Grazed from AFP. Author: Editorial Staff.

German software giant SAP said Friday that it would eliminate 2,200 positions as it accelerates its shift to delivering businesses its accounting and management applications via the Internet "cloud", but would avoid forced layoffs. SAP intends to "cut three percent of positions … over the short to medium-term," a spokesman said Friday, confirming plans reported by Bloomberg News.

That would make for 2,250 jobs in the company that employs 74,400 people. The plan does not include any forced layoffs, with the reduction to be achieved by voluntary departures and retraining of people employed in less profitable units, said the spokesman who noted that SAP created 7,800 jobs last year…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Editorial Staff.

Telecom network gear makers are on a collision course with Silicon Valley computing giants as software and cloud computing have begun to change the way operators from AT&T to China Mobile run their networks. The shift, while in its early stages, involves relying on ever cheaper computer boxes and powerful software that promises to make networks more flexible and efficient.

As networks move to relatively standard hardware, formerly entrenched equipment groups must increasingly compete for contracts with the likes of Cisco, Hewlett-Packard and VMware, as well as a slew of startups. Relying more on software to run networks could boost the gear makers’ profit margins one day, but will also force them to search for new sources of revenue…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

As a longtime blogger, columnist, and general pundit in the technology space, I spend a lot of my day pointing out both the good aspects of enterprise technology and the technologies that may no longer deserve our support. Such was the case with a blog I wrote for InfoWorld back in 2009 where I described three technologies that cloud computing would kill. I still stand behind that post.

That post took a lot of heat from the powers that be in the world of service-oriented architecture (SOA), especially those pushing a specific type of SOA governance. My issue was not their technology but how cloud computing was changing our management and government of services…

Grazed from BankingTech. Author: David Bannister.

Cloud computing is becoming more prevalent throughout the financial sector but many firms say they are less than halfway to having a firm cloud strategy in place, with controls and security remaining primary concerns. In a new survey carried out by the Cloud Security Alliance, How Cloud is Being Used in the Financial Sector, 61% of respondents admitted that a cloud strategy is only in the formative stages within their organisation, with 39-47% planning to use a mix of in-house IT, private, and public clouds, and 18% planning to use private clouds. None of the respondents have plans to host a majority of their applications or systems in a public cloud.

The results of the survey also showed that the more a firm’s customer base uses electronic transaction channels, the less strict the cloud policy that firm takes, with only 3% of these types of organisations indicating having a strict cloud policy in place. “The results of this report are insightful into understanding how the financial services industry is progressing in terms of cloud adoption and how cloud providers can best serve their interests and needs,” said Jim Reavis, chief executive of the CSA…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

The cloud is not a stagnant creature, but an ever-expanding entity. Over the past few years, use of the cloud has grown exponentially—and that growth is only expected to continue. With more uses and even more vast an expanse, where will cloud computing and cloud-based file sharing go—or, grow—to in 2015?

In short, the cloud will (continue to be) everywhere. Research from Gartner, Inc. suggests that global cloud adoption is expected to reach $250 billion by 2017. Gartner also predicts that 50 percent of enterprises will employ hybrid clouds. That’s all good news for managed service providers (MSPs), but the important question remaining is whether or not this hybrid cloud will take the same shape we’ve grown accustomed to seeing…

Grazed from CIOToday. Author: Jef Cozza.

The world’s largest open-source software Relevant Products/Services provider just brought a new operating system on the market. On Thursday, Red Hat, known for its enterprise Relevant Products/Services distributions of the Linux operating system, launched its Enterprise Linux 7 Atomic Host OS. The new OS is specifically designed to run the latest generation of applications as Linux containers.

Linux containers are virtualization Relevant Products/Services environments that allow organizations to run multiple isolated Linux systems on a single Linux control host. Containers introduce autonomy for applications by packaging apps with the libraries and other binaries on which they depend…

Grazed from TechWorm. Author: Editorial Staff.

A group of researchers only needed $104 and 8 hours of Amazon’s cloud computing power and of course, FREAK to hack the NSA’s website. The researchers used NSA’s anti-encryption policies, which were the main reason for the newly disclosed internet flaw called FREAK, to make NSA’s own website a guinea pig.

The bug which was disclosed by Akamai and subsequently reported by Techworm on Monday allows any potential hacker to intercept a supposedly secure connection between people using Android or Apple devices and PC’s using Mac OS X and Safari browser. The websites vulnerable to this flaw may be in thousands including NSA.gov, FBI.gov and Whitehouse.gov…

Grazed from FinancialPost. Author: Lynn Greiner.

Privacy is top-of-mind for many industries, especially when it comes to the cloud. Since the U.S. government began demanding access to cloud-based data from Microsoft’s Irish data centre, customers realized that they may not be safe from privacy violations even if their information is not resident in the U.S. Microsoft and other industry players have been fighting the demands, since they’re all placed in the awkward situation of breaking someone’s laws no matter what they do.

If they capitulate, the EU won’t be happy (nor will customers), and if they don’t, the U.S. government will be miffed. With lawyers. But Microsoft firmly believes that customers, not the cloud provider with whom they store it, own their data. To that end, it says it has become the first major cloud provider to adopt ISO/IEC 27018, the first global standard for cloud privacy, and Microsoft Azure, Office 365, and Dynamics CRM Online have been evaluated for compliance by the British Standards Institute. Additionally, Microsoft InTune has been verified by Bureau Veritas…

Read more from the source @ http://business.financialpost.com/2015/03/04/microsoft-corp-achieves-iso-cloud-privacy-certification/?__lsa=ecc6-e6ca

Grazed from TheHostingNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

EasyStreet Inc. has brought to market a new type of cloud computing solution engineered for unrivaled speed and scalability. The EasyStreet Extreme Performance Cloud Computing solution is ideal for situations where access to data has to be quick such as supporting website visitors and data-driven applications.

Working with leading products from SanDisk Corporation and Dell Inc., EasyStreet now deploys private clouds with a storage system capable of ten times the performance of a traditional disk system and three times the performance of an all-flash system using the same computing resources…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

The single hottest topic these days in or out of the cloud is Docker containers. As an alternative form of virtualization containers have been around on Linux platform for years. But with the advent of Docker containers it’s becoming simpler to invoke "micro-services" to create distributed computing applications that can span almost any combination of hybrid cloud computing scenarios.

As with any emerging technology, there are a host of security and management issues that still need to be addressed before Docker containers will make it into production environments. One way to address those issues is to nest Docker container images inside existing Linux containers…