Grazed from PYMNTS.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Oracle’s cloud services may account for just 5 percent of its revenue today, but the company plans to be the world’s largest cloud service provider by the end of the year. In an interview with India’s Business Today, Oracle Senior Vice President Shawn Price told reporters that the company will aim to surpass current cloud computing leader Salesforce by the end of 2015, with a goal of $2.5 billion in revenue.

Price’s hiring at Oracle came just six months ago, when he worked at B2B software giant SAP. His experience, the executive said, will allow Oracle to view cloud services from a different angle from what has been the norm up until now…

Grazed from CloudTech.  Author: James Bourne.

As we’re now full swing into 2015, there is certainly a greater understanding over the potential – and the limitations – of cloud computing. Research from NTT Communications has explored the varying issues and argued there needs to be a smoother migration path from the corporate data centre to the cloud.

Similarly, even though cloud will claim a growing share of IT budgets in coming years, many IT decision makers don’t believe it is living up to its potential.  The complexity of companies’ IT is growing and becoming difficult to manage. UK IT decision makers claim they have to support 250 applications on average, compared to 100 in the US, 58 in Benelux and 57 in Germany. Globally, IT is having to deal with more than four clouds on average…

Grazed from Baseline.  AuthorL Tony Kontzer.

Many company executives would make more use of cloud computing if it were easier to adopt this technology. Recent research from CDW indicates that IT decision-makers are put off by migration and integration challenges, and are relying on financial models that are proving to be inaccurate.

CDW surveyed more than 1,200 IT professionals for its "Cloud 401: Navigating Advanced Topics in Cloud Computing" report, and the findings indicate that respondents would be doing a lot more in the cloud if only vendors could break down some of the barriers that are preventing migrations. More to the point, one of the major promises of the cloud—that it frees up IT resources that could be reallocated to more strategic activities—is proving to be a fantasy…

Complementing VMware’s vCloud Air Network of service providers, the new VMware-operated location provides customers with a local Asia Pacific Infrastructure as a Service that can help address local compliance and data locality concerns. This initial VMware vCloud Air deployment in Australia is hosted out of a Telstra connected data center.

“We continue to see growing client adoption and interest as we build out VMware vCloud® Air™ with our newest service location in Australia,” said Bill Fathers, executive vice president and general manager, Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware. “VMware’s new Australia service location enables local IT teams, developers and lines of business to create and build their hybrid cloud environments on an agile and resilient IT platform that supports rapid innovation and business transformation.”

The CloudTrust Program from Skyhigh Networks (www.skyhighnetworks.com) is designed to promote cloud services that have the highest rating of "Enterprise Ready." Skyhigh provides an objective and detailed risk assessment of more than 9,000 cloud services across 50 attributes developed in conjunction with the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). IaaS vendors that satisfy the most stringent requirements for data protection, identity verification, service security, business practices and legal protection earn the highest rating of "Enterprise-Ready."
 

CloudVelox software automated key disaster recovery processes for MyPoints, including discovery, blueprinting, provisioning and deployment of the DR environment into AWS. The deployment was remarkably fast. Within a few weeks MyPoints had the option of shuttering its secondary data center.

Docker, the company that kicked off the recent enthusiasm for containers two years ago, today announced that it has raised a $95 million Series D round led by Insight Venture Partners. New investors in this round include Coatue, Goldman Sachs and Northern Trust. Existing investors Benchmark, Greylock Partners, Sequoia Capital, Trinity Ventures and AME Cloud Ventures also participated.

As Docker’s VP of enterprise marketing David Messina noted when I talked to him earlier this week, it’s interesting to see the support from financial services companies in this round. This somewhat atypical investment, he believes, speaks to the support Docker has from developer teams in all kinds of organizations and how these companies now look at Docker as a key platform for their teams.

Grazed from Cleveland Business.   Author: Timothy Magaw.

IBM announced late Monday, April 13, it had acquired Explorys Inc., a Cleveland Clinic spinoff that helps hospitals analyze patient data.  Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. In a news release, IBM, the Armonk, N.Y.-based computer powerhouse, shared little of its plans for the newly acquired company other than to say than it is now part of the company’s newly launched Watson Health unit. The Watson technology, with which the Clinic has experimented in recent years, is perhaps best known for handily defeating some of the best Jeopardy! contestants of all time.

IBM also announced its Watson division will work with tech heavyweights Apple, Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic. In addition to the Explorys acquisition, IBM also announced it had purchased and Phytel, a cloud-based computer services company based out of Dallas…

Grazed from Bloomberg.  Author: Alex Barinka.

IBM is joining with Apple Inc., Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic Plc to create a technology that will make it easier for health-care companies to analyze patient data.  International Business Machines Corp. announced a cloud-computing platform, called Watson Health Cloud, which can store and analyze anonymous patient data. A business unit will be created around the offering with at least 2,000 specialists, IBM said in a statement.

IBM has been seeking growth in newer areas like data analytics and cloud computing as tumbling demand for legacy hardware and services has dragged down revenue. The company has increasingly relied on industry-specific partnerships to help boost sales, like these latest tie-ups in health care…