Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Arthur Cole.

It should be pretty obvious by now that most enterprises will not adopt “the cloud” as the next phase of data infrastructure, but many clouds. Indeed, with large numbers of employees embracing a variety of public services to process and store corporate data, many organizations already use multiple clouds without even knowing it.

This could be a huge potential problem even beyond the obvious questions of security and availability. If the deployment of cloud services is allowed to continue in a piecemeal fashion, the enterprise could very well end up recreating the same silo-based infrastructure that currently diminishes performance in the data center…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Pedro Hernandez.

Microsoft has finally flipped the switch on a series of enterprise-grade updates to its Azure cloud computing platform, which the Redmond, Wash.-based company first teased in a cloud-themed press event on Oct. 20. Scott Guthrie, executive vice president of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise group, announced Azure Premium Storage, a high-performance cloud storage service backed by speedy solid-state drives, during the event.

Today, customers can take the offering for a spin. Microsoft Azure’s director of product marketing, Vibhor Kapoor, announced the Azure Premium Storage public preview in a Dec. 11 company blog post. The service "stores data on the latest technology Solid State Drives (SSDs) and offers up to 32 terabytes of storage per virtual machine," he explained…

Grazed from DataCenter Dynamics.  Author: Drew Amorosi.

Moving IT infrastructure into the cloud is a hot trend, but it appears the practice is burning brighter on one side of the Atlantic. That’s according to newly released survey data showing those who hold the budget purse strings in the US have been faster to move their IT infrastructure to the cloud when compared with their UK counterparts.

The survey of IT decision makers in both regions showed that one-third of those surveyed in the US have moved a “significant” amount (50–70%) of their organization’s IT infrastructure into the cloud, whereas in the UK, more than three-quarters have shifted less than 50%. UK respondents cited a lack of proper tools and technical skills as the primary factor for slower cloud migtation. On the US side, those surveyed said the decision to place infrastructure in the cloud was motivated by perceived improvement in service levels, uptime, and reliability…

Grazed from PCWorld.  Author: Mary Branscombe.

Microsoft plans to open-source the framework that helps developers of cloud services like those behind the popular Halo 4 game.  Building cloud services for millions of users means connecting and coordinating thousands of servers, and handling tasks and information across all of them. Project Orleans is a framework built by the eXtreme Computing Group at Microsoft Research using .NET, designed so developers who aren’t distributed systems experts can build cloud services that scale to cope with high demand and still keep high performance.

The Orleans framework was used to build several services on Azure, including services that are part of Halo 4, and Microsoft had an enthusiastic response when it released a public preview of the technology in April this year. Now Sergey Bykov of the eXtreme Computing Group says (http://orleans.codeplex.com/) they will open-source the project…

Grazed from Nasdaq.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft  recently teamed up with Accenture to jointly fund and build a new hybrid cloud bundle, which is expected to launch next year.  The "hybrid cloud" refers to businesses managing some of their own resources in-house, while relying on external cloud services for others. For example, a company can keep its recent customer data on in-house storage, but send its archived data to a public cloud service.

This approach, which is built on top of existing IT services, is useful for large companies, which can’t transfer their data to the cloud as quickly as smaller businesses…

Read more from the source @ http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/12/12/what-microsoft-and-accentures-cloud-partnership-me.aspx#ixzz3Lib6qPY8

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Anastasia Lamotchkina.

It’s becoming clear that out of the top tech trends this year, the Internet-of-things (IoT) is one of the most interesting. With any hope IoT will quickly evolve from simple trinkets to extremely powerful connected devices. So what’s next? you ask, Vordik thinks the cloud will have a lot to do with it.

IS YOUR TOASTER TALKING?: AN INTRO TO IOT

The Internet of Things is simply a label that has been tacked on to the concept of machine-to-machine communication that has existed for around 15 years. In the same way that computers can interact with each other and share information via their IP address, any object can now be assigned its own IP address – thus enabling it to connect to the Internet.

With technology advancing and prices decreasing, practically anything can become “smart” in the right hands. As a ridiculous example, take a look at this toaster that gets upset and jealous when it’s unused…

Grazed from CloudTimes.  Author: Saroj Kar.

The operating system of most famous open source is gaining ground in business particularly in cloud computing, according to a report from the Linux Foundation and Yeoman Technology Group.

The Linux Foundation has published a study called “2014 Enterprise End User Trends Report” that shows the steady growth of Linux in the market for large companies, especially in recent years driven by factors such as the growth of cloud computing, in addition to its known qualities in terms of safety, capacity deployment, costs or virtualization…

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Chris Talbot.

Docker is getting more love from cloud services providers (CSPs) and other organizations, but at the same time, it’s starting to gain its fair share of detractors, as well. Some of the people criticizing Docker’s current strategy are also some of its earliest supporters.

The latest criticism comes from Bob Quillin, CEO of StackEngine. In a blog post, Quillin compared Docker’s current strategy to that of peanut butter, but noted that although spreading peanut butter thin makes for a tasty treat, Docker spreading itself too thin is causing worry for StackEngine and other Docker partners…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Louis Columbus.

There are 3.9 million jobs in the U.S. affiliated with cloud computing today with 384,478 in IT alone.  The median salary for IT professionals with cloud computing experience is $90,950 and the median salary for positions that pay over $100,000 a year is $116,950.  Globally there are 18,239,258 cloud computing jobs, with the majority being in China (40.8%).

These and other key insights are from WANTED Analytics, the leading provider of data analytics on the workplace. The company currently maintains a database of more than one billion unique job listings and is collecting hiring trend data from more than 150 countries...

Grazed from CBROnline.  Author: Eleanor Burns.

According to a NaviSite survey most UK businesses recognise the benefits of cloud computing, but many are still running a significant amount of systems either in-house, or externally on traditional platforms.  Three-quarters of those surveyed had migrated less than 50% of their infrastructure to the cloud.

A major cause of this was found to be the lack of the correct tools and skills needed to execute migration.  A finding which will come as no surprise is the 59% of respondents who cited security as their main concern when choosing a cloud service provider…