Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

The cloud wants enterprise data, and so far it has been fairly adept at gathering the low-hanging fruit: mostly bulk storage, archives, B&R, low-level database workloads and other non-critical stuff. But the real money is in the advanced applications – the kind of data that organizations will pay a premium to support because it brings the highest value to emerging business models…

This is a conundrum, however, because that high value also causes the enterprise to keep critical data close to the vest, which means cloud providers need to go the extra mile to win enterprise trust. And for the most part, that has not happened yet. This is a shame because in terms of both security and uptime, the cloud is at least on par with the typical enterprise and in certain key metrics is actually superior…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

As a big supporter of cloud computing, this is never an easy topic to discuss. However, security concerns will always be present as threats continue to rise. Let me give you an example. As soon as the whole Heartbleed topic arose, our organization began fielding calls from various IT shops asking for remediation, fixes, and patches.

The crazy part was that not all OpenSSL systems were impacted. Many pre-version 1 OpenSSL systems were safe. Many others were facing the challenge up correcting and fixing this serious vulnerability. Cisco, Juniper, F5, and many others were actively deploying fixes to ensure that their systems stay safe…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

Manchester-based cloud services provider DataCentred has added ARM AArch64-based servers to its OpenStack-based public cloud platform, a product of its recently announced partnership with Codethink. The company’s head of cloud services told BCN the company is responding to customer demand for putting ARM-based workloads in the cloud.

As part of the move the ARM AArch64 architecture, which allows 32-bit and 64-bit processes to be executed alongside one another, will be added to the company’s OpenStack-based public cloud offering; the company said it will run the platform on HP M400 ARM hardware, and give customers access to Intel and ARM architectures alongside one another within an OpenStack environment…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: James Carlini.

Today, more enterprises are looking at cloud-based solutions. What is still missing is the ability to "sync up" transactions coming from various outbound originations to a single destination. What is necessary is Cloud Transaction Synchronicity. There are many articles and white papers discussing cloud computing and shared services. We have seen numerous articles on new services that are being touted like SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service).

Cloud Transaction Synchronicity is the ability to have every transaction synched up off of one Master Clock (not multiple clocks). Just like the timing of the public switched telephone network (PSTN) itself is based on one Master clock (the Atomic clock), the applications needing timing should also be provided with timing…

Grazed from CNNMoney. Author: Editorial Staff.

VMware, Inc., the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the expansion of VMware vCloud® Air™ in Europe with the general availability of service in Frankfurt, Germany. Complementing VMware’s UK location and the vCloud Air® Network™ of service providers, the new VMware-operated German data center provides customers with a Central European location that helps to address German and EU compliance and data protection regulations, while enabling them to take advantage of VMware’s enterprise-class cloud.

"The continued expansion of VMware vCloud Air in Central Europe marks another major milestone in the global build out of our hybrid cloud service, bringing benefits to our customers through fast and easy access to the public cloud while reducing operating costs and providing compliance with local data protection regulations," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware…

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…