Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

IBM has today announced the IBM Global Entrepreneur Program for Cloud Startups, which aims to help aspiring firms to the tune of $120,000 (£75,000) if they get a foot up on IBM’s cloud platform. Those who get the funding will be able to access the entire set of jewels in IBM’s cloudy crown, including SoftLayer infrastructure, Aspera’s data transfer, Cloudant’s database as a service, and Twitter’s social analytics, after the firms’ partnership was announced earlier this month.

Big Blue is also offering face to face events, as well as CIO and entrepreneur meet-ups for successful startups. With over four million developers and 143,000 companies in the IBM cloud ecosystem, IBM claims it has the widest range of cloud services out there. The firm certainly feels as though it’s got the largest in terms of funding, trilling in its press literature the $120k is greater than Google ($100k), Microsoft Azure ($60k) and Amazon Web Services’ ($15k) offerings…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has had its fair share of success in a variety of markets and verticals, and now the public cloud provider is hoping a new designation will give it a significant boost in the life sciences and healthcare industries. Amazon is claiming to be the first cloud services provider to achieve the ISO 9001 certification. According to Jeff Barr, Amazon Web Services’ chief evangelist, "This certification allows AWS customers to run their quality-controlled IT workloads in the AWS cloud. It signifies that AWS has undergone a systematic, independent examination of our quality system. This quality system was found to have been implemented effectively and has been awarded an ISO 9001 certification as a result."

Of course, ISO 9001 certification is likely to be of most interest to the life sciences and healthcare verticals, as they have an FDA-mandated obligation to operate a quality management program, Barr noted. With this certification, Amazon seems intent on targeting drug manufacturers, laboratories and firms conducting clinical trials…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Editorial Staff.

Box, Dropbox and Mozy are just a few of the many large players in the enterprise cloud computing space competing for your clients’ attention. While these companies undoubtedly have the advantage when it comes to brand-name recognition, they cannot match your local, trusted presence as an MSP. Here are three ways in which you, as your clients’ trusted IT partner, can stand out in the crowded cloud computing space and successfully compete against the big players.

1. Brand your IT services under your own name

If you’re merely reselling the offerings of corporate giants, such as Box or Carbonite, you’re likely taking the wrong approach to maximizing your revenue and profits. Most large brands force their brand on your clients, limit customization options and cap the margin opportunity for their channel partners. Consequently, by just reselling these brand-name cloud products and services, you’ll get squeezed by low margins–probably not the business model you want to pursue…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mary K. Pratt.

Martin Slominis had a problem familiar to lots of IT executives: His staff didn’t have the capacity to fulfill all the demands users put on his department. So he did what technologists do best and used technology to solve the problem. Specifically, he turned to cloud computing.

“Cloud was an easy way to multiply our resources,” says Slominis, vice president of management information systems at the Wayne State University Physician Group in Detroit. His organization started moving applications to the cloud several years ago to save money, increase agility and improve flexibility while reducing the maintenance work his team had to handle…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworld.com/article/2843861/cloud-computing-claims-a-pivotal-role-in-2015.html

Grazed from ProgrammableWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Before investing in any new technology, an organisation must first establish whether that technology will meet the businesses’ needs. Similarly, the organisation must scrutinise the technology and its provider, to make sure it is up to standard with the company’s security and compliance requirements.

One such example of this, says John McLoughlin, MD of J2 Software, a distributor of SkyView Partners’ managed security solutions, is cloud computing. “The business benefits of cloud computing are widely accepted and documented, however, whether or not cloud computing meets your business requirements is dependent on the type of data being stored, accessed, and shared in the cloud.”…

Grazed from BusinessInsider.  Author: Julie Bort.

Cloud computing has completely changed the tech industry, but it’s got a dark side for the companies competing in the market, something those in the industry call "the race to zero."  There’s so much competition in the cloud industry that cloud companies keep cutting their prices, even while they increase their storage limits.

There’s a couple of reasons for this. For one, computer storage keeps getting cheaper. A gigabyte’s worth of storage on a hard drive in 1993 cost over $9,000, but it cost a mere 4 cents in 2013…

Read more from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/cloud-storage-race-to-zero-2014-11

Grazed from Washington Post.  Author: Editorial Staff.

As of now, the top three most widely used U.S. search engines, by a considerable margin, are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. If you live in this country and you are actually online, there’s well over a 90 percent chance that you use one of them, according to the web data company comScore.  This we all know. But what few people realize is that if you are using these searches, it is growing more and more likely that you are also engaging in what is, in effect, a green pattern of Internet use.

The reason? Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are part of a growing number of tech and other major companies that are entering into long-term “power purchase” agreements (PPAs) with wind farms to ensure a steady stream of power, at a fixed cost, over a period as long as several decades. Most recently, last month Yahoo signed such a deal for wind power in the Great Plains with OwnEnergy, a wind energy developer…

Grazed from CCI.  Author: Editorial Staff.

For those looking to dive into cloud for the first time, Rick Delgado picks the top five things to consider when looking to create a cloud solution.  Companies are always on the lookout for new trends, tools and technologies and how they can incorporate the latest developments into their business. The hard part is finding where to start, and how to build a strategy around new features.

Such is the case with cloud computing. So many companies are recognising the cost-saving benefits and diminished IT risks and responsibilities by operating within the cloud. Company leadership is pushing for cloud integration, but many don’t have specific goals in mind. As a result, it can be difficult to determine where to begin…

Grazed from TechGenMag.  Author: Henry Festa.

Gone are the days when computer engineers and software developers worked together in developing innovative products that inspired the participation of users all over the world. Instead of an open source approach to program and hardware development with the PC at its center, the tech industry now promotes forced adaptability.

First came generalized OS configurations meant to service larger consumer bases at the expense of variety. Next, the explosion of apps gave way to anything and everything digital moving online. And now, with the future of traditional home computing in limbo, Big Data has set up one-size, fits-all cloud computing interconnectedness and all of a sudden the personal computer is no longer personal…

Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: David H. Deans.

We’re nearing the end of 2014 and most smart CEOs already know their IT transformation game plan for 2015 – more digital differentiation woven into the fabric of their essential operations. Every enterprise is now a digital business, regardless of the industry. That’s why digital service innovators are in such high demand. Meanwhile, many of the more traditional IT process-oriented jobs will diminish in importance.

Are you evolving your IT support team’s roles and responsibilities, as a result these key trends? Forward-thinking CIOs and IT managers have already embraced business technology that will do some of the more tedious routine system administration tasks via automation, so that they can redirect their focus to higher-priority activities…