Grazed from TechCocktail. Author: Rick Delgado.

Businesses can’t seem to stop talking about cloud computing. It feels like the term is everywhere, with many companies acting like it’s the solution to every issue your organization faces. There’s little doubt that the cloud has become extremely popular in the past few years, but some companies are reluctant to take that final step.

Your company might be one of them, constantly asking basic questions like, “What is cloud computing?”, expressing concerns about such a major transition, and essentially feeling uneasy about the cloud and all that it offers. While there’s nothing wrong with showing a little bit of caution with new technology, worries over your company’s readiness for the cloud might be a bit overblown. In fact, you’re likely already using it, even if you don’t know it…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jaikumar Vijayan.

Google Wednesday released a beta version of a software-debugging tool that it says will give application developers a way to quickly diagnose performance bottlenecks in production applications running on the company’s cloud computing platform. Google Cloud Trace works with applications running on Google App Engine or using a Google Cloud Platform managed virtual machine.

It helps developers gain visibility into software code while it is running, to see which line or lines of code might be dragging down application performance. In the event of a performance bottleneck or other problems, the tool generates a report containing details on what might be causing the issues…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Sharon Gaudin.

With some of Verizon’s enterprise customers about to lose their cloud service for up to two days, now is the time for them to prepare for the extended downtime. "One of the major selling points of cloud computing is that it takes the burden of IT management off the shoulders of the customer, but with this outage, Verizon’s customers are right back in the thick of things when it comes to IT management," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group.

"They’re going to have to figure out how to minimize the impact of the Verizon two-day fail on their business." Verizon confirmed to Computerworld this week that it will shut down its Verizon Cloud service to do maintenance for up to two days, starting at 1 a.m. ET Saturday. Users are being told to shut down their virtual machines at least an hour ahead of time…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Lindsey O’Donnell.

Solution providers are expecting accelerated growth in the managed services space but stress that MSPs must transform as the need for cloud, mobility and big data solutions rises. A study released Wednesday by research and consulting firm MarketsAndMarkets predicted the demand for managed services will jump drastically in the next five years, with the global market slated to grow from $101.2 billion in 2014 to $193.3 billion in 2019.

Kyle Cebull, CMO of Fort Myers, Fla.-based solution provider Entech, said customers are looking to managed services to increase efficiency and reduce in-house costs. “Managed service providers are a more sophisticated way of handling information technology,” he said. “Companies are becoming more sophisticated in general about looking for new ways to excel…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Jordan Novet.

Microsoft is moving right along in its efforts to maintain a leading position in the public cloud market. Today the company is announcing a public preview for a new service for storing cryptographic keys in the Azure cloud — and it’s rolling out the G-Series of virtual machines for running applications.

New virtual machines, each of which is a sliver of a physical server in a Microsoft data center, are par for the course in the highly competitive cloud business, where it’s only natural for computing power to increase over time. The new Key Vault service, for its part, could be interpreted as Microsoft’s answer to the Key Management Service, which cloud market leader Amazon Web Services announced last year to manage keys, and Amazon’s older CloudHSM service, which provides dedicated gear called hardware security modules (HSMs) for key storage…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: David Linthicum.

Creating a business case for cloud computing has always been tough. And as cloud continues to evolve, putting its true value on paper won’t become any easier in 2015. Cloud technology often provides a great deal of value and quickly pays for itself. If you’re concerned that your cloud business case is weak, then it could become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Some companies may not benefit from cloud or see the anticipated return on investment. To build a strong cloud business case, it’s important to consider these three issues:

1. Cloud deployment data points suggest the value of cloud computing has morphed in new and unexpected directions. Initially, the cloud’s value was allowing organizations to move from a Capex to an Opex model. Today, it’s more about the cost of ownership and cost of risk…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Information technology spending is still expected to maintain its upward trajectory over the coming year, so that begs the question: where will all this extra money be going? Where should it go? A new survey of 112 executives from Piper Jaffray suggests that more IT spending is being funneled into cloud computing services.

Overall IT spending increased 2.6% from last year, and two-thirds of respondents say they will boost their budgets at least as much in 2015. Most of the boost goes to cloud services — average cloud budgets are up six percent, compared to a two-percent jump in on-premises spending…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: David Linthicum.

Today’s Software as a Service (SaaS), Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), and Platform as a Service (PaaS) offerings enable near-instant productivity and capacity. Businesses, however, have little visibility into or control over their cloud solutions’ true cost. Cloud computing allows lines of business to self-provision tools, often without IT’s knowledge…

The result is an increase in localized productivity. But provisioned systems are often redundant, contracts are poorly optimized, and businesses are unable to manage or audit the lifecycle and usage of these services. They also lack the data and clout to negotiate more favorable terms…

Grazed from EEJournal. Author: Bruce Kleinman.

At face value, it is a bit of a brain twister: Amazon’s goal of being the “everything store” on the one hand, that is, and its massive cloud services business on the other. At first glance, not exactly peanut butter and chocolate. Walmart and Costco are not actively hawking their data processing capabilities—which one imagines as quite formidable—on the open market.

Turn the clock back a few years and it makes sense. Amazon developed their massive datacenters in-house because their requirements could not be readily met with existing solutions. As time passed, they developed more and more value-added differentiation. And, at some point, someone thinking well outside the box suggests “let’s monetize our unique datacenter capabilities by selling them in the emerging cloud computing market.”…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Defense Information Systems Agency is turning to industry for “novel” approaches to secure the millions of devices plugged in — and virtually connected — to the Pentagon’s computer networks. A Jan. 5 request for information queries contractors on a “next-generation” endpoint security system that would allow the agency to better configure, secure and keep tabs on network endpoints all using a central management tool.

Put simply, endpoints are all those devices — desktops, laptops, mobile devices, servers — connected to DOD’s networks. All told, there are 4 million of them. Endpoint security, then, describes the process of safeguarding those devices — usually through software, such as antivirus and firewall protections…