Grazed from CNBC. Author: Arjun Kharpal.

Amazon and Microsoft are "friends" not rivals of Alibaba in the cloud computing space, a top exec at the Chinese e-commerce giant told CNBC. The comments come just a few days after Alibaba opened a data center in Silicon Valley—its first on U.S. turf in a cloud market dominated by Amazon, Google and Microsoft.

But Ethan Yu, the international head of Alibaba’s cloud division, Aliyun, told CNBC that the company was not in competition with its U.S. counterparts. "The public cloud business is growing exponentially. There is just huge room for everyone to grow. We are trying to position differently from our friends in this area. We would not call them competitors," Yu said in an interview at tech trade fair CeBit, in Hanover, Germany…

Read more from the source @ http://www.cnbc.com/id/102507984

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Paul Sawers.

At Microsoft’s business-focused Convergence conference today in Atlanta, Georgia, the computing giant confirmed it’s making a big play into the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) realm, with a new Microsoft Azure IoT Suite and IoT-focused version of its Windows 10 operating system.

Azure is Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform infrastructure that helps companies build and manage apps and services from the cloud. With the Azure IoT Suite, Microsoft is looking to help companies integrate and manage all their connected offerings, and will be introduced in preview mode later this year. The new platform will give busineses access to tools such as asset management, remote monitoring, and predictive maintenance. Feeding into this is Azure Stream Analytics, which serves up real-time data from “things”, and will be made available “next month” as a standalone service, or bundled with Azure IoT…

Grazed from InsideHPC. Author: Editorial Staff.

High Performance Computing (HPC) users are always looking for more performance at a lower cost. In the past, organizations would purchase specific sets of servers that would be destined for a specific workload. When that workload changed or was modified, the existing systems that had been acquired may or may not be able to run efficiently or be the best choice for the application. In addition, the CAPEX and OPEX costs would rise.

Learn how IBM Platform Computing is transforming isolated clusters and grids into flexible, dynamic, high performance private, hybrid and public clouds. Clusters that are purchased for specific applications tend not to be flexible as workloads change. What is needed is an infrastructure that can expand or contract as the workload changes, depending on user requirements and demands…

Grazed from NetworkAsia. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud is now a viable option for many IT projects, requiring infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders to expand the scope of systems as they actively consider those that are cloud-based, according to Gartner, Inc. This is the first of four major I&O impacts identified by Gartner from its 2015 CIO Survey, "Flipping to Digital Leadership: The 2015 CIO Agenda." The 2015 survey polled more than 2,800 CIOs that accounted for $397 billion of IT spend and $202.5 billion of I&O spend.

"The survey results show that, for most CIOs, public cloud is an option for projects, but only a first consideration for a small minority," said Dave Russell, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "I&O leaders have been more protective of their existing infrastructure and, in many cases, have been the biggest obstacle to cloud-based solutions, often resorting to cloudwashing as an excuse to not seriously pursue a true cloud-based solution…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

Big data (more correctly data analytics) involves processing and analysing large amounts of high-volume data to extract trends of social or business value. Telsyte expect this threefold increase in uptake to be driven by a number of factors including more customer interactions occurring through digital channels, a move from ‘reactive’ to ‘proactive’, or ‘predictive’, business intelligence and analytics, and better use of available real-time data from existing IT and device infrastructure.

According to Telsyte, more than 40 percent of organisations using big data are using it for IT network monitoring and management, business intelligence and sales and marketing applications. It says the fastest growth areas for big data applications will be telemetry, network monitoring and customer behaviour measurement…

Grazed from Project-Syndicate.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Europe is on the cusp of an unprecedented technological transformation. I call it the Internet of Everything: the penetration of the World Wide Web into the everyday aspects of our lives. Wearable technology will tell us how well we are sleeping and whether we need to exercise. Sensors in the street will help us avoid traffic jams and find parking. Telemedicine applications will allow physicians to treat patients who are hundreds of miles away.

This massive transition will transform how citizens interact with their governments, revolutionize entire industries, and change the way we engage with one another. In Europe, the Internet of Everything is emerging as the single most promising way to revive a moribund economy and tackle the continent’s stubborn unemployment problem, with companies, cities, and even countries positioning themselves as leaders in innovation, growth, and the creation of jobs.

Read more frpm the source @ http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/internet-economy-europe-by-john-chambers-2015-03#kpXwpqdPTJR6XI8R.99

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Tim Clark.

As you read this, hackers are working diligently to uncover avenues, inroads and byroads to get into your confidential corporate data. I know what you’re thinking. You’ve heard this all before, your company isn’t vulnerable and you already took care of it. Are you sure?

Time for a reality check. Even if you figured out how to plug holes in your networks, the hackers may be gaining access through applications and solutions. Sure, many organizations have significant network security in place but it’s not enough as 84% of all cyber-attacks are happening on the application layer…

Grazed from ITProPortal.  Author: Wieland Alge.

Recent speeches by UK Prime Minister, David Cameron, and US President Barack Obama demonstrate that cyber security is still a huge concern for national governments.  We should be in no doubt that another raft of counter-measures is being considered at national and international levels.

However, those in charge of IT security in the business community are not necessarily taking their cue from world leaders to re-evaluate their own policies and ensure they are still offering protection from the kind of cyber attacks that are likely to occur in 2015…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In the last few years, "the cloud" has become a household term, yet it’s not always as well understood as you might think. Used in this popular singular form, "the cloud" suggests that there really is a single, nebulous entity where computing resources and endless data storage magically reside.

Of course, the reality is that the cloud is a network of data centers, and within those, a network of servers and storage nodes. The real mystery begins when organizations start taking a closer look at the cloud’s inner workings, asking such questions as: Where exactly does my cloud data live…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Kittu Kolluri.

You’re only as strong as your weakest link, and that’s the Internet’s biggest problem today. For more than two decades, the very backbone of the Internet — the network — has subsisted in the shadows, pinned beneath the weight of a fast-growing Internet economy and a powerful cohort of incumbents with much to lose.

Since the early days of SaaS, the tech world has set an astonishing pace for innovation. If the cloud breaks everything (and it does), we are nothing if not resilient — toppling each obstacle in a race to deliver anything-as-a-service, big data and mobility. We have evolved into device-addicted, app-devouring gluttons for bandwidth — all the while coaxing and cajoling the underlying architecture to manage a far greater load than it was ever designed to bear…