldwide, according to IT market research firm IDC, a 14.4 percent year-over-year improvement.

In total, the cloud represented 30 percent of all IT infrastructure spending in 4Q14, compared to 27 percent during the same year-ago period. Private clouds are growing more popular among enterprises, IDC’s data indicates. Spending in the segment reached $2.9 billion, an 18.3 percent year-over-year increase. Public clouds accounted for $5 billion in IT revenues, a 12.3 percent gain…

Secure Channels provides Ingram Micro resellers with impenetrable encryption solutions for enterprise networks and small businesses for strong security in in the Cloud, Private Data Centers, various Mobility Platforms, and securing a wide array of database systems.

Designed to help enterprise developers securely build, deploy and manage cloud-native applications, these new open source projects will integrate into VMware’s unified platform for the hybrid cloud — creating a consistent environment across the private and public cloud to support cloud-native and traditional applications. By open sourcing these projects, VMware will work with a broad ecosystem of partners and the developer community to drive common standards, security and interoperability within the cloud-native application market — leading to improved technology and greater customer choice.

"Through these projects VMware will deliver on its promise of support for any application in the enterprise — including cloud-native applications — by extending our unified platform with Project Lightwave and Project Photon," said Kit Colbert, vice president and chief technology officer for Cloud-Native Applications, VMware, Inc. "Used together, these new open source projects will provide enterprises with the best of both worlds. Developers benefit from the portability and speed of containerized applications, while IT operations teams can maintain the security and performance required in today’s business environment."

“The principle of least privilege is nothing new to the security world, but applying it to network security down to the host level has historically been impractical. Thanks in part to emerging analytics and automation technology; network segmentation at a granular level – micro-segmentation, in other words – is now possible,” said Adrian Sanabria, Senior Security Analyst at 451 Research. “This is a significant security advantage of virtualization, and is a prime example of how software-defined innovations present an opportunity to reinvent defenses. The combination of virtualization and automation is allowing enterprises to improve security without adding significant implementation and management effort.”

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Andrew Conry Murray.

Mobility and cloud computing are transforming application delivery and development. IT has to keep up with these transformations to ensure that end users and customers have a good experience regardless of where the application runs. At the same time, IT is responsible for security, governance, compliance and the reams and reams of data these applications consume and generate. Interop’s Applications track helps IT meet this tall order with a mix of real-world case studies and in-depth workshops and tech sessions. Here’s a sample of what you’ll find.

Transforming Data Into Information And Knowledge

This workshop delves into data analytics and how it can be applied to change the way work is planned, accomplished and improved. The workshop looks at industry examples, including healthcare, to show how raw data can be transformed into actionable information. It will also provide an overview of the different data analytics technologies available, and share tips on how to get a data analytics project off the ground…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Cloud security compliance (CSC) company Cloud Raxak today has launched Cloud Raxak Protect, a cloud-based service that enables users to "secure and ensure compliance of their compute infrastructures, starting with their environment provisioning process and through the lifecycle, for both public and private clouds."

Cloud Raxak Protect provides hybrid cloud service management for businesses, according to Cloud Raxak. It leverages the Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) Cloud Service Automation (CSA) solution, Cloud Raxak said, to help companies reduce their hybrid cloud service management costs and simplify audits…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-security/04202015/cloud-raxak-unveils-cloud-security-compliance-solution

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bob Violino.

Open-source cloud computing offers compelling potential—cost savings, innovation, low barriers to software deployment, avoiding vendor lock-in and a broad community of support, to name a few. Despite this, CIOs and IT executives still have misconceptions about the challenges surrounding open-source cloud technologies, such as a perceived lack of security or the potential inability to handle business-critical

We’re here to address these perceptions in a five-part series to show that these myths are just that: misconceptions about open-source cloud. First up, the lack of security. The idea here is that there’s inadequate security with cloud computing in general. For several years, concerns about security have kept a large number of organizations from moving data and workloads to the cloud, particularly public cloud services.applications…