Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) provider CloudSigma has signed on to Equinix Cloud Exchange to give a boost to its hybrid cloud solutions portfolio. CloudSigma is also hoping to expand its global cloud footprint and make it easier to access its services around the world.

This announcement follows up on the October 2013 news that CloudSigma had expanded its presence in the U.S. using Equinix’s DC6 International Business Exchange (IBX) data center in Washington, D.C. The addition of a relationship with Equinix for its cloud interconnect solution expands CloudSigma’s footprint even more, providing it with the potential for accelerating adoption of its own cloud infrastructure services…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Frederic Lardinois.

Google and Mesosphere today announced a partnership that brings support for Mesos clusters to Google’s Compute Engine platform. While the Mesos project and Mesosphere aren’t quite household names yet, they are quickly becoming important tools for companies that want to be able to easily scale their applications, no matter whether that’s in their own data centers, in a public cloud service, or as a hybrid deployment.

With this collaboration between Google and Mesosphere, Cloud Platform users will now be able to set up a Mesosphere cluster on Google’s servers in less than 10 minutes. Developers get to choose between two basic installs: a development cluster with four instances, eight virtual CPUs and 30GB of memory for prototyping their applications, or a production-ready install with 18 instances, 36 virtual CPUs and 136GB of memory. If those two options don’t fit, they can also create their own custom clusters…

Grazed from SooperArticles. Author: Lauren Ellis.

Cloud computing has enabled companies to operate at lower expenses and startup costs, and also advanced mobility and access factors. Despite all these advancements in the technology and capabilities, there are a multitude of risks that need to be assessed and addressed as appropriately as possible. Regarding the processes and protocols of privacy and security in the cloud, there seems to be a lingering haze of confusion and doubt. The latest spike in hacks only furthermore fuels this, with the increase in cybercriminals and other data breaches of large enterprises. Thankfully, nowadays, cutting edge security software is to block off unauthorized access and terrible data leaks.

Information technology professionals continually quote cloud security as one of their leading worries. The purpose following this is the massive amount of treasured possessions and information saved through cloud storage. As per statement of Insulation Partners principal analyst Marian Wright, "Given the latest progressions in cloud technology and acceptance, information tech professionals and chief information security officers are suggested to employ more advanced and more suitable tactics for cloud security defenses…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is becoming mainstream and a familiar concept at all levels of society. A recent survey by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) estimated that approximately 55 percent of the adult population had heard of the term. However cloud computing has not yet reached the stage in Australia where mainstream newspapers devote entire supplements to the topic, as that august UK journal, The Times, did recently with the publication of its 25 page ‘Cloud for Business’ report.

It’s full of useful stuff. There’s a two page spread "Understanding the Cloud Ecosystem" that explains the distinctions and the interplay between public, private and hybrid cloud. Another looks at the role of the cloud integrator: an organisation that manages a business’ multiple private and public cloud services…

Zetta.net today launched its new DataProtect 4.5 cloud backup and disaster recovery (DR) solution, allowing users to make full server image backups without requiring an appliance or a local staging drive. The new solution is the first SaaS-based service to deliver complete cloud backup and DR – from files to databases to server images – directly to the cloud, with integrated WAN acceleration for optimal transfer speeds.

The appliance-free approach enables customers to start recovering data immediately after a disaster without needing to wait for replacement hardware, as well as offering reduced deployment times and maintenance costs. With 279 percent customer growth in the first half of 2014, Zetta.net has seen rapid adoption by organizations looking to replace older, complex tape- and appliance-based backup systems with faster, more flexible alternatives.

Infoblox Inc., the network control company, today announced that it has enhanced the Infoblox IPAM Plug-in for VMware vCenter Orchestrator, VMware vCloud Director, VMware vCloud Automation Center for Desktop and VMware vCloud Automation Center for Server, adding powerful new capabilities for DNS, DHCP, and IP address management (DDI) for private cloud networks.

The Infoblox IPAM plug-in for VMware, introduced in June 2013, eliminates the need to manually set up network services for VMware environments. By automatically provisioning and de-provisioning IP addresses and DNS records for virtual machines as they are created, moved, and removed, the plug-in can dramatically reduce the time required to bring up services and can increase network agility while lowering operating costs.

Grazed from CipherCloud.  Author: Michael Higashi.

The cloud technology landscape has grown more complicated and more fraught with FUD in recent months. This is being driven by the ever-changing landscape of data residency and data privacy laws, and the growing mountain of revelations of government agencies demanding cloud service providers (CSPs) to hand over private consumer and enterprise data. For markets outside the United States, fears are particularly strong that any data stored on US soil or by US-based CSPs is vulnerable to NSA surveillance.

Some CSPs headquartered outside the US are leveraging these fearsDomestic-Only Cloud Services Address Cloud Computing Risks to push a model of domestic-only data centers as a way of addressing the cloud computing risks surrounding data residency and privacy…

Grazed from SysCon Media.  Author: Gilad Parann-Nissany.

In a Feb 2014 survey, 94 percent of organizations surveyed reported running applications or experimenting with infrastructure-as-a-service.   According to research firm Nasumi, there is over one exabyte currently stored in the cloud. An exabyte is over a billion GB.  Considering the amount of data in the cloud and the growing rate of adoption for sensitive use cases, it is natural that securing our data in the cloud is a concern.

But, cloud security, though rightfully a central concern, should not be a hindrance to aggressively moving workloads and applications to the cloud.  In fact, there are some misconceptions about cloud security that need to be laid to rest…

Grazed from IBM.  Author: PR Announcement.

International Business Machines Corp said on Friday that US regulators had approved the $2.3 billion sale of its low-end server business to Lenovo Group Ltd, as the company continues its shift to more profitable software and services like cloud computing and data analytics.

IBM has already divested $16 billion in annual revenue over the past decade from low-margin businesses like personal computers and printers.  The approval by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States came despite CIFUS members’ concern, first reported by the Wall Street Journal earlier this year that IBM servers used in the Pentagon’s networks could be accessed remotely by Chinese spies and compromised.

Grazed from BitPipe.  Author: Nick Huber.

Cloud computing is everywhere in business. Whether a small van-hire business in Burnley needs a few extra servers to power its website or a multinational wants a large data warehouse to analyse millions of customer transactions.  The spread of the cloud – large networks of web servers and datacentres that are hosted online rather than on users’ own computers – is in no small part down to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

In just seven years, Amazon Web Services, the services arm of US online retailer Amazon, has become one of the biggest suppliers of cloud computing. It has hundreds of thousands of customers, including Netflix and Instagram, and the Central Intelligence Agency and Unilever. Growth has been rapid. AWS’s revenue was estimated at about $1.5bn in 2012, according to a report by Baird Equity Research….