Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: Jason Bloomberg.

Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Amazon.com cloud computing juggernaut, wrapped up its annual reInvent conference in Las Vegas last week. Host to many thousands of AWS devotees, hundreds of exhibiting partners, and dozens of press and analysts – but not myself. You see, I wasn’t invited.

Not for want of trying, mind you. It didn’t matter that I had attended last year as an analyst, or that I write about them regularly, or even that my opinion of them has generally been quite favorable. You’d think that with my new role as contributor to Forbes on the topic of digital transformation, I’d be a shoe-in for one of the coveted press/analyst passes. Didn’t happen…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

Last week there was so much going on at AWS Re:invent, I missed a lot – even some eyebrow-raising stuff. Like for instance, that OpenStack-oriented Rackspace will now support and sell Microsoft Azure services. Second, Microsoft-oriented Apprenda private PaaS will now run on Amazon Web Services.

First Rackspace. It joined the Microsoft Cloud OS Network meaning it will run Windows Server, Hyper-V, System Center and Azure Pack in its U.S. data centers. That means it will provide service and support to its customers for all that infrastructure as well as Microsoft applications like Exchange, SharePoint and Lync running on that stack…

Grazed from NSEWT.com.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Google has helped launch an ambitious project combining cloud computing, big data and satellite networks to monitor global fishing activity with an eye to curb overfishing. Global Fishing Watch, formed with environmental groups Skytruth and Oceana, is described as the first global view of commercial fishing based on satellite data analysis.

It’s intended to "give citizens a simple, online platform to visualize, track and share information about fishing activity worldwide," according to a release from Oceana. A prototype of the system was shown off Friday at the 2014 International Union for Conservation of Nature World Parks Congress in Sydney, Australia, where Google is hosting a mapping workshop. A public release version of the project is still in development…

Grazed from BusinessInsider.  Author: Julie Bort.

A tiny startup called Docker, which launched a mere 19 months ago and gives its software away for free, has become a huge industry phenom.  The biggest names in tech have been calling it up and asking it to be their partner.

In the past few months Dell, HP, Google, IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat, VMware and others have all asked to join forces with this 31-employee company.  On Thursday, Amazon got cheers at its customers when it announced it would be supporting Docker, too…

Grazed from Zefflin.  Author: PR Announcement.

 Systems integration startup Zefflin Systems, L.L.C. today announced its entry into the IT marketplace. Zefflin brings state-of-the-art data center automation and private cloud solutions to market using leading technologies like OpenStack, VMWare VCloud® Suite and Chef® software. Zefflins unique combination of tools, integration skills and experience brings affordable solutions designed to dramatically increase productivity of IT staff.

To support growing business units with flat or shrinking IT budgets, todays CIO has no choice but to increase IT staff productivity dramatically. At the same time, IT departments are faced with the need to improve the speed of service while maintaining a secure computing environment…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

There are already billions of devices — from forks to jet engines – connected to the internet, and all signs point to a huge surge in the coming years. Cisco, for example, predicts 21 billion of them in 2018, up from 13 billion in 2013. But despite those numbers, the companies that will be storing all that device data are less concerned sheer volume and more concerned about making it usable.

On the Amazon Web Services cloud, where anecdotal evidence suggests a large percentage IoT applications run, all that connected data is just a drop in an enormous bucket. Matt Wood, the company’s general manager of data science, said the world of big data has matured so much over the past few years that, for example, customers regularly spin up thousands of cores to process large datasets…

Grazed from Yibada.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft, a U.S.-based multinational technology firm, overtook ExxonMobil, an American oil and gas company, as the second most valuable company next to Apple Inc.  Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has proven to be a strong leader for the firm this year. The CEO reformulated the company’s budgeting while also downsizing jobs.

Nadella pledged to put more effort into developing the company’s mobile technology, which it did through the acquisition of the Nokia Lumia line of smartphones…

Grazed from Sci-Tech.  Author: Shirley Siluk.

hanging IT needs will drive more enterprises away from in-house data centers to off-site facilities in coming years, according to a new forecast from the analyst firm IDC. The future will also see a rise in super-size "mega datacenters," leading to a decline in the overall number of data centers around the world even as total data center space keeps growing, the report stated.

According to the IDC forecast, released earlier this week, the total number of data centers will peak at 8.6 million in 2017 and then start to decline. However, total data center space will increase globally, rising from 1.58 billion square feet in 2013 to 1.94 billion square feet by 2018…

Grazed from VirtualizationReview.  Author: Dan Kuznetsky.

Marc Crespi, CEO of OneCloud Software , came by to introduce his company and its product, OneCloud Recovery (OCR). OCR is designed to integrate virtual data centers created on-premise and move them to Amazon’s Web Services (AWS). Doing this task quickly, reliably and manageably is the challenge OneCloud Software has had to face.

OneCloud’s Secret Sauce

The secret sauce, OneCloud Software would say, is its Automated Cloud Engine (ACE), which has the ability to reach into the customer’s VMware infrastructure. Here’s how the company describes ACE:…

Grazed from PolicyChargingControl.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Toshiba and Cisco this week signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the aim of enhancing the progress of a new Smart Community by extending collaboration on new ways to utilize the Internet of Everything (IoE) to improve processes, productivity and experiences in manufacturing, transportation and city environments. The global collaboration is intended to bring together the Cisco Fog Computing network environment featuring Cisco’s network-wide security solution with the Toshiba Group’s endpoint management technology.

Toshiba seeks to generate new value by connecting its energy, health care, storage products and services using cloud computing, big data and analytics technologies, with the goal of creating a Human Smart Community: a safe, secure, and comfortable society…