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…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Hybrid cloud computing is gaining an impressive foothold among more firms and will eventually be expected to be part of regular IT implementation. The latest research on cloud computing trends suggests that hybrid models could be an answer for midsize businesses looking for the best cloud solution to fit their needs.

Cloud Market Growth

According to a new report featured in WhaTech, the hybrid cloud market is expected to go mainstream within the next few years. Additionally, a rising market share in cloud computing solutions is already visible among retail, health care and government sectors. The report also points to the growing acceptance of IT consumerization and overall cloud and mobile developments as factors that are changing the way firms operate…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Terry Hedden.

Picking vendors can either be very simple or very complicated depending on your approach. Some firms trust what they hear and read from the vendor and simply trust that it is all true. Others are more pragmatic and choose to validate everything they hear to ensure that the marketing groups are not overstating the firm’s capabilities or trustworthiness. The reality is this: In the cloud, you can’t trust what you read, you have to verify for yourself.

The most amazing thing that the web did for marketing was to create a very inexpensive way to exaggerate a firm’s capabilities. In the old days, you could look at a building or office space and literally see that the firm was successful and thus could be trusted to provide a quality product or service. On the web, $5,000 goes a long way in terms of producing a very impressive storefront full of marketing information that was written by a professional copywriter…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Gina Murphy.

Enterprise organizations are looking to partner with MSPs as they move to the cloud. The key for success is to develop an engagement plan using a high touch process to ensure a smooth onboarding experience during all three phases of the on-boarding process: The Assessment, Transition Plan and Cutover, and Ongoing Performance Analysis.

Like most new technologies, cloud computing can require significant changes in business processes, application architectures, technology infrastructure, and operating models that must be properly understood before embarking on any new initiative. Having a well thought out strategy can mean the difference between success and failure…

Grazed from Cloud9Realtime. Author: Editorial Staff.

There are so many benefits that you have to ask yourself, what am I waiting for? Cloud computing is knocking at your door, and here are some of the most important reasons for you to open it:

• Elimination of traditional business limitations
• Improving business agility and responsiveness
• Ensuring optimal competitiveness
• Reduced operational costs
• Decreased energy requirements

When we hear it said that cloud computing adoption is a synonym for business innovation, it’s not an exaggeration. After a successful cloud computing adoption you can focus entirely on your business and let the cloud computing support team take care of most IT related issues…