Grazed from OReilly. Author: Benjamin Hindman.

Developers today are building a new class of applications. These applications no longer fit on a single server, but instead run across a fleet of servers in a data center. Examples include analytics frameworks like Apache Hadoop and Apache Spark, message brokers like Apache Kafka, key-value stores like Apache Cassandra, as well as customer-facing applications such as those run by Twitter and Netflix.

These new applications are more than applications, they are distributed systems. Just as it became commonplace for developers to build multithreaded applications for single machines, it’s now becoming commonplace for developers to build distributed systems for data centers…

Grazed from GlobalNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Canopy, the Atos cloud powered by EMC and VMware, announced today that it has achieved the Cisco® Master Service Provider Certification for cloud and managed services. This certification recognizes Canopy as having the capabilities to sell and deliver cloud and managed services to help accelerate time to market and time to revenue. Additionally, the certification rewards partners for their expertise and investments for creating, selling and delivering cloud and managed services with financial incentives and go-to-market benefits in all countries of legal presence.

"Achieving the Cisco Master Service Provider certification is an important step for our customers as it provides an external guarantee of the robustness of our Enterprise cloud solutions," said Jacques Pommeraud, Canopy CEO. "As the European leader in cloud computing we have built our reputation on trust, security, and enterprise-grade designs. Taking this step further in our partnership with Cisco means bringing more innovation, vision and value to our customers around the globe."…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Madeline Bennett.

V3 has launched its Cloud Computing Definitive Guide, covering everything your business needs to get the most out of the cloud revolution. Cloud computing has seen a radical uptake within businesses in recent years, with the smallest and the largest of firms now relying on cloud services and applications.

However, there are still obstacles to the widespread rollout of cloud services. The view remains among many that hosting data off-site is inherently less secure than having it safe within the company walls, while cloud outages have also become a regular occurrence, affecting vendors from Microsoft to Netflix…

Grazed from FederalTimes. Author: Aaron Boyd.

The Department of Defense’s new cloud procurement policy — orignally promised for mid-November — is now slated to be released in December, according to a spokesperson from the DoD Office of the Chief Information Officer. In an effort to speed the department’s move to cloud computing, the new policy will divest authority from the Defense Information System Agency to the contracting officers at each branch and agency within DoD.

Before issuing the policy, a memo has been circulating among the component agencies for review, a process that is still ongoing. Despite minor delays, the policy should be signed and released in early December, sooner than later, according to the DoD representative…

Read more from the source @ http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20141202/FEDIT01/312020017/New-DoD-cloud-policy-delayed

Grazed from NYTimes. Author: nicole Perlroth.

What if it isn’t too late to start from scratch? It was only about 40 years ago that Vinton G. Cerf and Robert E. Kahn holed up in the conference room of a Hyatt hotel in Palo Alto, Calif., and sketched out the sets of rules and protocols that laid the foundation of the modern Internet."

Despite big advances in speed, performance, memory and machines, their decisions continue to form the basis for modern digital communications — much to the detriment of security, some experts argue. But the United States government is teaming up with computer scientists to do something about it…

Read more from the source @ http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/12/02/reinventing-the-internet-to-make-it-safer/?_r=0

Grazed from Nasdaq. Author: Editorial Staff.

Technology company International Business Machines Corp. on Tuesday entered into a new seven-year cloud-computing services contract with British advertising giant WPP Plc (WPP.L, WPPGY) for IBM to transform and manage WPP’s global technology platform. The deal will enable WPP to accelerate its digital transformation and global leadership.

"This announcement is a significant milestone in the deployment of enterprise cloud and extends IBM’s position as the premier global cloud platform. Our secure, open enterprise cloud platform will enable WPP to quickly deliver new innovations to their customers," said Erich Clementi, Senior Vice President, IBM Global Technology Services…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

The pool of online data analysis services available for corporate users is about to grow larger, with Hewlett-Packard set to offer two of its own products as hosted cloud services by early next year. The company’s high-performance columnar database, Vertica, will be available as a hosted offering starting early in 2015, as HP Vertica OnDemand.

The company will also offer selected functions of its IDOL (Intelligent Data Operating Layer) text processing software as discrete services that can be embedded into mobile and desktop computing applications, in a package called IDOL OnDemand, already available to selected developers…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Matt Turck.

The frenzy around the Internet of Things (IoT) should be reaching its final countdown. There has been a period of extraordinary activity in the IoT space since this original attempt at charting the ecosystem for TechCrunch. While the Internet of Things will inevitably ride the ups and downs of inflated hype and unmet expectations, at this stage there’s no putting the genie back in the bottle.

The IoT is propelled by an exceptional convergence of trends (mobile phone ubiquity, open hardware, big data, the resurrection of AI, cloud computing, 3D printing and crowdfunding). There’s also an element of self-fulfilling prophecy at play, with enterprises, consumers, retailers and the press all equally excited about the possibilities. As a result, the IoT space is now reaching escape velocity…

Grazed from BetaNews. Author: Vivek Vahie.

One of the current challenges for a business IT team is supporting a variety of desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile end user devices for employees. This task can be a considerable overhead in terms of time, resource and cost. Physical desktops are not only expensive, insecure, and maintenance heavy, they are also not necessarily a good fit for an increasingly mobile and demanding workforce.

The groundswell of Windows 7 migration plans, an expanding virtual workforce, the growing popularity of mobile devices, and tighter IT budgets each point to the need to re-evaluate desktop strategies. While virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) seems like a promising alternative to managing physical desktops and mobiles, in reality, it’s too costly and complex for most companies to implement successfully…

Grazed from GigaOm. Author: Jonathon Vanian.

For the past several months, it seemed like Docker was on its way to becoming the de-facto standard for container technology, the hottest thing in cloud computing in 2014. Then along came CoreOS, which dropped a bomb (or in this case, a rocket) on Monday, kicking off what could become a container-standardization war between the two entities.

CoreOS’s announcement that it has built a container engine that can potentially compete with Docker’s container technology caused quite a commotion within the tech community on Monday. Docker has enjoyed a swift ride to prominence past year with its container skills catching on with some of the biggest names in the industry, such as Google, Amazon and Microsoft…