Grazed from ISC Events.  Author: PR Announcement.

For the first time, the ISC Cloud Conference is offering attendees an Amazon Web Services tutorial on launching high performance computing clusters in the AWS Cloud. The presenter, Dougal Ballantyne, is a HPC solutions architect at Amazon Web Services. This workshop is free-of-charge for attendees.

This AWS-sponsored workshop will held from 9am to 12pm on September 29, 2014, giving attendees a good introduction to cfncluster, a framework for launching HPC clusters on AWS…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Joseph F. Kovar.

The allure of the cloud is irresistible. Businesses are drawn to the cloud for the promise of flexible compute and storage resources, little or no up-front capital expenses, and the far-from-certain idea that using the cloud costs less than on-premise IT.

However, there is also a large segment of the business market for which the cloud is not the final answer to their IT requirements. And for those looking to get off the cloud and back down to earth, they have as allies their local solution providers who can help find the right balance of cloud and non-cloud technology.  There is no doubt businesses are moving part or all of their IT workloads to some sort of cloud…

Grazed from TechNews.  Author: Shirley Siluk.

Up until now, banking Web sites and other high-security Relevant Products/Services online services looking to prevent hacking attacks have had to make sure their in-house IT infrastructure Relevant Products/Services was up to the task. But CloudFlare, which provides speeded-up access to Web sites through the cloud Relevant Products/Services, has come out with an alternative solution: Keyless SSL that keeps sites secure Relevant Products/Services without the need for organizations to share their private SSL keys with third-party service providers.

"Private clouds are an oxymoron," CloudFlare CEO Matthew Prince said in a blog post on his company’s site Thursday. With Keyless SSL, however, he said organizations can take advantage of the cloud’s flexibility "without having to turn over their most guarded secrets: their private SSL keys."…

Grazed from WSJ.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Alpha CEO, tech visionary, philanthropist, America’s Cup champion, owner of his own Hawaiian island — Larry Ellison is a singular personality. He is also among the best sources in Silicon Valley for head-turning quotes.

“I don’t know what I’ll do when I retire,” the billionaire Oracle ORCL -4.21% founder once said. “I just love competing as opposed to just going out and watching the sunset.” Ellison stepped down as CEO on Thursday, but he remains chairman of the board and Oracle’s tech chief. That leaves more time for Ellison to generate more wit and wisdom…

Grazed from FirstPost.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Infosys Ltd, India’s second-biggest IT services provider, said it had signed a partnership agreement with China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to offer enterprise customers cloud computing services.  Infosys also said it had expanded existing cloud computing partnerships with Microsoft Corp and a Hitachi Ltd unit.

Infosys, led by Chief Executive Vishal Sikka, has been planning to boost investment in cloud computing, smartphone apps and other new technologies to win more high-margin outsourcing contracts. These are expected to help Infosys back to the forefront of India’s $100 billion IT outsourcing industry…

Grazed from Autonews.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Mercedes-Benz is using a cloud-computing setup to protect data as cars’ mobile links and software expand and the industry prepares for driverless travel.  Elements of the technology will include enabling people in a vehicle to control how much of their data is available to the outside world while they’re on the road, Christine Hohmann-Dennhardt, head of legal affairs at Mercedes parent Daimler, said today at a conference to examine connected driving and data protection.

Drivers will also have the option of erasing information automatically once they’ve left the car. "If we say we’re making safe cars, that doesn’t just apply to the mechanical technology but to data security," Hohmann-Dennhardt said at the event here. Protecting information will be key to gaining customer acceptance of comfort and safety products, she said…

Grazed from Oracle. Author: PR Announcement.

Oracle Corporation (NYSE: ORCL) today announced that fiscal 2015 Q1 total revenues were up 3% to $8.6 billion. Total Software plus Cloud revenue was up 6% to $6.6 billion. Software-as-a-service (SaaS) and Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) cloud revenue was up 32% to $337 million. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) cloud revenue was up 26% to $138 million.

Hardware systems revenue was down 8% to $1.2 billion. GAAP operating income was up 3% to $3.0 billion, and the GAAP operating margin was 34%. Non-GAAP operating income was up 2% to $3.8 billion, and the non-GAAP operating margin was 44%. GAAP net income was unchanged at $2.2 billion while non-GAAP net income was up 2% at $2.8 billion. GAAP earnings per share were $0.48, up 2% compared to last year while non-GAAP earnings per share were $0.62, up 4%. GAAP operating cash flow on a trailing twelve-month basis was $15.4 billion…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Ashlee Vance and Jack Clark.

Oracle Corp.’s Larry Ellison stepped down as chief executive officer of the software maker he founded, making way for a new generation of executives and ending one of the most profitable runs for a leader in business history. Mark Hurd and Safra Catz, currently co-presidents of Oracle, were both named CEO to replace Ellison, the company said today.

Hurd will run sales, marketing and strategy, while Catz will remain chief financial officer and oversee legal and manufacturing operations. Ellison will become chairman, replacing Jeff Henley, and also take on the title of chief technology officer. Ellison, who turned 70 last month, guided the Redwood City, California-based company for more than 35 years to make it the world’s largest database-software company and one of the biggest providers of business programs…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

Everyone is moving toward “the cloud” and it seems that most individuals and organizations have a pretty good idea of what that is and how they hope to use it. But the cloud is not one thing, and it is most certainly not eternal. It is constantly growing and changing, with new services and new underlying technologies continually adding to and reinterpreting what we know about living and working in a cloud-based data environment. So even while we pursue our cloud strategies, there needs to be some realization that by the time the transition is complete, the cloud may not be what it appeared to be at the outset.

Key cloud providers are already tapping into this reality by pitching their services as “a new kind of cloud.” Rackspace, for example, places great stock in its ability to provide a “Managed Cloud,” which is its way of describing the specialized services and technological hand-holding it offers in contrast to the do-it-yourself commodity experiences that most providers offer…

Grazed from The Register. Author: Trevor Pott.

Anyone who says public cloud computing is "pay for what you use" is trying to rip you off. The public cloud is pay for what you provision, and that is a completely different thing. In order to move away from the model that pretty much every existing application uses – one where you provision the peak amount of resources required and then the application sits idle until it’s needed – you need to throw away your code and rewrite it from the ground up.

This means either convincing your software vendor to scrap their codebase and start over; having your in-house developers do the same; or both. Very few applications are an island, and in the real world one application feeds information into another, which then feeds information into another…