Grazed from ITProPortal.  Author: Antony Saavas.

There are a number of concerns among organisations considering moving into the cloud.  These include not having the expertise and internal skills to do it, the perceived cost of cloud deployments, and in some quarters the belief that the cloud is an immature market.

Throw in serious data security concerns, industry compliance obstacles, some users not convinced of cloud benefits, and issues around cloud reliability, and it’s fair to say that the cloud market has a battle on its hands…

Grazed from MSPAlliance.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In a move I have predicted long ago, Canada is one of many countries making moves to establish cloud computing guidelines to protect end-user data. While some countries are making very superficial steps, Canada is actually following the path of Germany, Brazil, and other nations, by wanting to establish transparency guidelines to know precisely where Canadian cloud data resides and who is accessing that data.

Oh, Cloud Canada!

The proposed guidelines seem to deal only with cloud computing as it relates to Canadian government projects involving the cloud. However, if the government adopts such a framework, it could be likely that private industry within Canada could also adopt such a stance, at least regarding certain types of data…

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM (IBM) today announced a deal to help Marriott International (MAR) offer faster digital services to its guests.  The global hospitality company said it plans to migrate many of its core IT systems and applications to the IBM Cloud platform over the next few years. Additionally, Marriott will deploy IBM analytics software-as-a-service (SaaS) called Big Insights so it can collect and leverage big data to find new ways to better serve its guests.

"IBM Cloud provides the analytics to see early-stage data patterns and the scale and flexibility to enable timely, innovative new services that will meet guests’ expectations in a predominantly digital world," Bruce Hoffmeister, Marriott’s global chief information officer, said in a prepared statement…

Grazed from SmartData Collective.  Author: Anand Srinivasan.

Cloud storage business has truly taken off in the past couple of years. According to a Markets And Markets study, the public/private cloud storage industry is expected to be worth $56.57 billion by 2019. For perspective, the public cloud storage industry was estimated to be just around $21 billion a couple of years back, according to Technology Business Review.

Besides cloud computing, one of the popular applications of cloud is in digital asset management, or DAM for short. For the uninitiated, DAM refers to the process of storing, cataloguing, searching and delivering of digital files, mainly audio, video, images and office documents. DAM is an extremely critical element of businesses like media and journalism that deal with lots of content. A typical media house, especially one that deals with videos, owns digital assets that are dozens of terrabytes large. In terms of data volume, it is common for these media houses to own northwards of a hundreds thousand files. Tagging every file, along with storing and retrieving them is a lot of work…

Grazed from GCN. Author: Editorial Staff.

VMware announced that its VMware vCloud Government Service (vCGS), provided by Carpathia, has achieved provisional authority to operate (ATO) through the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP) program. vCGS is a government community hybrid cloud service built on VMware’s vSphere data center platform.

It lets agencies run new and existing applications in the cloud and offers on-demand compute, network and storage resources via a self-service portal or application programming interface (API). With vCGS – an infrastructure-as-a-service offering – agencies using vSphere-based virtual infrastructure in the data center can move workloads easily between their internal data center resources and the vCGS, VMware said in its announcement…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Jason Hannula.

Public cloud providers are able to bring resources up within minutes for clients, setting high expectations for cloud computing in general. But due to a disconnect between legacy systems, current infrastructure, and the need for virtualization, the reality for private cloud computing — particularly for small and midsize businesses with limited IT resources — is not that simple.

Virtualization Bottleneck

As referenced in a recent Datamation article, an Enterprise Management Association study found that heterogeneous infrastructure, departmental silos and a need for repeatability in software and hardware configuration were the biggest impediments to software-defined data center deployment. As supporting technologies are required to extend virtualization across legacy systems, these factors can delay private cloud computing in any business that is dependent on legacy systems or infrastructure…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Joe Curtis.

VMware CIO Tony Scott is joining the White House to perform the same role for President Barack Obama. Scott is leaving the virtualisation firm to become the US government’s third CIO, charged with delivering the administration’s Smarter IT Delivery Agenda. According to a statement from the White House released yesterday, his responsibilities include providing world-class digital services, deriving value from existing IT investments and protecting IT assets.

Scott, who joined VMware in 2013, succeeds previous US government CIOs Vivek Kundra and Steve VanRoekel, who helped establish the US Digital Service (USDS), which took inspiration from the UK’s Government Digital Service (GDS). Jennifer Pahlka, who set up USDS, was at Whitehall’s Sprint 15 event this week to talk about the progress USDS has made in transforming public services…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

As organizations evolve and grow, employees turn to hundreds of cloud computing services without expressed permission from the enterprise or the IT department. Various business units also deploy cloud technology separately from other departments. This has led to a confusing cloud environment, resulting in misallocated expenses, lost efficiency and poor policy enforcement.

Without visibility into the wide variety of cloud apps employees are using every day, organizations are struggling to monitor and control the associated expenses and face an array of problems such as potential liabilities and security issues. Other concerns surround ownership, responsibility and indemnification for loss or damage to customer data. Indeed, many enterprises are reluctant about cloud computing because of the threat of data breach or loss due to unauthorized access. Some are also concerned about their ability to comply with local and national regulations in a public cloud environment…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Ericka Chickowski.

FireHost this week teamed up with Dell Services to roll out a converged infrastructure solution that brings together Dell compute and server hardware with FireHost’s cloud architecture to create a secure, single-tenant managed cloud. Known best for its security-focused public cloud platform, FireHost steps out with this move into the managed private cloud market for the first time.

"Our secure managed private cloud offering provides the channel with a physical, converged readymade rack that can be deployed on site," says John Funk, director of global partnering for FireHost. "By us offloading some of the security and compliance burden from customers through our secure managed service approach, the channel has a unique talking point and can position themselves more strategically in accounts as a partner who enables customers to scale toward other key business priorities."…

Grazed from Diginomica. Author: Phil Wainewright.

As cloud computing becomes more mainstream and moves progressively further upmarket into ever-larger enterprise deals, will the pioneering cloud-only integrators such as Appirio, Astadia, Bluewolf and Cloud Sherpas get left behind? It’s increasingly the big-brand global systems integrators (GSIs) — Accenture, Deloitte and PwC, among others — that get brought into the high-value projects.

It may have been the smaller firms that helped build market presence for the likes of Salesforce and Google Apps at a time when the established SIs thought cloud applications were beneath them. But that history counts for little when big bucks are at stake. Now that the global SIs are taking cloud seriously, the vendors are not only happy to work with them but often eager to leverage their existing client relationships…