Grazed from Wired. Author: Ross Patton.

The next big thing in cloud computing doesn’t work with Microsoft’s Windows operating system. But Microsoft wants to change that. As part of its ongoing effort to embrace the latest tech trends, Microsoft says it’s building a version of Windows that will offer something akin to Docker—a technology originally created for the Linux operating system that’s all the rage among the companies and engineers developing the massive online services that have come to define the modern tech world.

To build a modern online service—such as a Google, a Facebook, a Twitter, or even the services running inside major financial institutions and other traditional businesses—you’re typically forced to run software across dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of computer servers, and Docker provides a way of doing this more easily and more efficiently…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

Amazon Web Services has a big lead over Google Cloud Platform in IaaS, but Google’s PaaS predates Amazon’s, and enterprises have taken notice. Google App Engine emerged in 2008, three years before Google would begin serious efforts on an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) platform, and three years before Amazon would launch its platform as a service (PaaS), Elastic Beanstalk.

Because of how infrastructure resources are abstracted in PaaS, services like Google App Engine tend to be "sticky" for early adopters — they stay on the platform once the PaaS becomes a core part of developing an app. Google PaaS, with its free quotas, has also been more affordable and easier to manage for some than Elastic Beanstalk…

Grazed from Informa.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud Asia returns for the 5th year from the 24 – 26 November 2014 to Hong Kong, maintaining its place as the only content-led CONFERENCE AND EXPO for the Enterprise IT & Telco Cloud Market in the APAC region. 

Cloud Asia is a free to attend exhibition and conference streams are only available FREE of charge to Operators and Enterprises: to claim your free conference pass quote priority code:I8E5P/COW0TS at: http://asia.cloudworldseries.com/free-pass-for-operators-and-enterprises/ 

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

NoSQL database vendor MongoDB has rolled out new features of its MongoDB Management Service, or MMS, that it claims will vastly improve users’ abilities to manage and scale the popular database. If even a fraction of its users pay for the service, MongoDB thinks MMS also stands to make the company a lot of money.

The new features, which MongoDB Director of Products Kelly Stirman calls a “massive set of enhancements,” will let users deploy, upgrade and scale their databases all with a few clicks from inside the cloud service, wherever those databases are running. MMS will also automatically optimize Amazon Web Services instances when users deploy MongoDB servers on that cloud computing platform. MMS has been around for years, but previously could only be used to backup data and monitor users’ database clusters…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Bulter.

A group of companies that sell products to build private clouds has determined a price at which it claims it is less expensive to operate a private cloud compared to using Amazon Web Service’s IaaS public cloud. A report from the vendors – which include a collocation provider, a cloud management vendor and a network operator – attempts to address a question many organizations may be considering: When is it better to use a public cloud versus a managed hosting or collocation environment? The case study finds that if an organization is spending more than $7,644 in Amazon’s cloud each month, then it can be cheaper to operate a private cloud.

But analysts say it’s difficult to put an exact dollar figure on when a private cloud will be more cost effective than a public cloud; there are just too many factors to consider, says IDC analyst Melanie Posey. “It’s very hard to make sweeping statements,” she says in an email…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Loggly has secured $15 million in new venture funding from private equity firms, and it has also released a new solution that aims to reduce the time developers spend on identifying and troubleshooting problems. Headquartered in San Francisco, the cloud-based log management solutions provider on Tuesday said it plans to use the additional funding to "support its areas of differentiation," which include engineering, sales and marketing.

Harmony Partners led the Series C financing round, while existing investors Matrix Partners, Trinity Ventures, Cisco (CSCO), Data Collective and True Ventures all increased the size of their investments. This funding round brings the company’s total financing to date to $33.4 million. Loggly received $8 million in Series B funding from investors in September 2013…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-funding-and-finance/101414/loggly-secures-15-series-c-financing-releases-problem-solving-so

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Andrew Nusca.

IBM and SAP plan to announce on Tuesday that they will partner to offer cloud computing services to companies. Specifically, IBM will provide cloud infrastructure services to SAP, which will run its business applications—collectively dubbed the HANA Enterprise Cloud—on top of them.

For IBM, it’s the second megawatt deal of the year with a technology industry peer as it continues to stake ground through large cloud computing partnerships. In July, it announced it would partner with Apple AAPL -0.33% to sell phones and tablets (and related applications and services) to business customers…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Palo Alto Networks, the leader in enterprise security, today extended its leadership in security services for private, hybrid and public cloud with the latest release of its virtual firewall series (VM-Series). Enterprises are keen to take advantage of the agility, scalability and cost benefits of cloud-based virtual data centers (VDCs) by building their own private cloud, purchasing public cloud services from providers, or adopting a hybrid cloud approach. Most enterprises are ultimately aiming for the portability of both the application and security policies, regardless of where the application is deployed.

However, when it comes to security, most public cloud environments are based on inconsistent network architectures common in traditional data centers and still rely on legacy security technologies – such as stateful inspection and port-based firewalls – that aren’t capable of securing public cloud or hosted VDCs against sophisticated cyber threats…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Ann Bednarz.

There’s no easy path to the cloud for large companies with decades of legacy IT investments. Roughly 20 percent of Progressive Insurance’s business applications run in a SaaS model, while 80 percent run on the company’s own hardware. On the infrastructure side, Progressive uses IaaS, but mainly for experimentation.

It would be “a whole new ballgame” if Progressive were some medium-sized business that didn’t have an extensive data center footprint, says CIO Ray Voelker, but “we already have assets we own that we can leverage.” Chris Drumgoole, chief operating officer for cloud at General Electric, says legacy is “where it’s more interesting for us; we need to be more thoughtful there.”…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

The cloud undoubtedly has its many benefits. It’s accessible from many devices, it’s scalable, sharable, and supports dozens of apps that can be useful to you in your professional or personal life and offers almost infinite backup and storage. But it’s these very features that you find valuable that also put you at risk for a data breach. And that’s something that managed service providers (MSPs) who offer cloud-based file sharing services, must protect against.

A report by Ponemon Institute titled “Data Breach: The Cloud Multiplier Effect” addresses these concerns, and highlights the ways in which the risk of a data breach in the cloud is multiplying. It is therefore the job of MSPs to address and ease these justified worries. Through educating, making aware, and preparing your users, minimizing and mitigating security threats is very possible even as the Cloud expands. Here’s a look at how…