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…

Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: Paul Mah.

FierceCIO had the opportunity to speak to Stephen Schmidt, the vice president of security engineering and the chief information security officer of Amazon Web Services, on the sidelines of the re:Invent 2014 conference last month. We were curious as to what the head of security for the world’s largest public cloud service had to share regarding top enterprise security concerns, as well as what it takes to keep AWS secure.

Top enterprise concerns

"The biggest concern that I hear from customers is that they don’t get the division of responsibility right," said Schmidt in response to our first question. "It’s a shared responsibility. We are responsible for the bottom layer. We are responsible from the floor of the data center up to the hypervisor," he said…

Grazed from VirtualizationReview. Author: Keith Ward.

Open source is becoming an increasingly attractive option for companies in the cloud, or planning on moving to it. And of those companies, a clear choice has emerged as their No. 1 option: OpenStack. So say the 376 respondents to an Open Source Cloud survey conducted by Zenoss, a vendor specializing in cloud-based management.

Its "2014 State of the Open Source Cloud" study found that 69 percent have implemented some form of cloud computing; of that number, 43 percent have cast their lot with open source. Of those, 69 percent are using OpenStack, which has been on a meteoric growth curve over the last several years…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

We at Talkin’ Cloud want to know your perspective on how cloud computing technology such as software as a service (SaaS), infrastructure as a service (IaaS) and platform as a service (PaaS) will impact the channel in 2015. And if you act immediately, you’ll even receive a small (but useful) gift of appreciation for your participation. Sounds like a good deal for opinonated channel partners, no?

To help us further understand the insights of our channel partners, Talkin’ Cloud made the decision to work with PartnerPath on its State of Partnering annual study, which measures the priorities and challenges in partnering from both the vendor and solution provider perspectives. The survey takes about 10 minutes to complete…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-research/12012014/channel-partners-needed-wheres-cloud-heading-2015

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

Some interesting research came out last month regarding the enterprise’s attitude toward the cloud and what it will take to push more of the data load, and mission-critical functions in particular, off of local infrastructure. It turns out that while security and availability are still prime concerns, flexibility and federation across multiple cloud architectures are equally important.

In IDG’s most recent Enterprise Cloud Computing Study, more than a third of IT respondents say they are comfortable with the current state of cloud technology, with about two thirds saying the cloud increases agility and employee collaboration. The key data, however, comes in the attitude toward advanced networking technologies like software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualization (NFV), with more than 60 percent saying they plan to increase their investment in these areas specifically to enhance their ability to access and manage disparate cloud environments…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itbusinessedge.coam/blogs/infrastructure/working-our-way-toward-the-federated-cloud.html

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Todd Bishop.

Microsoft investors will gather Wednesday morning for a yearly tradition, the company’s annual shareholders meeting at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Wash. It’s Satya Nadella’s first shareholders meeting since becoming CEO nine months ago, and it caps a year of massive change for the company.

If Nadella follows the tradition set by his predecessors, he will give a broad update on the company and do his best to persuade shareholders to buy into his vision. That vision, in his words, is to make Microsoft the “productivity and platform company for the mobile-first, cloud-first world.”…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

Docker is the hottest new idea in the world of cloud computing, a technology embraced by Silicon Valley’s elite engineers and backed the industry’s biggest names, including Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Based on technologies that have long powered Google’s own online empire, it promises to overhaul software development across the net, providing a simpler and more efficient means of building and operating websites and other massive online applications.

But some of Docker’s earliest supporters now believe that the company behind the technology, also called Docker, has strayed from its original mission, and they’re exploring a new project that aims to rebuild this kind of technology from scratch. On Monday, a San Francisco startup called CoreOS unveiled an open source software project called Rocket, billing it as a Docker alternative that’s closer to what Docker was originally designed to be…