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…

Grazed from BreakingFinanceNews. Author: Toi Williams.

International Business Machines (NYSE: IBM) has announced that it signed a 10-year, $10 billion deal with ABN AMRO to provide cloud services to the banking company. The multibillion-dollar service agreement includes the management of the IT infrastructure of the bank and the implementation of a private cloud for the bank’s global operations. ABN AMRO is based in the Netherlands and serves private, corporate, and retail banking customers.

The contract with IBM includes fully managed services for servers, storage, end-user computing, application support, and a help desk. The 10-year agreement also includes the standardization and simplification of the bank’s entire IT landscape. IBM will handle a wide variety of IT tasks for the company, including upgrading its mobile computing operations and maintaining the company’s existing mainframe infrastructure…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ben Kepes.

A new initiative backed by IBM and with the involvement of a number of second-tier European vendors was recently launched. It’s always interesting to see these “open initiatives” – they’re generally heralded by triumphant sounding press releases, marketing department-fuelled hyperbole and little else.

Over the past half dozen years or so I have been amazed at the number of times these things have been launched (and, as an aside, does anyone else notice that IBM IBM -0.17% is often the central figure in these deals?). I’ve seen, off the top of my head: DCRM, DMTF, OCCI, ODCA, OSIMM, OVF, SNMP, TOSCA, CAMP… you get the idea. Of these acronyms and initiatives, very few still exist, and even less gained any real traction…

Grazed from BizJournals. Author: Efrat Kasznik.

Software vendors across the world are embracing the software-as-a-service (SaaS) cloud-based business model in growing numbers. According to Software Equity Group, SaaS software revenues will likely represent about 25 percent of the overall software market in the next five years. Research firm Gartner estimated that global spending on SaaS will reach $22.1 billion by 2015.

Some software vendors are converting their software delivery and revenue models to SaaS, while others acquire SaaS companies to gain access to this market. SaaS mergers and acquisitions transactions grew 25 percent last year, and the median SaaS exit multiple was more than double that paid for traditional, on-premise software targets, according to the Software Equity Group…

Read more from the source @ http://www.bizjournals.com/bizjournals/how-to/funding/2014/12/how-the-saas-business-model-affects-valuations.html

Grazed from RenaissanceCapital. Author: PR Announcement.

Workiva, which offers a SaaS platform used by companies to manage the SEC filing process, announced terms for its IPO on Monday. The Ames, IA-based company plans to raise $101 million by offering 7.2 million shares at a price range of $13 to $15. At the midpoint of the proposed range, Workiva would command a fully diluted market value of $581 million.

Workiva had 2,176 customers as of September 30, with 60% of both the Fortune 500 and Fortune 100, including The Coca-Cola Company, Wal-Mart, Cardinal Health, Boeing, Credit Suisse, Google and Chevron. Its ten largest customers make up 5% of revenue. The company’s subscription revenue retention rate was 97% as of September 30, and 108% including additional seats purchased by existing customers. The company’s management team will collectively own 82% voting power-post IPO…