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…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Robert X. Cringely.

In my last two columns here I explained why iPads last longer than expected (very few mechanical parts to go bad) but that the longevity of almost any modern device is finite because of those darned mechanical parts and eventual failure of lead-free solder joints. This final column in the series is the good news: even solder failures won’t matter soon because computing hardware will shortly become irrelevant.

It not only won’t matter what kind of computer or operating system you have, it also won’t matter whether what you have is a PC, a tablet, or a phone because you’ll be able to do the same work — exactly the same work — on any of them. Personal computing has come to be about ecosystems — primarily Windows, Macintosh, and many flavors of Linux…

Grazed from StorageAcceleration. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Storage is always an interesting topic when it comes to the idea of the cloud. How do we replicate the information? How do we ensure data integrity? How do we optimally utilize storage space within our cloud model? When we take a look at the modern datacenter we see that there are already many different kinds of storage efficiencies built in. Things like data deduplication, thin provisioning, and even data tiers can be applied to vast arrays and multiple controllers.

The challenge has been to take a lot of this technology and span into the cloud. With that in mind, I had a chat with a senior storage architect — Jeff Arkin of MTM Technologies — who argues that cloud computing helps introduce a whole new tier when it comes to data control. He points out, "Cloud introduces another storage tier which, for example, allows for moving data to an off-premises location for archival, backups, or the elimination of off-site infrastructure for disaster recovery…

Grazed from RISCNetworks. Author: Jesse Frye.

Cloud computing is the foundation of many operations, including Web-scale IT. Cameron Haight, research vice president at Gartner, recently explained the term was founded by the likes of Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix and Rackspace. The tech model improves service delivery capabilities, enabling smaller businesses to directly compete with larger enterprises.

"Gartner has identified six elements to Web-scale IT: industrially-designed data centers, Web-oriented (or microservices) architectures, programmable management, velocity-focused processes, a collaborative organization style, and an innovation-centric and learning culture," Haight said…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Louis Columbus.

Demand for Computer Systems Analysts with big data expertise increased 89.9% in the last twelve months , and 85.40% for Computer and Information Research Scientists. Demand for Python programming expertise increased 96.9% in big-data related positions in the last twelve months.

These and other key insights are from a recent analysis completed of big data hiring trends using WANTED Analytics, the leading provider of data analytics on the workplace. For purposes of this analysis, the term “big data” is comprised of the four skill sets of data analysis, data acquisition, data mining and data structures. The WANTED Analytics taxonomy references these skill sets when queries are made on the term “big data”…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

The idea is to build a cloud platform as efficiently as possible. That means having hardware components in place capable of handling high user demand, great levels of multi-tenancy, and advanced resource controls. So, is this why so many companies are starting to look more at converged infrastructures for their cloud and virtualization platform?

There are some new players on the market. Numerous vendors are creating powerful node-based server platforms capable of great amounts of scale. Nutanix, for example, says that their platform is already adopted by the likes of Google, Facebook and Amazon. It does make sense though. Your organization can quickly build a “cloud-in-a-box” platform with everything you need…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Dan Ring.

The cloud, mobile and analytics were the major technology trends having an impact on software for financials and human resources in 2014. Cloud computing advantages have been a focus for at least five years, but in 2014, more and more companies stopped using software on-premises and shifted to software as a service (SaaS).

Companies discovered cloud computing advantages in managing and improving business processes, customer relations and employees. Paul Hamerman, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester Research, based in Cambridge, Mass., said he is seeing a pickup in adoption of software categories that had been laggards in the past…