Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Sharon Gaudin.

For years, people in marketing or HR have been sneaking their apps and data onto the cloud, totally bypassing IT’s approval or help. Buckle up, IT. Those days are coming to an end as more enterprises look into moving critical applications and information to the cloud. IT shops are being called in to corral all of those individual cloud projects, while moving critical data to the cloud, as well.

"Central IT departments are absolutely going to be more involved with how enterprises use, or don’t use, cloud services," said Dan Olds, an analyst with The Gabriel Consulting Group. "In the past, individual departments or employees have used cloud services like a fat guy would use a buffet…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft launched its cloud platform, Azure, in 2010. Since the launch, the service has posted triple digit growth, and last year generated over $1 billion in revenue, according to reports. Considering the latest quarterly results, in which the company claimed that its cloud revenue grew a 128% year over year, we estimate that the annual revenue run rate for Azure can be close to $2.3 billion.

Azure, currently, is the only major cloud platform that is consistently ranked as a leader for both infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and platform-as-a-service (PaaS). While Microsoft continues to use the same platform that is used in Azure for some of its offerings such as X-box live, Bing, Office 365, SQL etc., it is extensively marketing its cloud offering to enterprises to roll out their apps on its platform…

Grazed from TechRepublic. Author: Nick Hardiman.

Sadly, Linux has become old, fat, and slow. After two decades of overindulgence, the once-lean OS has gained some ugly pounds of cruft. Linux may not be the most overweight server OS out there, but it does take up more resources than it used to. According to the Linux Foundation’s 2014 Enterprise End User Report, 75% of enterprise cloud platforms are Linux.

Since millions of cloud computing services are powered by Linux, that’s a lot of extra resources consumed. Do we really need to use an all-singing OS like Linux — one that requires an overloaded kernel and thousands of supporting files? Isn’t there a lighter, faster, and more secure way of providing business value?…

Grazed from BizJournals. Author: Ben Miller.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing service is making gains against Amazon.com Inc.’s market-leading Amazon Web Services cloud product. That’s according to Reuters, which reports Amazon is having a tougher sales job these days in a post Edward Snowden information leak world, because Amazon doesn’t have the worldwide presence like Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) possesses.

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) is reportedly losing some cloud clients to Microsoft because it doesn’t have data centers in many countries, unlike Microsoft. Microsoft, which employs roughly 1,200 people in Irving, is able to offer companies more direct oversight over their data storage because of its broader local presence around the world…

Read more from the source @ http://www.bizjournals.com/dallas/blog/techflash/2014/12/microsoft-making-gains-in-worldwidecloud-computing.html

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Roland Moore-Colyer.

Moving entire IT infrastructures into the cloud is an unrealistic goal, and businesses need to take a hybrid approach instead, according to Dell’s cloud strategy leader. Gordon Davey (pictured) said in an interview with V3 that cloud computing is "overhyped", and that cloud vendors have enticed companies to make major shifts to the cloud without considering a model that works for their business.

"I think it’s definitely a case of cloud as a buzzword is overhyped. The idea of cloud for the sake of cloud doesn’t really stand out," he said. "The problem comes from customers that have seen the buzzword and want to get the benefits and are just jumping on the bandwagon because it is an industry hype thing, rather than actually evaluating the benefits that a true cloud can bring, and applying that to their business requirements."…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to Wanted Analytics, there are 3.9 million jobs in the United States affiliated with cloud computing today, with 384,478 in IT alone. The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950. Globally, there are 18,239,258 cloud computing jobs, says Wanted Analytics, with the plurality in China (40.8 percent).

The growth in the United States has been fueled largely by enterprises seeking cloud talent to get their migration projects on track. Both cloud architects and developers seem to be in high demand. How do you cash in? First, always look at new and emerging trends, such as cloud, big data, and the Internet of things…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Dan Worth.

Cloud computing is now an established way of doing business. Software tools for HR, ERP, CRM and other such services are now used in the cloud by all types of company, offering flexibility, reduced costs and regular feature upgrades. Tech giants such as IBM, HP, Microsoft and Oracle are spending millions and devoting endless staff hours on developing new platforms, products and tools to meet this demand, as well as expanding data centre footprints into numerous regions.

This is all to make sure that vendors can reassure customers on issues ranging from security and data sovereignty to latency and data access. However, all this could be in vain if the US government has its way. A court battle is raging between Microsoft and the US authorities over whether the government has the right to access data on a US company’s servers when stored overseas…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Editorial Staff.

This spring, Taser International Inc won a small but high-profile contract to supply body cameras to the London police. But the deal nearly collapsed over one issue: where the video footage would be stored. In the end, the deal survived only after Taser dropped Amazon.com Inc as the data storage provider for the year-long project. The fact that Amazon did not have a data center in Britain was a deal breaker for British officials, according to Taser.

The case is an example of the challenges that Amazon faces as it works to expand its cloud computing business, known as Amazon Web Services (AWS). In cloud computing, clients store and process data on remote servers accessed by the Internet, as opposed to storing information in local servers…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Kevin McLaughlin.

Oracle CTO (and former CEO) Larry Ellison once famously trashed the term "cloud computing" as redundant and vague, but now he sounds like he’s had a big change of heart. On Oracle’s fiscal second quarter earnings call Wednesday, Ellison said his company booked $170 million in new SaaS and PaaS subscriptions during the quarter, and expects that figure to jump to $250 million by the end of its fiscal year next May.

In Oracle’s 2016 fiscal year, which starts next June, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based vendor is on track to sell "well in excess" of $1 billion in new, annual cloud subscriptions, according to Ellison. "As our cloud business gets bigger, our growth rate is going up," Ellison said on the call…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimsberger.

Debates over trusting an expert as opposed to someone who claims to be an expert happen every day across all industries—from car repair to IT—and this certainly includes anything involving the cloud. While cloud computing enables significant benefits for users to access applications from any computer, it has also created a new group of "cloud posers."

These posers are defined as inexperienced software developers who make bold (and often untrue) claims about the performance of the cloud-based applications they manage. Most of these posers work as independent consultants. On the surface, a poser may talk a good game and seem like a good choice to support an enterprise, but asking a few smart questions might just reveal his or her lack of expertise—and save you lots of grief…