Grazed from TheVarGuy.  Author: Michael Cusanelli.

VCE is ramping up its converged infrastructure portfolio with the launch of several new platform and software innovations, including a choice of using either VMware (VMW) NSX or Cisco Systems’ (CSCO) ACI for their systems.

VCE’s new lineup includes several new solutions, most notably the company’s VxBlock Systems family of converged infrastructure solutions, according to the announcement. VxBlock can be customized with a choice of either Cisco Application Infrastructure or VMware NSX for software-defined networking functionality, according to the announcement. Additional setups are expected to be announced later this year…

Read more from the source @ http://thevarguy.com/virtualization-applications-and-technologies/031315/vce-unveils-new-converged-infrastructure-portfolio

Grazed from CCI.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The rise in software as a service cloud applications means there’s now tens and hundreds of cloud apps for almost every business process, and it’s getting harder to decide which one to use. However  as we always maintain there’s safety in numbers, and on the whole people tend to gravitate toward applications that offer the most value and best fit and will discard apps that don’t. But how do you find out the most popular applications?

The answer is to look at what people are using and use that hard data to create a list, but nobody is going to tell you this sort of information are they? Wrong,  Skyhigh are one business that has access to those numbers and this Cloud Growth Top Ten is the result of looking at the cloud apps used by the 15 million users they regularly monitor in over 350 enterprises worldwide…

Grazed from FierceWireless.  Author: Mike Dano.

Amazon acquired a startup called 2lemetry that offers technology for sending, receiving and analyzing data from Internet-connected devices and machines. Terms of the deal, first reported by TechCrunch and confirmed by Amazon, were not disclosed.

It’s unclear exactly what Amazon will do with the startup, which was founded in 2011 and is based in Denver. Amazon said only that it would continue to support 2lemetry’s customers, which include Honeywell, the Demeter energy group, and First Mile, which recycles office equipment…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Editorial Staff.

Global software giant Oracle Corp. is slated to report its fiscal 2015 third quarter results on Tuesday, March 17th (the company follows June-May fiscal year). Having posted strong results in the second quarter thanks to the rapid expansion of its cloud computing business, expectations are ripe for the continuation of the cloud success story.

Further, this will be the first earnings report since Oracle initiated an aggressive pricing strategy for its engineered systems (Read: Oracle Triggers Price War in the Servers Market). Therefore, Oracle’s hardware business will also be watched closely to determine if the strategy has paid off…

Grazed from EdTech. Author: Frank Smith.

New technology is making it easier for school IT leaders to manage vast amounts of data. While cloud solutions have helped in this regard, some K–12 districts are reluctant to fully embrace the advantages offered by cloud services. In Cloud 401, a new report from CDW, more than 1,200 IT leaders from sectors such as business, healthcare, federal and state governments and K–12 were surveyed about their approaches to cloud services.

K–12 district IT experts surveyed said that 42 percent of their services are delivered either totally or partially through the cloud. “Cloud services have such great appeal that departments outside IT are often sourcing them independently," says Stephen Braat, vice president of cloud and managed solutions at CDW…

Grazed from CMSWire. Author: David Roe.

The public cloud is more than 30 percent riskier than on-premises applications — and security concerns remain a strong barrier to cloud adoption. Those are just two of the findings from a new Cloud Security Spotlight Survey (registration required) by Campbell, Calif.-based Bitglass. The data security company surveyed more than 1,000 IT and IT security practitioners to assess the state of cloud in the enterprise.

It found a third of respondents have experienced more security breaches with the public cloud than with on-premises applications. In addition, 90 percent still express concern about public cloud security. The report also exposed other interesting facts, including that there are greater fears about employee misuse and access control than malware and hacking…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Cisco and Microsoft have jointly created a software and hardware package designed to help cloud providers spin up new services more quickly. The Cisco Cloud Architecture for the Microsoft Cloud Platform was designed to streamline the process of setting up a cloud service by integrating Cisco hardware and software with Microsoft’s cloud and system software.

The package could be used to set up infrastructure, platform and software services. It has been designed to support enterprise applications in particular. Cloud systems can be difficult and expensive to set up properly because they involve coordinating operations among all the different elements, including servers, networking equipment and operating systems. A set of integrated offerings could cut deployment and maintenance times significantly…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Matt Weinberger.

What the heck is "the cloud"? Like "non-GMO," "part of a complete breakfast,"and "Intel Inside" before it, marketers have convinced us that "the cloud" is something we should want without ever really truly knowing why. When Microsoft airs TV commercials touting its range of cloud services and how it helps research teams work on cures for cancer, it hopes we’re nodding knowingly.

So, where does the phrase come from? Let’s back up. Rewind to the early nineties: Computer scientists and engineers needed some way in their diagrams and slideshows to refer to "the network," that big grouping of computers and storage devices out there somewhere. In other words, they needed some way to refer to something that was, essentially, somebody else’s problem…

Grazed from Cloud Computing Today. Author: Arnal Dayaratna.

On Wednesday, Google announced the Beta release of Google Cloud Storage Nearline, a cloud-based storage product that transforms the economics of hot and cold storage. Whereas enterprises currently wrestle with the problem of managing frequently accessed data versus “cold” data, Google Cloud Storage Nearline renders cold data accessible within three seconds.

The ability of Google Cloud Storage Nearline to access cold data means that organizations need not have separate infrastructures for managing cold and hot data but can instead leverage Google’s high performance, low cost storage solution to render historical data available within a few seconds…

Grazed from TechRepublic.  Author: Matt Asay.

There are lots of ways to explain the explosion of public cloud computing and the comparatively conservative growth of private cloud. We can talk about elasticity, shadow IT, and a number of other contributing factors.

But every once in a while, someone manages to sum up an argument in just one tweet, as Owen Rogers, a senior analyst with 451 Research, did this week. In fewer than 140 characters, Rogers said everything you need to know about why public cloud is the future of enterprise computing…