Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Steve Ranger.

For an industry run according to logic and rationality, at least outwardly, the tech world seems to have a surprising weakness for hype and the ‘next big thing’. Perhaps that’s because, unlike — say — in sales or HR, where innovation is defined by new management strategies, tech investment is very product driven.

Buying a new piece of hardware or software often carries the potential for a ‘disruptive’ breakthrough in productivity or some other essential business metric. Tech suppliers therefore have a vested interest in promoting their products as vigorously as possible: the level of spending on marketing and customer acquisition by some fast-growing tech companies would turn many consumer brands green with envy…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Mining companies around the world are facing many challenges, such as managing unique operational complexities and staying profitable in tough economic times, under tremendous global pressures. "Cloud has long been touted as one of the Internet’s greatest success stories, revolutionising many industries by improving operations, efficiencies, accuracy and so on," says Richard Vester, director of Cloud Services at EOH. "Mining is no different, and we are seeing organisations in this sector realising the potential of cloud in transforming the industry, and slowly embarking on a cloud journey."

Vester says cloud is set to be a major driver for growth in the mining industry, which is very competitive, and deals with fixed resources. "Mining organisations who adopt cloud can look forward to vast improvements in operations and well as major returns on investments. At the same time, adopting cloud will greatly reduce general running costs."…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138964:Mining-benefits-from-cloud-adoption

Grazed from TheHill. Author: Cory Bennett.

U.S. tech companies are worried a German law under debate could bar them from doing business in that country if it is approved. The bill could require companies to turn over source code and proprietary data to the German government or to private critical infrastructure companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

U.S. companies see the language as a way to exclude them from government contracts, given German fears over the National Surveillance Agency’s (NSA) ability to access U.S. companies’ data. Although the bill is still in draft form, it is expected to eventually pass. The measure is the latest in a long string of incidents that have U.S. businesses worrying about lost revenue overseas following the disclosures of NSA spying programs…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Patrick Moorhead.

This weekend was Formula 1 racing weekend. In my hometown, Austin Texas. Many may not believe it, but Austin is actually home to a US Formula 1 race track, and there are other international races here. Each year tens of thousands come from all around the world, representing the pinnacle of wealth, and they descend on Austin, the same town that boasts a “keep Austin weird” campaign.

As unlikely as that seems to be as a combination, it is similar to the combination of Stratus and high availability private clouds. When most think about the move to private cloud, they think about more conservative vendors like VMware VMW +1.57% and IBM IBM -0.4% leading customers down that path, but in reality, something that all of the big vendors still don’t have in their OpenStack solutions – high availability – is being delivered by Stratus, a company that cut its teeth on the idea of “always on” computing in the enterprise. Download our paper for detail on how they are making this happen…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2014/11/03/does-stratus-have-the-formula-for-success/

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Annoucement.

New research released today by CompTIA, the information technology (IT) industry association, reveals that more than 90 percent of companies are using some form of cloud computing, a clear indication that the cloud has quickly become an essential ingredient of modern IT.

CompTIA has defined four stages of cloud adoption: Experiment, Non-critical Use, Full Production and Transformed IT. Companies will move through these stages based on several factors, including technical know-how, risk tolerance and budgetary constraints.  But as users move beyond experiments and trials into more advanced applications, they’re also facing more challenges, according to CompTIA’s Fifth Annual Trends in Cloud Computing study…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Editorial Staff.

The problem with encrypting data is that sooner or later, you have to decrypt it. Keep your cloud files cryptographically scrambled using a secret key that only you possess, and it’s likely no hacker will have the codebreaking resources necessary to crack them. But as soon as you want to actually do something with those files—anything from editing a word document or querying a database of financial data—you have to unlock the data and leave it vulnerable. Homomorphic encryption, a still-mostly-theoretical advancement in the science of keeping secrets, could change that.

A homomorphic encryption scheme is a crypto system that allows computations to be performed on data without decrypting it. A homomorphically encrypted search engine, for instance, could take in encrypted search terms and compare them with an encrypted index of the web. Or a homomorphically encrypted financial database stored in the cloud would allow users to ask how much money an employee earned in the second quarter of 2013…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Divina Paredes.

Cloud computing is uniquely susceptible to the perils of myths due to the nature, confusion and hype surrounding it, says David Mitchell Smith, Gartner vice president and fellow. Myths are sometimes harmless but they do have an effect on how we approach solutions and can impede innovation, he states in a recent research paper. “Many myths are rooted in fear and misunderstanding. They can drive decisions and strategies based on fear and this leads to oversimplifications and mantras that are the real dangers.”

Even with a mostly agreed on formal definition, multiple perspectives and agendas still conspire to mystify the subject ever more. Add the incessant hype and there can be a resultant confusion that permeates IT (and beyond) today, he says. He lists some of the most “dangerous and misleading” cloud myths…

Grazed from Dell. Author: PR Announcement.

Dell recently unveiled its most advanced and easy-to-manage portfolio of PowerEdge servers, designed to help customers worldwide address and optimize the evolving spectrum of application and workload requirements. The new Dell PowerEdge portfolio– which begins with five form-factors across blade, rack and tower servers– provides customers with choice in how they address industry trends including cloud computing, mobility, big data, and software-defined.

These are factors that more than 80 percent of IT decision-makers report as investment priorities for the next 12 months, according to the Future Ready IT survey, recent worldwide research commissioned by Dell and Intel…

Grazed from VMTurbo.  Author: Webinar Announcement.

How to Deliver Real-Time Automation & Hyperscale Operations – with a VDI use case from a Fortune 50 Health Insurer

OpenSky Corp. helps transform IT infrastructure for the world’s most innovative clients, and was specifically tasked by a Fortune 50 Health Insurer to increase the efficiency of its VDI environment and guarantee zero downtime… all while scaling from 1,500 to over 25,000 seats in less than four years.

In the process, OpenSky’s Don McKeith realized that to fully deliver the project, a fundamentally different operations framework was necessary. What happened next provided insights from which every IT organization can learn…

Grazed from TechGoondu.  Author: Aaron Tan.

Robots, drones and driverless vehicles will propel the next decade of growth in the cloud computing industry, according to a Dell executive.  In an interview with Techgoondu at the Cloud Asia 2014 conference last week, Martin Yates, strategic enterprise practice director at Dell Asia-Pacific and Japan, said the increased processing power delivered over the cloud will offer unlimited possibilities in advanced automation.

“You’ll see an acceleration of cloud computing in areas like drones,” he said, noting that companies like DHL and Amazon are already using or experimenting with drones to deliver packages…