Grazed from FinancialPost.  Author: Lynn Greiner.

Every year around this time, we get inundated with predictions of what to look for in IT when the calendar turns. Sometimes those forecasts come true, sometimes they’re merely wishful thinking, but it’s usually interesting to see what the pundits believe is in store.

Let’s take a peek into their crystal balls.

International Data Corporation analysts made a series of predictions, some rather startling, about the cloud. For example, they said that three quarters of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) offerings would be redesigned, rebranded, or discontinued in the next 12-to-24 months, despite the expectation of rapid growth as competitors rise up to challenge market leader Amazon…

Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Editorial Staff.

KPMG’s 2014 Cloud Survey Report of enterprise cloud computing adoption had some significant findings, including the notable shift away from cloud adoption for purely cost reduction purposes and a move to other goals. The Report was compiled from survey answers from 539 C-level global business executives and IT leaders including CEOs’, CIOs’ and CFOs’.

The executives were from organizations spanning more than a dozen major industries, all of which had annual revenues between $100 Million to over $20 Billion. The methodology is explained in greater detail on page 15 of the study. There were a number of points of note including the following; According to Forrester Research, the public cloud market is estimated to reach $191 billion by 2020, a significant climb from 2013’s total of $58 billion…

Grazed from Baseline. Author: Samuel Greengard.

In recent years, the pace of digital change has been breathtaking. New tools, technologies and approaches have entered the enterprise, and the intersection of these factors has introduced new and more complex challenges—along with remarkable opportunities. As the calendar flips over to 2015, here are six trends that will shape business and IT in the coming year.

The Internet of things moves into the mainstream.

Hype notwithstanding, it’s becoming increasingly clear that the Internet of things (IoT) and connected devices represent enormous potential for enterprises that learn to use these systems effectively. They represent a goldmine of data for business, along with new conveniences and efficiencies for both the enterprise and consumers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.baselinemag.com/innovation/six-tech-trends-that-will-define-2015.html#sthash.kKLfDEtY.dpuf

Grazed from TechnologyNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

Public cloud computing providers offer subscribers as much flexibility as they can, but their first commitment is always to the security and stability of the cloud infrastructure. This means limiting the degree to which subscribers can manage hosted applications.

Blocking application patches

One of the ways service providers limit the degree of application management is by blocking subscribers from installing application patches. Organizations often outsource applications to cloud service providers in order to free themselves from the burden of managing the application. Many administrators are all too happy to walk away from their patch management chores…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

It’s that time of year again, as PR people reach out to tell me about their client’s 2015 cloud computing predictions. Are you sitting down? Most revolve around whatever technology they sell. Shocker, right? I figured I would take a different approach. Here are three cloud computing predictions for 2015 that have no chance of coming true, though they should.

1. Enterprises finally get a good grasp on cloud computing security

Everyone is interested in security, but they all figure it doesn’t really work in the cloud — yet no one in enterprise IT can tell me why. The fact of the matter is that most enterprise IT folks don’t have a good understanding of what it means to build a secure cloud, so they default to the “cloud computing is unsecure” reaction…

Grazed from SysCon Media. Author: David H. Deans.

How agile is your IT organization? Have you kept pace with the rapid evolution of cloud computing services? Have you applied that cloud investment to connect with your key stakeholders in the marketplace? Are you ready to seize the opportunities from the emerging mobile cloud trend?

If you answered NO to any of these questions, you’re at a competitive disadvantage with your more digital savvy business technology peer group. The leading organizations worldwide will rely on cloud infrastructure to achieve commercial benefits that extend far beyond IT cost reduction goals…

Grazed from OutboxSystems. Author: Editorial Staff.

There’s a big transition happening in the way companies manage their data. Many are jumping on the cloud computing bandwagon and, if it’s not already, your company could be next. Here are seven things about cloud computing you should know.

1. It’s Cost-Effective

The biggest cost cutter has to do with the servers housing your company’s data. Instead of having to store and maintain clunky computer servers in your company’s office, your business gets to use programs that have servers elsewhere. This also means not having to pay for a full IT department to come fix bugs and install software on each computer…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Stuart Crawford.

Gone are the days when people would hear “cloud” and look up at the sky. Everyone has at least some idea of what the cloud is now. What they want to know is how to USE it. So how are you presenting the cloud to your clients? Are you just selling Office 365 and leaving it at that? Or are you seeing what kind of platforms you can help them leverage in order to really take advantage of the power the cloud offers?

For that, you need to look at a service like Cloud-A, a Canadian company offering “true cloud” services for partners like MSPs. At its heart, Cloud-A is providing the framework for true cloud architecture. Sounds fancy, right? But really, it’s what you should be looking at for building cloud infrastructure for your clients. Brandon Kolybaba, the CEO and co-founder of Cloud-A, says, “Infrastructure is a utility.”…

Read more from the source @ http://mspmentor.net/cloud-computing/making-switch-your-clients-will-soon-demand-cloud-based-it-infrastructure

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Recently, Seagate announced a revolutionary way applications are going to communicate with their storage and resource back-end. According to Rocky Pimentel, Seagate executive vice president and chief sales and marketing officer, “With the Seagate Kinetic Open Storage platform, our internal R&D teams have designed an unique, first-of-its-kind storage architecture to enable cheaper, more scalable object storage solutions that free up IT professionals from having to invest in hardware and software they don’t need, while empowering them with the most innovative storage technology available.

This technology optimizes storage solutions for a new era of cloud storage systems, while drastically reducing overall costs.” So what does this all really mean? Well, the reality here is that infrastructure, applications, and the cloud are becoming a lot more intelligent. Just like the modern hypervisor for virtualization, we are trying to eliminate extra resources hops between our workloads and the resources that they utilize…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Bryan Betts.

Despite all the hype around cloud storage, it still faces hurdles when it comes to commercial uptake. Those hurdles include concerns over access speed and latency, as well fears around security, compliance and data portability. So, storage and cloud suppliers have come up with a potential solution.

With hybrid cloud storage you do not have to use cloud-hosted storage for all – or indeed any – of your data. Instead, data can reside on-site, in a private cloud or in a public cloud – as appropriate for your performance needs, the economics involved, regulatory compliance and, of course, your risk assessment…