Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

What lurks in the shadows? For many midsize companies, it is the specter of unapproved cloud services leveraged by end-users needlessly putting both corporate data and cloud-based networks at risk. As it becomes clear just how far shadow cloud services extend, a question emerges: Can IT professionals regain control, or is this free-for-all here to stay?

Behind Closed Networks

According to a recent article from CIO, "many companies contain workstations with software that is not approved by the Information Technology (IT) department; instead, it has been adopted and installed by individuals or even, in some cases, entire departments." Simply put, not just employees but entire business units are now willing to circumvent IT policies they find too restrictive, and the open nature of public cloud services makes this a simple task…

Grazed from CNBC. Author: Ari Levy.

Wall Street has become quite familiar by now with cloud computing. The model of delivering services over the Web has gained so much momentum that public market investors, who traditionally parked their tech dollars with Microsoft, IBM, Oracle and Cisco, have dozens of new stocks to choose from if they want growth.

But despite the hype surrounding cloud and the rapid influx of capital from money managers, Wall Street is still puzzled when it comes to valuing cloud vendors. That’s because, of the 26 index members to go public most recently, 21 are losing money on a GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) basis. And not just a little dough. Those unprofitable companies were a combined $388.7 million in the red in the last quarter…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Pity your private cloud, if you have one. If cloud analysts are to be believed, private cloud is losing ground as public cloud providers — chiefly Amazon Web Services, Google, and Microsoft — keep adding features and functions, many of which target enterprise IT buyers.

Last week, for example, Gartner analyst Thomas Bittman blogged that 95 percent of enterprise IT types he surveyed found something lacking in their own private clouds. Of course Bittman loaded the gun for them, distilling the gripes he’d already compiled as reasons “your enterprise public cloud is failing” into key categories and then polling an audience about them at a Gartner event…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Kristopher Spadea.

Thought you were going to read about erotica in the cloud? Sorry to disappoint! But there are indeed 50 shades of grey and more when it comes to selecting cloud computing services. So if you are thinking about migrating to the cloud or if you want to improve your ROI in the cloud, here are the shades of “grey” you’ll need to be defining:

Shades of Grey in Business Objectives – Identifying Why You Are Moving Into The Cloud

1. There are as many business objectives for the cloud as there are shades of grey, such as capex to opex budgeting, flexibility, agility, high availability, etc. Why do you want to move to the cloud?
2. Saying that your objectives are important isn’t enough. How important are these outcomes to the success of your business? Are they all equally important, or can you rank them?…

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

Never has the hunger for bandwidth been as high as it is today. To meet that demand, Bell Labs, the industrial research arm of Alcatel-Lucent, has been studying how high-end networks use converged IP and optical transport technologies to meet today’s network demands.

The researchers found that converged IP/optical control integration could reduce network resource requirements without compromising service availability. This was done by "comparing the relative cost of integrating and coordinating resiliency methods in both the IP routing and optical transport network. Resilience is the network’s ability to resume normal operations if a failure occurs and is an essential component of an operator’s highly reliable network."…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Ericka Chickowski.

The volume and diversity of cloud services in use by companies continues to rise significantly year-over-year. And, according to a report out yesterday by Skyhigh Networks, the good news is that security capabilities have also matured as deployments have grown. Increasingly more services are offering better encryption, multi-factor authentication and ISO 27001 certification proving their in-house security practices.

Nevertheless end user organizations are still struggling with data governance and access control in the cloud. The Cloud Adoption & Risk (CAR) Report showed that from fourth quarter 2013 to fourth quarter 2014, the average number of cloud services in use within the enterprises increased by 43 percent to 897 services, which includes both sanctioned and shadow IT applications…

Grazed from Diginomica. Author: Phil Wainewright.

After last year’s change of the guard at the European Commission, there’s been a wait to find out what new policy directions the new team of incoming Commissioners may go off in. Given the attention that the previous cohort of Neelie Kroes, Viviane Reding and others lavished on cloud computing, this has special importance for anyone investing in cloud IT in the European market.

Some strong pointers came at this week’s Think Cloud for Government conference in London during a presentation by Pearse O’Donohue, who has taken over the role previously held by Ken Ducatel as the Commission’s head of unit for software, services and cloud computing. Essentially, this means he is the official in Brussels in charge of developing and delivering the EU’s policies on cloud computing…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Paul Sawers.

The current state-of-play with the so-called Internet of Things (IoT) offers a tantalizing glimpse into the future of ubiquitious computing, with Web-enabled thermostats, self-driving cars, and even connected kettles creeping into our daily lives. But for all the cool applications we’re starting to see in the real world, there needs to be a force that enables it all.

Launching this week, Barcelona-based TheThings.io is setting itself up to be the back-end platform of choice in the burgeoning Internet of Things industry — an “Amazon Web Services (AWS) for IoT companies,” for want of a better analogy. Indeed, just as AWS and similar cloud-computing services have enabled startups to scale faster and more affordably than they otherwise could, TheThings.io is hoping to help fledgling IoT companies launch to market quickly, with enough power and elasticity under the hood to cater for unprecedented levels of growth…

Grazed from CBROnline. Author: James Nunns.

EMC has released the findings of a global IT business decision-maker survey which gauged the global sentiment about IT’s evolving role in organisations today. The survey revealed that there is a global increase in the adoption of cloud computing and that the majority of respondents cited hybrid cloud as the preferred option due to its greater agility and security.

Many respondents believe that IT is a business enabler, however, there are concerns over spending, as many believe that it is moving outside of IT’s control. The pressure to help support business growth and to act as an in-house broker of on-demand services, combined with a widening IT skills gap, is considered to be driving IT professionals to pursue hybrid cloud….

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

According to survey figures released by Gartner, 95% of attendees at the analyst house’s Datacentre Conference in Las Vegas are unhappy with their private cloud deployments. The 140 respondents were given six potential options to explain what was going wrong with their private cloud, alongside a ‘nothing is going wrong’ option. 31% cited a failure to change the operational model, 19% said it was simply doing too little, and 13% cited a failure to change the funding model.

Bittman admitted he was “a little surprised” at the results, although some commentators below the line argued the question was leading in focusing too much on the negative side of public cloud. Regardless, the increasing prevalence of hybrid cloud models – as Matt Asay wrote for Tech Republic, “no wonder private cloud vendors have started calling themselves ‘hybrid’ clouds” – has meant the private cloud as we know it is facing a tipping point…