Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Two years ago the biggest battles in the IaaS cloud computing industry were over price. Amazon Web Services would drop prices one day, and Google or Microsoft would cut the price tag on virtual machines or storage weeks, days, or even hours afterwards. It was a seemingly non-stop back and forth that caused some to wonder how low the prices could go.

Fast forward to today and providers are still dropping prices, but not with the same vigor and frequency as in 2013. Constant jostling of prices doesn’t grab headlines, nor the buzz of the industry like it used to. At AWS’s most recent re:Invent conference it didn’t even make a price cut announcement, which had become standard for any big AWS news event…

Grazed from DefenseSystems. Author: Kevin McCaney.

The Defense Information Systems Agency has released its new security requirements guide for cloud computing, which is intended to make it easier—and quicker—for Defense Department agencies to procure commercial cloud services while still ensuring security. The new SRG puts out to pasture the Cloud Security Model, under which only a handful of vendors had received authorization, and more closely follows the Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program used by civilian federal agencies—although it does set additional requirements in areas where extra security is needed. In many cases, cloud providers will seek to comply with the SRG in coordination with their FedRAMP reauthorization.

"The SRG is designed to ensure that DOD can attain the full economic and technical advantages of using the commercial cloud without putting the department’s data and missions at risk," Mark Orndorff, DISA Risk Management Executive, said in a statement. The new guide sets the security requirements for information up to the Secret classification, sets standards for what systems or information can be handled in a virtual environment and what data should be physically separated, and tweaks the impact levels identified under the old Cloud Security Model…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Eugene Kim.

In recent years, cloud computing providers have been slashing prices — a phenomenon we’ve called the “race to zero.” Amazon Web Services, for example, has cut its price 44 times in the last six years, while Microsoft and Google have both decreased prices multiple times to keep up with AWS.

On Wednesday, RBC Capital’s Mark Mahaney published a chart that perfectly captures this trend. According to the chart below, the average monthly cost per gigabyte of RAM, for a set of various workloads, has dropped across the board over the past year. This is just one way to measure cloud pricing – cloud companies charge in different ways for different services. But it’s a good proxy for how fast prices have been dropping for real-world use scenarios.

Read more from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/cloud-computing-price-war-in-one-chart-2015-1#ixzz3Opdk3GZV

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: David Chernicoff.

IBM continues its $1.2 billion investment in cloud computing a bit closer to home after recent announcements focusing on new European data centers with the opening of their first SoftLayer cloud data center in Mexico. Customers needing to have location-sensitive data stored near at hand or looking to develop a presence in Mexico and Latin America will be able to take advantage not only of the new facility but also the data protection offered by redundancy options within the SoftLayer network.

The new facility has less than 25 ms latency from the existing Dallas SoftLayer data center and customers can take advantage of the free, unmetered bandwidth between the data centers on SoftLayer’s private network, providing high performance options for backup, data protection, and business continuity…

Grazed from SiliconAngle. Author: Alina Popescu.

IBM’s 13th generation of System z has just been launched and its integration with the cloud brings the “mainframe back on the table as a relevant piece of infrastructure,” says Dave Vellante in his opening analysis with John Furrier that kicked off theCUBE’s IBM zNext coverage on Wednesday. In itself, this billion dollar investment only generates 3 percent of the company’s revenue, but the added elements of software and mainframe boost it to over 20 percent.

Vellante pointed to a previous VMware statement about “building a software mainframe” which would have security built in, virtualization, and openness. “The industry has always wanted to build a mainframe. IBM has got one.” said Vellante. “The cloud and mobile drive this trend,” Furrier added. He also raised the question of how existing businesses will integrate this new system…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

With more types of applications being put into the cloud every day organizations of all size are now starting to think in terms of now only putting entire business processes into the cloud, but also essentially turning data into a service. Speaking at an Oracle CloudWorld event in New York this week, Thomas Kurian, president of product development at Oracle (ORCL), outlined how the convergence of applications and identity management will soon give rise to the notion of delivering data-as-a-service.

The basic idea is that as Oracle, for example, continues to extend its portfolio of applications in the cloud around a common data model and user interface, the lines between cloud applications will continue to blur. In its place Kurian said what will emerge a set of identity management services in the cloud that will enable users to mix and match data across multiple cloud applications depending on what permissions they have and their role inside the organization…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/01142015/oracle-cloudworld-rise-data-service

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

In October, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella proclaimed that "Microsoft Loves Linux," during a press event. Today, the company is backing up that once-inconceivable statement with a new offering that enables organizations to migrate their Linux servers and virtual machines (VMs) to Microsoft’s massive Azure cloud computing service.

"Today, we are excited to add support for the migration of Linux physical and virtual machines to Azure, this functionality will further bolster the support for heterogeneity in MA [Migration Accelerator]," announced Srinath Vasireddy, principal lead program manager for Microsoft Cloud and Enterprise, in a Jan. 13 blog post. Migration Accelerator, based on technology acquired from last summer’s InMage buy, enables organizations to transfer physical and virtual server workloads to the cloud…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Serdar Yegulalp.

If uptime and availability are what matter most in a cloud provider — for many, they are — Amazon and Google currently lead the pack. Azure, on the other hand, has a ways to go. Cloud-service analytics firm CloudHarmony, which harvests statistics about the uptimes and reliability behaviors of dozens of cloud hosts, recently released statistics detailing total availability across 2014 for all the hosts it tracks.

The list includes major names like Amazon and Azure, up-and-comers like SoftLayer, midtier players like Rackspace, and other, smaller providers like Vault Networks and DigitalOcean. Tracked services don’t include only cloud VM services like Amazon’s EC2, but also CDN, DNS, object storage, and application engines…

Grazed from Zacks. Author: Editorial Staff.

Akamai Technologies, Inc. (AKAM – Analyst Report) recently announced its collaboration with the largest commercial bank in Thailand — Bangkok Bank — to offer a host of cloud services. Reportedly, Bangkok Bank has been using Akamai’s Web Performance Solutions that increased users’ satisfaction and resulted in customer growth.

The deal will primarily focus on cyber security for customers given the critical financial information stored on the bank’s database. Akamai’s security solutions such as the Kona Site Defender and Web Application Firewall, Prolexic, Site Shield and Fast DNS which protect against the largest Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks would provide Bangkok Bank with the utmost cloud security, thereby translating into significant growth opportunities over the long term forthe company….