Grazed from PCWorld. Author: John Ribeiro.

Microsoft has adopted a new standard for cloud privacy that commits the company to protect the privacy of customers’ data, not to use it for advertisement purposes, and to inform the customer of legal requests for personal data. The company said Monday it was adopting the ISO/IEC 27018, published last year by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which outlines a common set of security categories and controls that can be implemented by a public cloud computing service provider acting as a processor of personally identifiable information.

Microsoft said the British Standards Institute had verified that both Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online, in addition to Microsoft Azure, are in line with the standard’s code for the protection of personal data in the public cloud. Microsoft Intune was similarly certified by testing company Bureau Veritas…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Alex Barinka.

IBM is introducing new storage software as the company tries to boost sales for higher-margin technology products. International Business Machines Corp.’s new portfolio, called IBM Spectrum Storage, lets customers use a single dashboard to manage massive amounts of information across existing storage infrastructure, including data centers and the cloud.

IBM also has pledged to spend about $200 million a year in the next five years on developing new storage offerings, the company said Tuesday in a statement. IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has been trying to entice customers with new products, such as software-defined storage, to help reverse falling sales. After 11 quarters of declining revenue, she’s still trying to find growth from higher-margin software and services delivered online via the cloud…

Grazed from CCSKGuide. Author: Editorial Staff.

The DoD’s new Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG), released by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), replaces their previous Cloud Security Model. The guide outlines an overall “security posture” that directs cloud service providers (CSPs) seeking to work with the DoD. This article is a continuation of a previous one, which introduced the four new information impact levels. Here, we will examine the DoD process of risk assessment of cloud service offerings, as defined by the SRG.

Risk Assessment Process

Shifting to cloud computing means that risk management processes must change as well. The goal is to address requirements and controls, relative to the criticality of DoD information in the external cloud, in a cost effective way. At the same time, it is also to assure the security of DoD core missions and networks in accordance with the DoD RMF…

Grazed from iMarketReports. Author: Clint Boulton.

The benefits of shifting business applications to Web-friendly cloud services is proving far more complex than lining up a partner and flipping a switch, say executives who have made the transition. Absent proper expense controls, they say the cloud can be exceptionally wasteful of expensive resources.

What to watch for? Experts say always keep future costs in mind when planning the shift. Some common mistakes include ordering too much computing power, failing to program software shutdowns in off hours, not using monitoring tools to keep tabs on wasted computing cycles, or allowing programmers to believe cycles are free…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

AppDirect announced $50 million in Series D funding led by Mithril Capital Management. New investors Henry Kravis and Paul Fribourg join existing investors Mithril, Foundry Group, iNovia Capital and StarVest Partners to bring the cloud commerce compay’s total capital raised to $110 million.

"This new funding will enable us to continue our growth and further drive innovation and redefine one of the fastest- growing sectors of cloud computing, cloud service commerce," Daniel Saks, CEO at AppDirect, told eWEEK. "Over the next year we’ll expand geographically to increase our global market share in Europe, Asia and Latin America regions."…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

A recent pact between Google and VMware reflects a new air of co-opetition among major cloud computing service suppliers, as companies try to keep Amazon from running away with the market. Ray Noorda, the late founder of Novell, popularized the term co-opetition, meant to convey how competitors will cooperate where their interests overlap in one narrow sphere, while continuing to compete on many other fronts.

Amazon’s continued ability to innovate and create new on-demand computing services around its online retailing base of operations has made it a formidable competitor. As enterprise IT shops experiment with and embrace cloud services, rivals including VMware, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, and IBM SoftLayer have reason to worry that Amazon will win today’s cloud-services land grab before they can bring forth a full suite of competing services…

Grazed from Financial Times. Author: James Crabtree.

Infosys has bought US-based technology group Panaya in a $200m deal, marking the most significant step in chief executive Vishal Sikka’s drive to offer high-end software and boost the outsourcer’s growth. On Monday, the Bangalore-based group announced it had acquired Panaya, which was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur in 2006 but has its headquarters in California, in an all-cash deal based on an enterprise value of $200m.

Panaya specialises in automation technologies, in particular those that can help large companies manage and upgrade complex software packages bought from the likes of US-based Oracle or German technology group SAP. Infosys’s move provides the clearest indication yet of the direction outlined by Mr Sikka since he took the helm of the group last June, having previously been SAP’s chief technology officer…

Read more from the source @ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05682e48-b5e4-11e4-b58d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RwCdrYMo

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there are more cloud platforms, services and environments being developed each and every day. The evolution of the cloud has seen many organizations evolve from private to public and now hybrid cloud platforms. In reality, almost every cloud environment within a pubic cloud has some sort of connection back to the central data center.

So, at some level, all public clouds are some percentage hybrid. Moving forward, the hybrid cloud model will give end-users even more services and benefits. A recent Gartner report found that the use of cloud computing is growing, and by 2016 this growth will increase to become the bulk of new IT spend…

Grazed from SiliconAngle. Author: Maria Deutscher.

The promise of cloud computing remains elusive for the traditional enterprise nearly a decade after the trend first reared its head. Organizations are caught in a trade-off between control and flexibility that makes it difficult to realize the full benefits of the model, but striking the right balance became a notch easier last week as the vendor community took a collective step forward toward seizing it.

AppDirect Inc. led the charge, revealing a $50 million funding round meant to fuel the development of its namesake platform, which provides a way for business workers to consume cloud services on their own terms while still upholding governance policies. It offers a selection of pre-screened applications that administrators can assemble into catalogs tailored to the requirements of their organizations and regulate usage accordingly…

Read more from the source @ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/02/16/what-you-missed-in-cloud-disrupting-consumption-models/

Grazed from BackupTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

Complete automation is a myth. Absolute agility is a dream. But, the cloud makes it possible to automate those routine processes and activities that would otherwise consume considerable amount of time and deprive the organisation of the precious time that can be spent innovating, communicating, and building up their business.

The first step towards smarter computing is to spell out your rules and policies. These are triggers and frames for intelligent process definitions. For instance, if you want only certain section of your employees to have access to a specified set of data, it is important to have a user management policy. Each employee who can be authorised for access must be given a user id and password that allows access to the data set…