Grazed from CNNMoney. Author: PR Announcement.

VMware, Inc. today announced VMware vSphere® 6, the newest edition of the industry-defining virtualization solution for the hybrid cloud and foundation for the software-defined data center. With more than 650 new features and innovations, VMware vSphere 6 will provide customers with a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application. VMware vSphere 6 will be complemented by the newest releases of VMware vCloud® Suite 6, VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ 6, and VMware Virtual SAN™ 6.

VMware today also re-enforced its support of open frameworks for building and managing clouds with its new VMware Integrated OpenStack distribution. This first-ever OpenStack distribution from VMware will empower IT to provide developers with open API access to enterprise-class VMware infrastructure…

Grazed from TechWeekEurope. Author: Ben Sullivan.

Hybrid cloud seems to be the darling child of the IT media at the moment. Vendors have jumped on the fact that almost every end-user survey is claiming that organisations will be looking to deploy hybrid solutions, as opposed to cloud-only solutions, in near future. But does this herald the backing by the end user community of hybrid cloud or just a reluctance to fully embrace the cloud?

Part of the reticence to move to a full cloud solution appears to be that, in the minds of some individuals, hybrid cloud delivers a convenient halfway house – an opportunity to try out the cloud, without diving fully in. But in reality this facet is highlighting the biggest issue with hybrid cloud – the majority of these solutions focus on on-premise and/or cloud-based access, with just a fraction of content or functions available…

Grazed from NewsWeek. Author: Kevin Maney.

No venture capitalist is crazier about outer space than Steve Jurvetson, who has been listening to unrealistic space company pitches for two decades. In the early 2000s, he helped back SpaceX. But mostly he’s impatiently waited for space to turn into Silicon Valley’s next playground—the kind of pulse-quickening, virgin land of hope and opportunity that the Internet once was.

Well, this is space’s Netscape moment, Jurvetson tells me. As often happens in technology, a bunch of advances in different fields are converging to make space less the final frontier and more like the next startup garage. In 1995, Netscape’s explosive IPO signaled that several technologies—the PC, software, the clunky government-run Internet, Tim Berners-Lee’s hyperlinking and Netscape’s graphical browser—had come together to create a world-changing new platform…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Trevor Jones.

Cisco has struggled to make inroads in public or private cloud, so the vendor is banking on its networking experience to play a key role in enterprises’ hybrid cloud deployments. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s cloud strategy relies on shifting its networking focus from hardware to software. Cisco made a splashy roll out of its cloud intentions last year that hasn’t translated into much yet, but its latest efforts around a unified cloud networking platform and subscription models could change that — at least with its existing customers.

"They’re going out with their strength, which is connectivity between all these clouds rather than differentiating with one cloud itself," said Dave Bartoletti, principal analyst with Forrester Research, Inc., based in Cambridge, Mass. "Cisco wants to be the glue that connects all your clouds together and not battle it out with commodity vendors for cloud servers."…

Grazed from BetaNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

Many of the things we do online require an ID and password, but typically whilst this makes things easier for the site it doesn’t always do a lot to protect the user, who may be revealing more information than they need. For example you may have to reveal your full date of birth and address to a video streaming service in order to verify your age and region, running a risk that the information may fall into the wrong hands.

Now researchers at IBM have announced plans for a new cloud-based technology to help consumers guard their personal data. The technology, called Identity Mixer, uses a cryptographic algorithm to encrypt the identity attributes of a user, such as their age, nationality, address and credit card number in a way that allows the user to reveal only selected pieces to third parties…

Grazed from Computing. Author: Sooraj Shah.

Technology giant EMC is to cut jobs after it forecast a lower-than-expected profit for the year, but CEO Joe Tucci said that he expects the launch of six new products to bring in more than $1bn (£663m) in revenues in the next few years.  Although Tucci did not divulge what the new products would be, he said that they would be focused on cloud, mobile, social and big data.

But EMC staff will be more concerned about the firm’s plans to axe a number of employees. "EMC management approved a restructuring plan," the company said in an SEC filing. "The plan consists of a reduction in force which will be substantially completed by the end of the first quarter of 2015 and fully completed by the end of 2015," EMC added…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Juro Osawa.

If you are an aspiring entrepreneur in Hong Kong, there’s a new fund that may give you financial support – as long as you are setting up your business on Alibaba Group Holding’s platforms. The Chinese e-commerce giant said in a statement over the weekend that it is spending 1 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$129 million) to create the Alibaba Hong Kong Young Enterpreneurs Foundation, which provides select Hong Kong startups with funding, technical assistance and training to help them build up businesses through Alibaba platforms.

The venture investment program will likely start in the second half of this year, Alibaba said. In the long run, the nonprofit foundation could help Alibaba increase its presence outside mainland China by turning young entrepreneurs in Hong Kong into loyal Alibaba customers…

Grazed from WilmingtonBizInsights.  Author: Shaun Olsen.

You love your technology. In fact, it’s with you more often than your spouse – and may actually know you better, given both Android and Siri’s propensity to find you/follow you/anticipate your next move.  You’re committed to your platform, in part because it has made you more productive. But start a new job, and you’re likely to find that they use a different platform, and you’re stuck learning a new skillset just to get started.

A movement to allow you to Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) to work began in 2009, and despite significant push-back from corporate IT departments, it has continued to grow. If the data included in recent reports from analyst firm Ovum are true, Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is “here to stay.”…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Katherine Noyes.

Focusing in particular on users of the Amazon Web Services cloud, the new tool takes advantage of NEC’s ExpressCluster software. The tool can automatically detect system faults as SAP Hana runs on AWS and switch over to a standby server when problems arise. The result, NEC said, is to shorten downtime and improve both availability and operational efficiency.

The tool is aimed both at companies using SAP Hana for high-speed Big Data analyses and those using it for core business-critical systems, the company said.  Eventually, NEC plans to make the software available for other cloud-based services as well.  The new offering fills a distinct need at the intersection of the four key technologies involved, said Kirk Borne, a data scientist and professor at George Mason University…

Grazed from CloudWedge.  Author: Sean Shado.

The most cited barrier to entry for cloud into the enterprise continues to be the security concerns involved with an infrastructure overhaul. Many IT decision makers are hesitating on making the switch to cloud as far as mission critical apps are concerned because of the unknown variables posed by cloud security risks. A KPMG report mentions that cloud security is still a top concern as IT executives look for ways to reduce costs.

The report mentions that 45% of respondents said data loss and data privacy were their top hesitations in regards to cloud implementations. What exactly are the biggest cloud computing security risks that will emerge in 2015?…