Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Matt Asay.

For years, the open source world has taken comfort in a bit of Gandhi wisdom: “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Red Hat went so far as to emblazon the phrase on the walls of its lobby, a reminder to open sourcers everywhere to take courage against the proprietary software machine.

Open source has different problems today. In a world that has gone from accepting open source to expecting it, to paraphrase MongoDB’s Dwight Merriman, what machine should the open source world be raging against? Given the absence of an outside enemy, it’s likely that open source will turn on itself…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

ProfitBricks has slashed the price of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings and is claiming that it is winning the cloud price wars against its biggest competitor Amazon Web Services (AWS). For this volley in the cloud price wars, ProfitBricks has reduced its prices by 30 percent and "has doubled the price drop percentage of the industry leader in the last year," according to the vendor.

With this price cut, a cloud instance with two dedicated CPU cores, 7.5GB of RAM and 500GB of block storage is now $73.95 per month. That includes support. It’s the first big price cut from ProfitBricks in a year, when it challenged Amazon with a major price cut and claimed its pricing was 50 percent of its rival’s…

Grazed from InformationManagement. Author: Bob Violino.

The transformation of the technology channel continues to accelerate with the shift to cloud services, according to a Canalys survey of channel partners worldwide. A huge majority (96%) of the 352 respondents say they already deliver some of form of “IT-as-a-service”, including managing customer assets on-premises, off-premises hosting or public cloud services.

For most, this still accounts for less than a quarter of revenue. But by 2017, the research firm says, almost two-thirds expect IT-as-a-service to account for more than 25% of revenue. “Product resell is still the most important business model for over 60% of channel partners,” Rachel Brindley, research director, Channels, at Canalys said in a statement. “But they rate the importance of their managed services to their businesses very highly, just behind reselling products.”…

Grazed from IT Pro Portal. Author: Jamie Hinks.

HP has announced the commercial availability of its Helion OpenStack and Development Platform that gives businesses the chance to benefit from a combined Infrastructure-as-a-service [IaaS] and Platform-as-a-Service [PaaS] solution. The company also announced its new Helion Content Depot that is designed to handle the growth in unstructured data, images and media, and the releases are the first since HP made it clear that it was supporting the OpenStack project in June.

Organisations that choose the Helion OpenStack IaaS get a solution that has predictable scalability, high availability and durability, and low operating costs. The Helion Development PaaS, meanwhile, allows users to develop and implement cloud-native apps using various programming languages and app services…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols.

When people think about Ubuntu, they generally think about the desktop. The new release of Ubuntu 14.10 — while it certainly does include a new and improved desktop — saves its biggest improvements for its cloud and server versions. This new release, Utopic Unicorn, features what parent company Canonical calls "the fastest, most secure hypervisors on bare metal, as well as the latest in container technologies with Docker v1.2."

The company also claims that "Ubuntu offers user-level container control, the ability for any user to spin up containers without the need for superuser privileges, providing higher security, privilege separation and greater system robustness." This is a feature that’s being explored in the just released Docker 1.3…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Chicago-based infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider SingleHop has launched a private cloud solution that leverages tools from EMC (EMC), Veeam, VMware (VMW) and other technology giants. SingleHop’s new release, Virtual Private Cloud (VPC), is a cloud-enabled managed IaaS offering that "provides a groundbreaking way for businesses of any size to benefit from a private, yet scalable cloud strategy," SingleHop said.

"Our customers can take advantage of our enterprise-driven network and managed services," Jordan Jacobs, SingleHop’s vice president of products, told Talkin’ Cloud. "Our flagship offering gives customers the ability to granularly choose the level of management they need. We can fully manage our customers’ entire VPC environment, [or] they can manage it themselves and everywhere in between."…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/iaas/102314/singlehop-launches-virtual-private-cloud-iaas-solution-enterprises

CloudCow Contributed Article.  Author: Sheldon Smith – Senior Project Manager, XO Communications.

Security in the cloud remains a top concern for businesses — according to a recent ITWire article, worldwide IT security spending will reach more than $71 billion this year and top $76 billion in 2015. And what’s driving these security concerns? Research firm Gartner describes a “nexus of force” made up of social, mobile and cloud (SoMoCo) solutions.

Used in concert, these technologies offer huge market advantages, but open up unique new vulnerabilities. One option to manage cloud security is a hosted PBX system, which supplants a traditional telecommunications company to supply all incoming and outgoing phone services. Here are five ways hosted PBX can help secure your cloud.

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Danny Ashton.

There has been a lot of buzz around cloud computing lately, but not many people know what that actually means. This infographic will try to resolve some mystery surrounding that topic. Cloud computing is a revolutionary concept that gives you the opportunity of accessing your data over a network, like the Internet. That means your data is located in a cloud and you can access it from any other computer or even from your mobile phone. This can save your life in cases of emergencies when you need to access some file quick and easy. If you have heard of it, but you are not sure if it is absolutely secure, you should read this infographic carefully.

Many companies are starting to see that cloud usage can be really useful in business world. Over 50 % of firms are currently using it in the United States. It definitely has a lot of benefits when compared with traditional computing. This infographic is based on a survey of 200 IT managers who use cloud security in their own workplace…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: CJ Arlotta.

BAE Systems (BASEY) has acquired cloud-based security solutions SilverSky in a cash-free, debt-free deal worth $232.5 million. SilverSky hopes to leverage its acquirer’s global resources to bring its solutions to market faster. BAE announced the deal on Tuesday. The company is a provider of defense, aerospace and security solutions and plans to incorporate SilverSky into its Applied Intelligence division.

SilverSky’s customers include more than 5,500 organizations in a variety of industries, including financial, healthcare and retail. It also serves a group of mid- to large-sized commercial enterprises. "BAE Systems is a large, multi-national company with a tremendous brand and financial resources," said Tim Harvey, CEO at SilverSky. "We expect to leverage their presence in the market to grow our business as quickly as possible."…

Read more from the source @ http://mspmentor.net/cloud-computing/102214/bae-systems-acquires-silversky-2325m

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Rackspace (RAX) updated its hybrid cloud offering with new security capabilities, increased scalability and an improved user experience. RackConnect v3 was designed to meet customers’ needs for public cloud scalability in a hybrid IT environment. RackConnect is typical in many ways of a hybrid cloud solution, in that it provides customers with a combination of traditional dedicated hardware and networks with various services deployed in the public cloud. In the latest version release, RackConnect has joined the growing software-defined networking (SDN) technology segment, with more SDN-focused features.

"RackConnect v3 redefines hybrid cloud by offering enterprise customers a migration path to the public cloud with none of the downside," said John Engates, CTO at Rackspace, in a prepared statement. "This unique hybrid cloud technology allows our customers to take advantage of our managed public cloud, private cloud and dedicated hosting offerings with a seamless integration backed by Fanatical Support. It is a unique offering in the market today."…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/hybrid-cloud-computing/102214/rackspace-rackconnect-update-adds-new-security-scalability