Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Kat Popovic.

The more I read, the more it’s becoming clear that it’s midsize businesses who have the most to lose in the cloud.(Ironically, they also have the most to gain from a move to the cloud, so go figure!). The upside is that the shift to cloud based computing has made it possible for small and midsize businesses (SMB’s) to access software and applications they previously may not have been able to afford, which is pretty cool.

According to a report by Techaisle, 25% of firms with 100-999 employees are using one or more cloud computing-based systems. And these numbers are on the rise. The advantages are clear: cloud computing lowers costs and frees up time, money and resources to focus on productivity, innovation, and reaching new clients…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Heather Clancy.

Stealthy startup Bracket Computing made its debut last month with more than $85 million in backing for its radical virtualization technology, which allows businesses to move computing workloads from cloud to cloud more easily. The vision is to help organizations process applications wherever it makes the most sense from a cost or resource perspectives.

The approach could also be used to bridge operations between on-site servers and those hosted in a cloud service. "When you have a million servers at your disposal, you have the appearance of an infinite resource," said Bracket CEO Tom Gillis. "Our question to ourselves was: can we build a layer that could present applications with highly reliable and secure performance?"…

Grazed from The Australian. Author: Stuart Kennedy.

An upbeat Mr Dell took Dell private a year ago and was touting the ability of his firm to bring products to market quicker than as a public company. He described the new DCS XA90 storage unit as being capable of holding 90 3.5-inch drives in one 4U chassis and able to store 720 terabytes.

“This thing is cloud scale storage to the max,” said Mr Dell at the firm’s annual Dell World user and partner event in Austin, Texas. Dell also announced a number of fresh servers and an all flash memory storage array that sells for about US$25,000. Mr Dell described it as the cheapest all flash array from any major vendor…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Jeff John Roberts.

Microsoft is the midst of a defiant stand against the federal government, insisting that a U.S. search warrant can’t force it to turn over emails located on a server in Ireland. The company has even taken the unusual step of opening itself to a contempt of court order, as part of a larger plan to reassure cloud computer customers in other countries that their data is safe from U.S. surveillance.

But now Microsoft’s high-profile legal campaign, which has received support from the likes of Apple and Cisco, could get under cut from another quarter: the FBI is quietly lobbying Congress to rewrite the rules for search warrants in order to expand their reach. If the lawmakers agree, this would mean that “searches” authorized by American judges would no longer be restricted to a specific geographic location in the United States (which is how search warrants typically work.)…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Lori MacVittie.

The verdict is in. Organizations are going to settle on cloud, but they’re settling on a mixture of private (on-premise) and public (off-premise). Hybrid, in the common nomenclature.

• 74 percent of enterprises have a hybrid cloud strategy (RightScale, 2014 State of the Cloud Survey).
• 55 percent of respondents expect to have hybrid cloud in place within the next two years (NorthBridge Ventures & GigaOm Research, 2014 Future of Cloud Computing).
• Of the 36 percent of organizations running private clouds, nearly a third have hybrid systems (InformationWeek, Hybrid Cloud Survey).
• Half of all enterprises will have hybrid clouds by 2017 (Gartner Research). That paints a pretty picture for someone like Microsoft who, being what many considered ‘late’ to the cloud game, is giving leaders like Amazon and Google a run for their money. Literally…

Grazed from BroadGroup. Author: PR Announcement.

Outstanding players in datacentre and cloud are being asked to nominate themselves for the annual Datacloud Awards 2015 which will be presented at a gala ceremony that takes place in Monaco, 2nd June 2015. Now in its 8th year, the Judges have sought to set the bar even higher for 2015 and are seeking exemplar companies that demonstrate excellence and inviting nominations from service providers and end user organizations across Europe.

As such this year’s categories are designed to reflect changes in markets and technologies, but retain their focus on recognising excellence across the datacentre and cloud sector. Four main Awards will be given for datacentre companies, and four prizes for Cloud. Both datacentre and cloud will hold one prestigious accolade each of Prix européen…

Grazed from ISC. Author: PR Announcement.

Celebrating their 30th conference anniversary, the organizers of ISC High Performance are pleased to announce that the 2015 technical content will be strikingly broad in subject matter, differentiated and timely. Over 2,600 attendees will gather in Frankfurt, from July 12 – 16, to discuss their organizational needs and the industry’s challenges, as well as learn about the latest research, products and solutions. The conference will be supported by a comprehensive exhibition, hosting over 160 vendors and international research organizations covering all areas of HPC.

Topics for the technical content have been selected under the direction of the ISC 2015 Program Chair, Prof Dr. Arndt Bode, along with a dedicated team of 39 experts serving as the conference’s steering committee. These individuals bring their own research interests and areas of focus into the program, thus opening up the 2015 invited talks to a range of unique topics and speakers. ISC High Performance is the only yearly international HPC forum that introduces over 300 hand-picked speakers to their attendees…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Kevin L. Jackson.

This week Dell released its first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI). This survey of more than 2,000 global organizations took a close look at how organizations are truly using security, cloud, mobility and big data to drive success. While the data collected from this effort should put to rest any doubts about the value of cloud computing, it also calls into question our collective mental state. Are half of us schizophrenic?

The survey data showed that 97 percent of organizations surveyed use or plan to use cloud. This high percentage is not surprising given that the data also showed a strong correlation between cloud use and company growth. Of those using cloud, 72 percent of organizations surveyed experienced 6 percent growth or more in the last three years, with just 4 percent experiencing zero or negative growth…

Grazed from Porticor. Author: PR Announcement.

Porticor, a leading cloud data security company delivering the only cloud-based key management and data encryption solution that infuses trust into the cloud and keeps cloud data confidential, today announced that its latest Porticor Virtual Private Data (VPD) release supports the OpenStack cloud operating system, securing datacenter information across compute, storage, and networking resources.

The Porticor Virtual Private Data system is the industry’s only solution combining patented split-key encryption and homomorphic key management technologies with data encryption to protect critical data in public, private and hybrid cloud environments. OpenStack customers can now leverage the Porticor technology for key management and data encryption in a pure OpenStack deployment, or in a hybrid environment, such as across a private VMware cloud, OpenStack and Amazon Web Services…

Grazed from HindiBusinessLine. Author: Editorial Staff.

Wipro has expanded its partnership with Red Hat to accelerate the deployment of open source-based hybrid cloud computing solutions. As part of the expanded collaboration, Red Hat and Wipro will work together to develop and deliver enterprise-grade cloud solutions to the market, and will also jointly deliver next-generation developer and operations-related solutions for integration and testing, according to a company statement.

As part of this most recent alliance expansion, Wipro becomes a Premier, Global Systems Integrator for Red Hat. With the expansion, Wipro’s open source infrastructure solution stack now includes Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization, Red Hat Satellite, Red Hat CloudForms, Red Hat Enterprise Linux OpenStack Platform, and OpenShift, the statement added…