Grazed from StorageReview. Author: Lyle Smith.

Google has added status update functionality to their Status Dashboard of the Google Cloud Platform, acknowledging that even small interruptions can cause issues with users and businesses and lack of information pertaining to what’s going on only adds to the problem. This new transparency helps to improve their current tools and services, such as Google Cloud Monitoring, which monitors the health of a service.

As such, Google hopes that these augmented services will help to make disruptions more manageable by presenting users with the latest information on all issues as well as the ability to help find workarounds to these issues. Launched in May of 2010, the Google Cloud Platform is a paid cloud computing platform designed to offer businesses the same supporting infrastructure that Google uses for products such as Google Search…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Last week was a busy one for HP, and specifically its cloud. Multiple media outlets reported that the company’s cloud chief – Marten Mickos – will no longer lead cloud efforts at HP. Mickos will stay on, but the company has three new executives heading up its Helion cloud platform.

Mickos came over to HP with the acquisition of Eucalyptus, an open source private cloud platform that has high fidelity with Amazon Web Services APIs. According to an internal memo cited by multiple media outlets, Mickos stepped down and will instead focus on what he says is his passion: “Identifying disruptive companies that transform the technology landscape."…

Grazed from SecurityMagazine. Author: Diane Ritchey.

Want happy employees? It’s more than the occasional catered office lunch. It’s providing an environment where employees can be productive, collaborate with colleagues and find creative ways to power through their to-do lists. Mobile devices play a primary role in this movement, but so have the widespread adoption of public and private cloud applications, which have provided workers access to their files, and each other, anywhere, anytime and from any device.

According to research by Softchoice, an IT and managed services provider, technology – specifically, access to and use of cloud apps – makes employees happier at work, more satisfied with their work-life balance and more willing to stay with their current employers. Softchoice research reveals that 74 percent of employees who use up to five cloud apps say they are happy at work, compared to just 19 percent of non-app users, and that 85 percent of employees who use six or more cloud apps for work feel that they have an optimal work-life balance, compared to 59 percent of non-app users…

Read more from the source @ http://www.securitymagazine.com/articles/86133-catering-to-happy-employees-with-cloud-computing

Grazed from Whir. Author: Cheryl Kemp.

Nearly all organizations would use hybrid cloud if the public Internet structure could be made more secure, yet most of them (57 percent) are migrating back to private clouds due to security and data protection concerns. According to 1,000 interviews with senior IT decision-makers conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of Tata Communications, cloud computing has been widely adopted yet concerns over security remain an obstacle to wider use.

Although most of organizations have some type of cloud, not all the data is stored there. Even though most companies would move to the cloud tomorrow if it were possible, only 28 percent of data is stored in the cloud and only 42 percent of infrastructure is virtualized. One of the barriers to more widespread cloud adoption and use is application readiness…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

When you think spy agencies and the cloud, you probably think about the National Security Agency (NSA) snooping on the cloud. Well, guess what? Intelligence agencies use the cloud for their own IT as well. Or, at least the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), aka the Company, does with its own private Amazon cloud.

Why would the CIA do this? Well, as Michael McConnell, former director of the National Security Agency, said in 2012, "The economics of the cloud are so compelling they can’t be denied. [But,] we have to get the security aspects right." So while I’m sure the CIA’s cloud takes the notion of a private cloud to new levels, it’s not going to share its cloud security secrets…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Eric Auchard.

Telecom equipment maker Ericsson and chipmaker Intel have agreed a partnership deal to help network operator customers build datacentres, putting them on a more competitive footing against big, cloud-based Internet firms such as Google, Facebook and Amazon. "We will build datacentre equipment which will actually have the same performance as many of the big cloud providers are doing for themselves," Ericsson’s chief executive, Hans Vestberg, told a news conference at the Mobile World Congress telecoms trade show in Barcelona on Monday.

Ericsson, the world’s leading maker of mobile network equipment, said it will help its global base of major telecoms companies to shift to cloud computing using Intel datacentre designs to compete more actively with Web rivals. No financial terms of the partnership were disclosed…

Read more from the source @ http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/03/02/uk-telecoms-mwc-ericsson-idUKKBN0LY1GU20150302

Grazed from CBROnline. Author: Eleanor Burns.

Compare the Cloud has today released the global #CloudInfluence rankings for February 2015, highlighting how IBM has leapfrogged AWS and Apple into second place. Coming in behind Microsoft who retained the number one spot, IBM’s leap from 6th to 2nd was put down to the planned $4 billion investment to grow revenue in areas like cloud computing to $40 billion by 2018. Trailing behind Microsoft and IBM, Apple took the 3rd spot while Amazon and its cloud business AWS took 4th and 5th respectively.

"All the cloud players are in a massive battle for market share and mind share," commented Dan Thomas, founder of Compare the Cloud. "Until Amazon breaks out its AWS revenues separately as it will for the first time in its next financial report, we won’t know for sure, but its cloud growth appears to be faltering in the face of recent stiff competition from Microsoft and IBM…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today debuted VMware vCloud® for NFV, an integrated Network Functions Virtualization (NFV) platform that will combine VMware’s production-proven virtualized compute, networking, storage and management solutions with integrated OpenStack support. With support for more than 40 different virtual network functions (VNFs) from more than 30 vendors, VMware vCloud for NFV is the only platform available today that runs different VNFs from different vendors side by side on the same unified platform for the cloud. With vCloud for NFV, communication service providers (CSPs) can deploy NFV solutions into production on a proven platform to achieve faster time to market for new and differentiated services while driving sustainable cost reductions.

At Mobile World Congress, VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger will deliver a keynote address titled, "The New Mobile Identity" on Wednesday, March 4, 2015 from 9:15 – 10:45 a.m. CET in Hall 4, Auditorium 1. Faced with declining margins and the need to accelerate service innovation, CSPs globally are embracing NFV to make their core network more agile and cost-effective. As the pioneer in virtualization and cloud, VMware is engaging with CSPs to deliver NFV solutions today…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Brocade (NASDAQ: BRCD) today announced its intent to acquire Connectem, a privately-held company in the LTE virtual Evolved Packet Core (vEPC) market, in an all-cash transaction. The continued explosive growth of traditional mobile data combined with emerging requirements around machine-to-machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT) connectivity place new demands on mobile networks.

To meet these challenges, mobile operators are looking to the power of virtualization to create flexible, scalable, and easy-to-deploy packet cores. Connectem provides highly-differentiated vEPC solutions with unique architectural attributes that leverage cloud computing, network virtualization, and software networking technologies to deliver higher scale and efficiency on industry-standard x86-based servers. Connectem software focuses on mapping mobile workloads to cloud resources, eliminating the constraints of physical equipment boundaries yet still maintaining the capablity to integrate with traditional node-based EPC architectures.

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Editorial Staff.

Over 4,000 VMware partners, in over 80 countries around the globe, gathered together and Dared to Thrive at this ever-growing and evolving high-tech industry event—Partner Exchange 2015. The event unveiled a major product launch and partnership as it kicked off with a General Session keynote, led by VMware President and Chief Operating Officer Carl Eschenbach. He challenged three members of the company’s leadership team to describe the value proposition of a specific part of the business in just five minutes.

• Bill Fathers, EVP and GM of Cloud Services at VMware, discussing hybrid cloud
• Raghu Raghuram, EVP of the Software Defined Data Center Division at VMware, discussing the value proposition of the software defined data center
• Sanjay Poonen, Executive Vice President and General Manager of End-User Computing at VMware, discussing the current and future state of end-user computing…

Read more from the source @ http://mspmentor.net/blog/bridging-gap-future-cloud