Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Joab Jackson.

To help organizations better organize their cloud assets, Microsoft and business consulting firm Accenture have released a package designed to make it easy to integrate in-house IT operations with Microsoft Azure cloud services.

The package is designed to "help enterprises more easily move into cloud technologies," said Paul Daugherty, Accenture chief technology officer. "Our large enterprise clients tell us the hybrid cloud is where they need to be. They need the combination of private and public capabilities."…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, and judging by the continued interest in private cloud solutions, it is fair to say that the sky is always bluer on the other side of the cloud, as well. Cloud providers have made no secret of the fact that they can deliver advanced IT services at a fraction of the cost of in-house infrastructure, but for organizations that have invested millions, if not billions, in their own data centers, it isn’t just a simple matter of dumping the old for the new. Rather, many CIOs are asking themselves: If a third-party provider can deliver IT more cheaply and effectively, why can’t I?

This is one of the reasons why private cloud adoption is about to undergo a dramatic shift over the next year or so, says Technology Business Report. According to the company’s latest research, the percentage of private clouds delivered by third parties is showing a steady decline – from 70 percent to 65 percent in the past year – while in-house clouds are on the rise – 30 percent to 35 percent…

Grazed from Zacks. Author: Editorial Staff.

The recent launch comes after the private beta was made available in Sep 2014. To date, Watson Analytics has nearabout 22,000 registered members. The new service will be made available under a cloud-based freemium model through Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android services as well as through the web.

Watson is an artificially intelligent computer system capable of answering questions posed in natural language. Watson Analytics is a cognitive service and it automates the once time-consuming tasks such as data preparation, predictive analysis, and visual story-telling for business professionals…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Lincoln Spector.

The cloud is the Internet, when used for chores that are traditionally handled by local hardware and software. For instance, if you back up your files to an external hard drive, that’s local. But if you use an online service such as Mozy or Carbonite, you’re using cloud-based backup.

Another example: If you use the installed Outlook program to read email, you’re using the Internet, but not the cloud. But if you read your email on the Outlook.com webpage, you’re reading it in the cloud. Other cloud-based applications include storage/sync services such as Dropbox, and web-based office alternatives like Google Docs…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Recently, I was pitched SAP HANA as a cloud solution. I checked out SAP’s site, and sure enough, there was a mutitenanted cloud version of SAP HANA — a free one for developers, that is. For any serious work, you needed a "dedicated instance" at $539 per month for the Starter edition. The Standard edition costs $3,932 per month.

Oracle, which you’ve heard a million times by now is all-in with the cloud, provides another example. To get Oracle Database as a Service, the price per OCPU (Oracle Compute Unit) per month starts at $600 for the Standard Edition and climbs all the way to $5,000 for the Extreme Performance Enterprise Edition. Click the Buy Now button and up pops an 800 sales number for you to call…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: David Deans.

The early-adopters of cloud services already know what they want to achieve from each new deployment, and are somewhat confident that they’re able to plan, implement and manage their own projects. In contrast, the typical CIO or IT manager in the majority of enterprises still need the help and wisdom of experienced practitioners — people who have been there, done that.

That’s why business decision makers are seeking cloud professional services guidance at twice the rate of private and public cloud vendors, according to the latest worldwide market study by Technology Business Research (TBR). Today, these consulting engagements are a pivotal point of the mainstream buyer’s journey, as more executives make the decision to migrate to a cloud services model and consultants provide advice and education to prospective cloud customers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.business2community.com/cloud-computing/growing-demand-cloud-professional-services-01089474#HZklUp0QQKuTBw2y.99

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

Sky has gone to a cloud-based data storage system to make its files more accessible as its data lake grows. The company is using Cleversafe’s object-based storage solution in the UK for its private cloud platform to host large amounts of unstructured data – including video, audio, documents, backups and more.

Sky manages multiple petabytes of data. As its unstructured data began to expand, the company sought a solution that could grow with it. Sky selected Cleversafe’s storage platform to build what it says is a highly scalable and cost efficient storage system. Will Westwick, head of enterprise technology at Sky, said: “As a leading media and communications company, we manage an enormous amount of unstructured data, and every bit of that data needs to be readily accessible…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworlduk.com/news/cloud-computing/3590094/sky-makes-data-more-accessible-in-the-cloud/

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

While you can implement cloud computing without a second thought to service oriented architecture, any good enterprise cloud infrastructure really should have a solid architectural foundation. Without such a foundation, there is uneven governance, haphazard security, and uncertain scalability. In other words, one may end up operating in the dark, meshed within a tangle of ungoverned — and likely duplicated — cloud services snarling their way through organizations.

Dare I say it? The only architecture that evolves out of all this chaos is a JBOCS architecture — Just a Bunch of Cloud Services. It gets very costly. SOA has taken its knocks in recent years as being too much about IT and not enough about delivering business value. But cloud computing is where the promises of SOA begin to see the light of day…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Executives of all stripes are bullish on hybrid cloud, a new study shows. Hybrid — which combines public cloud services with those of on-site systems — is seen as the best path forward between too much dependence on outside providers with unknown security risks, and on-site data centers with their associated costs and maintenance requirements.  Within three years, executives expect to see most if their applications and services running within hybrid clouds.

The costs and headaches associated with running one’s own data centers are well documented, but going too far in the other direction into public cloud carries potential headaches as well. ComputerWorld’s Charles King even suggests that purely public clouds are the new “legacy” systems,  over which enterprises may not have a great deal of control…

Grazed from TelecomLead.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Significant growth in mobility, server virtualization and cloud computing applications are creating fresh demands on the mobile network, causing more investment in networking architectures including mobile backhaul.  Ryan Perera, country head of Ciena India, said the focus on 4G / LTE networks is causing a major shift in the architecture of mobile networks and will have a significant impact on the development of new data intensive applications like the connected car.

Customers today are demanding speed and simplicity in adding backhaul capacity that provides the necessary flexibility to handle multiple outside plant environments. As apps continue to create more data that must be managed and transported, customers need an intelligent network that is agile enough to respond to traffic demands, utilizing network resources in a way that maximizes outputs…