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…

Grazed from Atlasmonitor. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Human Body Version 2.0 project features none other than arch-Transhumanist Ray Kurzweil as its main proponent. The goals have been openly stated for some time: In the coming decades, a radical upgrading of our body’s physical and mental systems, already underway, will use nanobots to augment and ultimately replace our organs.

We already know how to prevent most degenerative disease through nutrition and supplementation; this will be a bridge to the emerging biotechnology revolution, which in turn will be a bridge to the nanotechnology revolution. By 2030, reverse-engineering of the human brain will have been completed and nonbiological intelligence will merge with our biological brains…

Grazed from TechRepublic. Author: Matt Asay.

No wonder private cloud vendors have started calling themselves "hybrid" clouds: the private cloud vision has failed — utterly and completely. Gartner analyst Tom Bittman asked why 95% of private clouds are failing, but the answer seems clear: the very notion of a privately provisioned cloud service is contradictory and nearly always doomed. Unfortunately, the odds of failure may skyrocket when enterprises turn to OpenStack.

Fail early, fail often

Roughly five years ago, Amazon Web Services (AWS) executive Andy Jassy spotlighted the problem with private clouds: "Companies usually are not able to provision accurately the amount of data center capacity that they require, and this problem recurs when they create their own internal cloud infrastructure."…

StackEngine, the platform that gives organizations the power to simply and massively deploy, manage, and scale resilient Docker applications, today announced the results of its inaugural ‘State of Containers’ survey, focusing on the issues and causes both leading to and prohibiting Docker adoption in the enterprise.

The survey, which polled 745 respondents in the enterprise virtualization and cloud computing field, was put together by StackEngine in partnership with both VMblog and CloudCow. It found that Docker adoption in the enterprise is indeed real and ahead of schedule, with more than 70% either using Docker or evaluating it in their organization. In fact, just 7% responded that they had not heard of the container solution, with 65% saying they were using VMware as their current infrastructure.

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Jay Chapel.

The cloud has changed the game for business and IT. The cloud is a disruptive technology – it fuels innovation, drives performance gains and enables businesses to do more with very little upfront investment. Users can source and deploy their own IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions in a matter of minutes with a few mouse clicks. These user-led cloud acquisitions produce silos of clouds with little to no IT governance, introducing risks to data security, business continuity and expense control.

What is Cloud Governance and Why is it So Important?

According to the website For Dummies, governance is the practice of applying policies that relate to using services. It’s about defining the organizing principles and rules that determine how an organization should behave. Before diving in, let’s take a step back and look at the IT governance process in general, because many of the same principles are relevant to the cloud environment…

Graze from Whir. Author: David Hamilton.

VMware made a series of announcements last week in support of unified “One Cloud” platform for the hybrid cloud that, according to the company, is the “first unified platform for the hybrid cloud.” On Monday, Feb. 2, VMware announced several updates that support this One Cloud effort including the new vSphere 6 platform, VMware Integrated OpenStack, Virtual SAN 6, vSphere Virtual Volumes, and vCloud Air Hybrid Networking Services.

With VMware being a direct provider hybrid and public cloud services through vCloud as well as through its ecosystem of cloud service provider partners, many voices from the hosting and cloud community have weighed in on VMware’s new capabilities and what it means for the industry…