Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: Natalie Lerner.

Hosting a website shouldn’t be a tedious task. With so many web hosting vendors to choose from, it can be hard to know where to start. Before you begin shopping, it is imperative that you create a list of traits that each web host must possess before making your short-list.

As many with experience will tell you, all web hosting companies are not created equally and depending upon the types of apps you are trying to launch, it may be important to note that not one size fits all when you are shopping for web hosting services…

Grazed from MacroInsider.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Final year software maker K2.com stopped relying on Amazon.com (AMZN) for its cloud solutions and turned to Microsoft (MSFT) as an alternative. K2 Chief Executive Officer Adriaan van Wyk says he’s delighted with the choice—most of the time. The developer tools of Microsoft’s Azure cloud service are superior, he says, and he likes its customized client service.

Yet occasionally Azure is slow, and on Nov. 18 it suffered a worldwide outage that lasted numerous hours. As insurance, Van Wyk has moved five percent of his organization back to Amazon Internet Solutions. “We nonetheless like Microsoft,” he says. “At the identical time, it’s been a bit bumpy. The five % tends to make confident if we have to move back to AWS we can do it swiftly"…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Seagate Technology a world leader in storage solutions, today unveiled two new storage products for the home, Seagate Personal Cloud and Seagate Personal Cloud 2-Bay. Seagate Personal Cloud provides the accessibility of cloud storage with the peace of mind that content is stored safely at home.

What differentiates these two Personal Cloud drives apart is how easily they can stream content to smartphones, set-top boxes, tablets, PCs or televisions via the Seagate Media application. Additionally, when used in conjunction with the acclaimed Seagate Mobile Backup app and Dashboard software, Seagate Personal Cloud also serves as a central backup device for PCs, Mac computers, USB drives, iOS and Android mobile devices…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Jason Perlow.

 This week I had the pleasure of being a guest on NPR’s Airtalk program, on the subject of Robert Zemeckis’ 1989 film Back to the Future 2 and its predictions for the year 2015.  It was an entertaining conversation, and as usual I played the role of down-to-earth technologist that had to point out that many of the "predictions" used in the film were developed primarily as comedic gags, and weren’t really meant to be an accurate portrayal of what life might be like in the year 2015.

 There are a few things in the film that echo some of today’s concerns about technology — such as the surveillance state, drones and data privacy — but overall the 2015 that Marty McFly and Doc Brown visit seems inspiring and pleasant, albeit dated and anachronistic, given the huge miss on the Internet and mobile devices in that film…

Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: Srinivasan Sundara Rajan.

IoT May Over Whelm Cloud: The potential adoption of the Internet of Things in industries like manufacturing, healthcare will definitely bring much needed automation and agility into the operations, but if they are not  properly planned out these initiatives may lead into an explosion of data whose magnitude will  simply derail the whole initiative or result in a huge cost of operations that will out smart  the benefits they bring in.

As I mentioned in my last article, the concept of Fog Computing (which is term coined by CISCO) is more of an EDGE computing where by much of data analytics and decision making are happening to a location much closer to its source, leaving only certain kind of decision making  to centralized cloud location…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Chris Preimesberger.

Consumers and enterprises crave always-on, on-demand and mobile access to just about everything: applications, work documents, video streaming and social networking. The list is lengthy. The networking industry that underpins the seemingly insatiable desire for constant information streams has undergone massive shifts in access and efficiency in the last couple of years.

How do you think your mobile device houses so much of the world’s information? Well, it isn’t by magic. With the rise of software-defined networks and virtualization redirecting the industry, players—from big vendors to startups and developers—have jumped into the markets from all angles to enable the next generation of computing…

Grazed from StrategicSourcerer.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In the practice of indirect procurement, purchasing software to support various departments and operations is a concern those in charge should take quite seriously.  However, the consideration grows much more complex in regard to big data analytics. According to a 2013 report conducted by SNS Research, global investment in data analysis solutions is expected to expand at a compound annual growth rate of 17 percent between 2014 and 2020.

This technology comes in many forms, and iterations are often constructed to befit the needs of certain verticals, such as manufacturing or health care. For instance, a business specializing in qualitative data analysis tools may deliver solutions through cloud computing, a practice known as software-as-a-service.  Listed below are three steps procurement officers should follow when surveying big data analytics tools…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Dan Kusnetzsky.

Jerome Lecat, CEO of Scality, spoke with me about his view of the future of software defined storage and how enterprises should be thinking about it now. Scality believes that enterprises should start thinking about and planning for tools that could, in the company’s words, "route data to and from individual users in the most scalable, efficient way possible."

Scality developed Scality RING that is designed to address the growing challenge enterprises face in dealing with rapidly growing, huge (petabyte scale) storage requirements that include both structured and non-structured data. Here’s how the company describes RING:   The RING is a software-based storage that is built to scale to petabytes with performance, scaling and protection mechanisms appropriate for such scale. It enables your business to grow without limitations and extra overhead, works across 80% of your applications, and protects your data over 200% more efficiently at 50-70% lower cost…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Zack Whittaker.

Huawei expects demand in its cloud computing, big data, and smart devices areas to push sales up 15 percent to $46 billion in 2014.  The company’s chief executive Ken Hu said in a message on the technology giant’s website that the company had "seized these opportunities, continued to focus on our pipe strategy, streamlined management, and maintained effective growth."

Hu added that the company had undergone internal efficiency savings, including restructuring three business units.  The Shenzen, China-based company’s chief executive, who shares the position with two other senior staffers on a rotating basis, said its cloud strategy continues to do well thanks to partnerships with SAP and Accenture…

Grazed from HCPLive.  Author: Jared Kaltwasser.

Cloud computing is fast becoming an indispensable tool for mid-sized healthcare organizations, even though only two-thirds of those organizations say they’re “very confident” the data is safe.  The findings come in a survey by Dell Inc., which polled 2,038 information technology decision-makers at public and private mid-sized healthcare firms.

About 43% said they’re using private cloud storage solutions, and another 43% said they use a hybrid cloud solution. Of those using the cloud, nearly half, 46%, said their biggest incentive to use the cloud is that it enables them to better allocate their IT resources. Thirty-nine percent said the biggest benefit is cost savings…