Grazed from InformationWeek.  AuthorL: Thomas Claburn.

Add windows to a room and everything looks brighter. Add Windows to a platform and you open doors to new customers.  That’s just what Google has done as it races with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, and other companies to attract business computing clients to the cloud.

Google on Monday said that customers now can use Windows-based workloads on Google Cloud Platform. The company is offering Microsoft License Mobility for Google Cloud Platform, which allows Microsoft customers to run Microsoft software on third-party services…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Darryl K. Taft.

IBM announced it has patented an invention that enhances the use of analytics for assessing and directing data in a cloud computing environment, enabling more timely and efficient application processing and management. The IBM invention, U.S Patent #8,639,809, "Predictive Removal of Runtime Data Using Attribute Characterizing," analyzes data from a variety of sources to avoid performance lags and processing delays.

Since not all data is equal and resources for processing, storing and managing information are finite, real-time analytics can be useful in expediting this process, IBM said. "Processing data in a cloud is similar to managing checkout lines at a store—if you have one simple item to purchase, an express lane is preferable to waiting in line behind someone with a more complicated order," IBM Inventor Michael Branson, who co-invented the patented technique with John Santosuosso, said in a statement…

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Mike Vizard.

Big data is supposed to generate massive amounts of demand for storage, but it’s not at all clear how all that storage is going to actually be paid for. Conventional wisdom says IT organizations will pay for storage on a usage basis, but the folks at Logentries have a very different idea.

Logentries, a provider of a log analytics application delivered as a service, has unfurled a Logentries Unlimited, On Demand Log Management service that starts at $429 per month, which includes logging unlimited data from up to 40 hosts. To make that even more enticing the company is also making available a free 30-day trail offer…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge.  Author: Mike Vizard.

Knowledge Vault today announced the general availability of its namesake analytics-as-a-service platform that provides more insight into how documents are being consumed and shared beyond anything IT organizations could hope to accomplish on premise.

Knowledge Vault CEO Christian Ehrenthal says that starting with Microsoft Office 365 deployments, IT organizations can use Knowledge Vault to discover and audit content and apply governance policies to documents stored in the cloud. Next up, says Ehrenthal, will be support for Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive and Box.net…

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