Grazed from HSToday.  Author: Kylie Bull.

Dell’s first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI), released November 4 at Dell World 2014, found security is the biggest concern in adopting cloud, mobility and big data.  The market research surveyed more than 2,000 global organizations and discovered that while 97 percent of those surveyed use or plan to use cloud services and nearly half have implemented a mobility strategy, big data adoption is trailing as approximately 60 percent of organizations surveyed do not know how to gain its insights.

While big data has proven marketing benefits, infrastructure costs and security tend to be the primary obstacles for implementing big data initiatives.  The Dell GTAI found IT decision-makers still consider security the biggest barrier for expanding mobility technologies (44 percent), using cloud computing (52 percent) and leveraging big data (35 percent)…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Joseph. Tsidulko.

Amazon Web Services introduced on Friday a new certification level and exam to validate the advanced skills of developers building applications on its public cloud platform.  The new DevOps Engineer Certification validates the technical expertise of software architects, developers and solution providers in provisioning, operating and managing distributed application systems on Amazon’s cloud. It’s the next step for AWS pros who have already earned the ranks of Certified Developer and SysOps Administrator.

"As you probably know, DevOps practices increase IT efficiency for your business, allowing you to respond more quickly to your customers by providing stable, secure and predictable IT environments," wrote Jeff Barr, Amazon’s cloud evangelist, on the AWS blog…

Read more from the source @ http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300074739/aws-adds-new-certification-for-devops-pros.htm

Grazed from FederalTimes. Author: Aaron Boyd.

The Department of Defense will be releasing an updated cloud computing policy within the next two weeks, acting department CIO Terry Halvorsen said Thursday. The re-write of the 2012 policy is intended to speed up the procurement process by giving more purchasing authority to individual agencies.

“I was not really thrilled with the original cloud policy that came out,” Halvorsen said. “Mostly because I don’t think we were getting the cloud fast enough.” Noting that you should be careful what you wish for, Halvorsen was tasked with revamping the existing policy to speed up the process without sacrificing agencies’ strict security needs…

Read more from the source @ http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20141107/FEDIT03/311070014/DoD-s-new-cloud-policy-coming-two-weeks

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Cloud computing provider Joyent has long been respected for its technological chops, but has struggled to find an identity among a sea of cloud providers and technologies with much larger operations and much larger marketing budgets. Now, the tides might finally be shifting in Joyent’s direction — and it’s doing everything it can to ride them.

Last week, it was the announcement of a $15 million investment and a repositioning of itself as an infrastructure platform that’s all about containers. The company has actually been touting its container approach for years, but the fast rise of technologies such as Docker, CoreOS and Google’s Kubernetes container-management system has put containers at the top of a lot of minds. On Thursday, Joyent took an even bigger step by open sourcing the code that powers its cloud computing and object storage systems, respectively called SmartDataCenter and Manta…

Grazed from BCN. Author: Tim Skinner.

HP has announced it will begin developing original NFV capabilities in partnership with network virtualization specialist Wind River. Carrier-grade network technologies from Wind River will be integrated into HP’s Helion OpenStack technology, and is intended to provide service providers with an open-source based cloud platform bringing enhanced reliability to NFV.

HP claims the cloud-enabled NFV platform will deliver enhanced reliability, performance and manageability by utilising a Linux and kernel-based virtual machine hypervisor. Combined with self-healing properties, high performance vSwitch-based networking, and advanced orchestration of workloads, HP claims the solution will include the three primary properties being demanded by carriers for an NFV platform…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimsberger.

Promising new options for cloud platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are keeping enterprise IT in the news these days. Just look at the long list of software-defined networking tools and services Google announced Nov. 4. These kinds of options are what Forrester predicts will lead to a $191 billion public cloud market by 2020.

While these new technologies allow IT to innovate faster for less money, it’s important to remember that cloud and SaaS need to be integrated to realize their full potential. Unfortunately, full integration among business systems continues to be a rare occurrence. With enterprise IT facing new promises and challenges in the cloud, its ability to integrate SaaS applications can often be the difference between transforming company culture with successful user adoption and running damage control for a failed IT project…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud computing is recognized by governments and private sector organizations as major, game-changing technology. It focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of shared resources. Whereas formerly most software programmes ran on a personal computer, cloud computing uses large networks of remote servers.

These enable the sharing of data-processing tasks, centralized storage and online access to computer services throughout the Internet. However, with the multitude of offerings and their fast-pace development, the need to ensure quality and compatibility through standardization was paramount…

Grazed from PrivacyLawBlog. Author: Mark Webber.

The summer of 2014 saw another ISO Standard published by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). ISO27018:2014 is a voluntary standard governing the processing of personal data in the public cloud. With the catchy title of “Information technology – Security techniques – Code of the practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors” (“ISO27018“), it is perhaps not surprising that this long awaited standard is yet to slip off the tongue of every cloud enthusiast. European readers may have assumed references to PII meant this standard was framed firmly on the US – wrong!

What is ISO27018?

ISO27018 sets out a framework of “commonly accepted control objectives, controls and guidelines” which can be followed by any data processors processing personal data on behalf of another party in the public cloud. ISO27018 has been crafted by ISO to have broad application from large to small and from public entity to government of non-profit…

Read more from the source @ http://privacylawblog.fieldfisher.com/2014/a-new-iso-standard-for-cloud-computing?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-iso-standard-for-cloud-computing

Grazed from Economic Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

The cloud market in India is heating up with the top four players — Amazon, Google, Microsoft and International Business Machines — trying different tactics to gain control over the still very nascent market here. Microsoft, which offers public cloud services under the Azure brand, says competing on price can no more be the strategy for cloud and it therefore is working on additional higher value services on top of its commoditised cloud offerings.

Amazon, which has cut cloud prices as many as 45 times since 2006, is forcing competitors to do the same, in turn impacting profitability and forcing them to look at other avenues to make money. Google on Tuesday announced a price reduction for cloud services, but corporate vice-president for Microsoft Azure Jason Zander said the company will not cut prices unless Amazon also decides to do so again….

Grazed from Computing. Author: Sooraj Shah.

Intel Capital, the global investment arm of chip giant Intel, has invested in 16 new companies covering a range of areas within IT, including big data analytics, the Internet of Things and cloud computing. The organisation has invested in Gigya, a Mountain View, California-based maker of a cloud-based customer identity-management platform that supposedly helps clients turn unknown web or mobile visitors into loyal and engaged customers.

Another US-headquartered company it has invested in is drone technology maker PrecisionHawk. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company uses a small, unmanned aerial vehicle and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyse aerial data for clients within "civilian industries"…