Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Seagate Technology, a worldwide leader in hard drives and storage solutions, today showcased its leading enterprise storage solutions at the 2014 Huawei Cloud Congress at the Shanghai Expo Center. During the conference, Seagate signed a supplier cooperation agreement with Huawei under which both parties agreed to expand cooperation to establish a joint laboratory and collaborate on new products, technology and marketing for cloud storage solutions. This includes more closely aligning their product and technology roadmaps.

The two-day 2014 Huawei Cloud Congress invites leaders in cloud computing technology, top managers from well-known enterprises and industry experts, to discuss the latest research results on cloud computing, mobile applications, data center management and enterprise applications, as well as sharing practical experience on cloud computing deployment, and exploring new ways of cloud computing…

Grazed from FedTech. Author: Nicole Blake Johnson.

The Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program has redefined how commercial cloud vendors do business with the government. In many ways, the program has set clear expectations for both agencies and companies by creating a common language and standards for securing cloud-based products and services.

Federal cloud computing has grown into a $3 billion market since the pre-FedRAMP era, when agencies didn’t have a mechanism for certifying if vendors could meet security requirements. Agencies have come a long way since then, and it shows in their solicitations for cloud services. Requests for FedRAMP-approved cloud services have become common…

Grazed from CloudComputing. Author: James Bourne.

IBM has launched Watson Analytics, offering what is claimed as instant access to powerful big data visualisation and analytics capabilities to anyone in the business. Instead of using programming languages or complex algorithms on the front end, Watson interacts with the user in natural language and comprehends key questions, including ‘What are the key drivers of my product sales?’, ‘Which benefits drive employee retention the most?’ and ‘Which deals are most likely to close?’

“Watson Analytics produces results that explain why things happened and what’s likely to happen, all in familiar business terms,” a press release explains. “And as business professionals interact with the results, they can continuously fine tune questions to get to the heart of the matter.”…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Cloudyn this week announced it has raised $4 million in financing to expand support for more more cloud computing infrastructure platforms and enhance its offering. Titanium Investments led the Series A funding round, with participation from existing investors RDSeed. This investment brings Cloudyn’s total funding to $5.5 million to date. The Tel Aviv-based cloud monitoring company in September 2011 secured $1.5 million in seed financing.

Cloudyn co-founder and CEO Sharon Wagner told Talkin’ Cloud that the company will "use the proceeds to expand our offering to new hybrid cloud platforms and support our growing base of clients in North America and EMEA." "Specifically, as we are seeing a nice uptake of Azure, this is an important platform that we are going to support," he said. "As part of our hybrid-cloud strategy and to expand our private cloud support, we will additionally support VMware."…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

After months of evaluating strategic alternatives and being acquired, Rackspace said Tuesday that it will remain independent. Shares promptly plunged about 18 percent in after hours trading. The company declared "its commitment to remain independent." Rackspace also named Taylor Rhodes CEO. Co-founder Graham Weston will be chairman.

Rackspace’s plan is to focus on its managed cloud strategy, which will avoid price wars with the likes of Google and Amazon Web Services. In May, Rackspace said it was approached by multiple parties exploring an acquisition. The company’s board then evaluated its options. During that evaluation, Rackspace shares would surge based on takeover speculation. Now that speculation is over. Rackspace said:…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

Application migration can be daunting when IT pros first look to make their way to the public cloud, but it doesn’t have to be, according to experts with experience moving workloads on behalf of clients. Whether you’re a novice cloud user or one of the enterprise clouderati, some rules of thumb apply when moving apps from being hosted on-premises to a cloud service provider’s data center. It’s important to note that at least half the battle lies in preparation for running in the cloud, from assessing applications to evaluating internal operations processes. After that, a phased, stepwise approach to cloud migration is strongly recommended.

Get ready: Assess applications first

Before migrating, IT professionals must assess applications and understand their business objectives for the cloud. Will the cloud host production or test and dev applications? And is there a variable demand for resources within those apps that can take advantage of flexible cloud infrastructure?…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR NewsWire.

tw telecom, a leading provider of Business Ethernet and networking solutions, and Virtacore, a leading cloud services provider specializing in virtual infrastructure solutions, today announced a partnership to provide a combination of cloud, network and data center services, giving customers the ability to deploy flexible cloud solutions.

Virtacore provides customers the ability to cost-effectively extend their IT infrastructure in the cloud utilizing best-of-breed technologies built on Cisco’s UCS platform, VMware VSphere, and hybridized storage using either NetApp or Nimble storage devices hosted at Equinix data center ecosystems. Utilizing tw telecom’s eLynk service, customers benefit from a secure, dedicated and scalable Ethernet cloud connection…

Grazed from ISC-Events.  Author: PR Announcement.

The ISC Cloud and ISC Big Data conferences will be held this fall in Heidelberg, Germany. This will be the fifth ISC Cloud Conference to be organized by ISC Group, and it will take place in the Marriott Hotel Heidelberg from September 29 – 30. The second ISC Big Data will be held from October 1 – 2 at the same venue.

The ISC Cloud Conference

This year’s ISC Cloud Conference, chaired by European cloud expert Wolfgang Gentzsch, offers a comprehensive agenda, addressing the interests of the research community as well as the industry attendees. The topics lined up for the two-day event include:…

Grazed from Virtualization Review. Author: Dan Kusnetzky.

I’ve just returned from the IBM Analyst Insight event and have much to think about. I was given the opportunity to speak with IBM executives responsible for Big Data and Analytics, X86 and PureSystems, cloud computing, Flash storage and Power and System z hardware. Although each executive was highly focused on their own area, they all presented IBM’s main messages first and messages about their products second. I’m going to focus on my discussions with IBM about cloud computing in this article.

IBM’s Take on Hybrid Cloud

Most members of the cloud computing community would agree that there are three different implementations of a cloud computing environment: private, public and hybrid. Hybrid combines the first two into a single computing resource, from a management and development perspective…

Read more from the source @ http://virtualizationreview.com/articles/2014/09/15/ibm-hybrid-cloud-analysis.aspx

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) has unveiled a cloud-based performance testing platform that is designed for Agile development teams that want to "apply smarter testing techniques into development."

HP said the new platform, StormRunner Load, can help Agile development teams accelerate application delivery and improve app quality. StormRunner Load is part of the HP Performance Testing suite. It supports HP’s mission to help Agile development teams accelerate application quality and delivery by providing them with a simple, intuitive and scalable cloud-based platform, according to the company…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/091514/hp-adds-cloud-based-load-testing-performance-testing-suite