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….

Grazed from MarkleyGroup.  Author: Paul Diamond.

For companies that haven’t yet dabbled in the cloud, the types and options seem endless and in some cases, intimidating. Where to even start when choosing what’s best for your company? What’s worse – if you’ve been keeping up with the IT industry buzz on the topic, you know that vendors, analysts and pundits have been touting the best cloud computing solutions and strategies for years.

The reasons for why specific solutions and strategies rise to become considered the “best” are for various motives and factors, and often times, pertain to specific infrastructure scenarios. Within industry coverage and articles that debate these cloud computing solutions and strategies, you will often read the comparison described as the “cloud war.”…

Grazed from CyberSecurity News.  Author: Lee Hazell.

Achieving secure data separation in cloud computing is a necessity for many companies wishing to utilise cloud services as a cost effective method for storage, processing and memory functions. Data separation in cloud computing describes the need to ensure that one consumer of a cloud service cannot interrupt, or compromise, the service or data of another.

As many cloud services rely on virtualisation technologies to offer compute power or storage to consumers, it is possible for a sophisticated attacker to compromise one virtual machine on the box and hop to others. This is an attack methodology that is being seen more and more in cloud computing and presents a real risk to companies that need to have some assurance that their data is safe should another consumer be compromised…

Grazed from Pinnacle.  Author: Editorial Staff.

As more businesses adopt cloud computing and storage practices, data governance and security issues are becoming more apparent. A U.S. judge recently ordered Microsoft to give data stored in Ireland data centers to U.S. law enforcement agencies, despite European data protection laws that make Europe-based subsidiaries of foreign companies abide by European law.

IBM is taking strides to change the way public and private cloud data is stored. According to an IBM press release, its inventors recently patented a technique that helps clients automatically analyze and manage the location where information resides. This enables businesses to comply with regulations governing where data can be stored in different countries and continents…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

Linode Founder and CEO Chris Aker has no illusions about challenging Amazon Web Services in the cloud, but that doesn’t mean he cant build a quality cloud. As he explains in this Structure Show interview, quality infrastructure and simple billing can go a long way.

So many conversations about cloud computing focus on Amazon Web Services, Google and which is the biggest company that can drive down prices the most. But there’s a whole other group of people and companies not running webscale applications, people who just want a virtual server that’s inexpensive, runs well and, most importantly, they don’t have to manage…