Grazed from DataCenterDynamics. Author: Nick Booth.

Telco Zayo has launched a Connect to the Cloud program that links cloud providers – including Amazon web services (AWS) and Softlayer – with 500 data centers worldwide. The aim is to simplify shopping for cloud connections and help customers to operate a hybrid cloud, according to Zayo, which uses its own network rather than the public internet in order to offer high service levels.

In 2011, Zayo became one of the first providers to offer direct bandwidth up to 10G through the AWS Direct Connect portal. In 2013 it became an Amazon Partner Network (APN) Technology Partner. Zayo provides private networks with circuits to enable connectivity to each AWS Direct Connect location…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Archana Venkatraman.

IT is seen not just as a business enabler, but also as a division that can help the business identify new revenue streams. So when IT was becoming a limiting factor at Holiday Extras, a UK travel add-ons service provider, its IT team knew it had to act fast. Holiday Extras provides add-on travel services, such as airport hotel bookings, parking and insurance services to British holidaymakers. Its most critical business application is its website.

The company’s in-house datacentre, which has been operational since its launch in 1983, powered its web applications, television campaigns and business operations. It was a regular facility full with blade servers, firewall infrastructure, load balancers and massive infrastructure around its web system…

Grazed from Winsupersite.  Author: Paul Thurrott.

While Microsoft’s business offerings have long dominated the conversation around the software giant, I’m increasingly excited by the firm’s growing set of integrated consumer services that work via apps on all popular mobile device platforms. It is here, I think, that Microsoft’s "mobile first, cloud first" mantra is most clearly seen, because the services that impact end users directly are those that make the most sense on mobile devices.  But here’s the tragedy: Most consumers, I bet, rarely even consider Microsoft’s mobile app and web services offerings. Most don’t even know they exist.

Part of the reason for this is no doubt because of Microsoft’s reputation as a provider of business technology products and services. And while it’s fair to point out that the majority of the firm’s revenues do come from business customers, that doesn’t diminish the quality of its consumer-oriented offerings, or the impact this company has with individuals, through apps and on the web…

Grazed from BDLive.  Author: Willie Oosthuysen.

THE ever-accelerating evolution of technology keeps making real the stuff of science fiction.  Just 30 years ago, cellphones, the internet and GPS were predictions. Now we carry instruments in our pockets that can do all those things, and more.  Technology predictions for 2014 give us a tantalising glimpse of what’s in store — and some of it is mind-boggling.

1. The internet of everything

This is the idea that, eventually, every device in the world can be connected to every other device.  You already have aspects of the internet of everything in your life, such as synching your calendar across devices…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Dan Sullivan.

Application monitoring tools give cloud admins insight into application performance and other crucial issues. These tools help admins understand complex distributed systems, which can often behave in unexpected ways. As more developers move from programming for single servers to writing distributed applications, they will come to depend on monitoring tools.

Most cloud providers, as well as third parties, offer deployment management and monitoring tools. Google is expanding the range of services and tools that are available to developers and system administrators with Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Trace and Cloud Debugger. Google’s Cloud Monitoring tool is generally available today, and Cloud Trace and Cloud Debugger are in private beta release…

Grazed from Investors.com  Author: Juan Carlos Arancibia.

OpenText doesn’t fit neatly into any one business category. Rather, it’s a collection of businesses ranging from document management to e-mail management.  But it all boils down to what is known as enterprise information management. That’s the technology that helps companies organize, secure and maximize use of their information warehouses.

OpenText is aiming much of its growth at cloud computing, where companies can access and manage data over the Internet. In January, it closed the $1.17 billion acquisition of GXS Group, a business-to-business cloud integration services provider…

Grazed from Press Enterprise.  Author:  Courtney Kaufman.

Over the past few years, there has been a lot of hype and excitement over the potential value of cloud computing, or the “cloud,” for the business environment.  The biggest problem has been that most people really don’t understand what cloud computing is or how it works. If you’re still not 100 percent sure what it is, you’re not alone. Even television shows and commercials commonly make fun of the term by mentioning it and then quickly reacting with, “What is the cloud?” or “Where is the cloud?”

Simply put, cloud computing is using the Internet to access your files, emails, data, applications and more. Instead of storing your files, applications and other data on a computer or server at your office, you’re storing them on high-speed, high-security servers that you can access anytime, anywhere via the Internet with nearly any device…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

File sharing and data security provider CertainSafe launched its new partner program this month as the company looks to garner more interest among U.S. resellers and VARs for its cloud-based file sharing and storage solution. With the new SecurePlus Partner Program, CertainSafe said its reseller partners could get easier access to its solutions and benefit from exclusive reseller sales and marketing opportunities.

The SecurePlus program will have a standard three-tier structure, with partner placement depending on combined quarterly purchases from the company’s solutions. As is standard with other partner programs, each tier will come with its own partner discounts, marketing programs and services, as well as other benefits, including a dedicated sales team for Gold and Platinum partners…

Grazed from BusinessCloud. Editorial Staff.

The Shenzhen datacentre will house approximately 10,000 servers and will provide a number of cloud services including infrastructure as a service, load balancing, relational database service, open storage service and open caching service among others. “As part of our ongoing commitment to enhance our services to better serve the cloud computing needs of users, we have chosen to open a datacentre in Shenzhen to provide customers with more options for network nodes and further enhance the reliability of user application services and response speed,” said Ben Wang, president of AliCloud.

“For users in Southern China and the Pearl River Delta region, using Shenzhen nodes will lower network latency, reduce data transmission time, and greatly enhance the user experience,” Wang added. The datacentre in Shenzhen comes just a few months after the company announced its first foray outside of mainland China with the construction of a Hong Kong cloud facility. The company has three other cloud computing datacentres in Hangzhou, Qingdao, and Beijing…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Microsoft Azure took an unexpected dirt nap last week. This is not good news for Microsoft, which identified the Azure IaaS and PaaS cloud as key to its success. Azure competes against Amazon Web Services, Google, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Verizon, and others, with AWS and Google as the main rivals. Among such contenders, Azure can’t afford many missteps.

I don’t take outages seriously unless they start to form a pattern. All public cloud providers, Microsoft included, are learning how to operate a public cloud service in real time. Outages are a fact of life, at least occasionally. Notice that the other cloud providers did not chime in with criticism? They know they could be next, and nearly all have experienced their own outages…