Grazed from ThoughtsOnCloud. Author: Francesco Pedulla.

At a recent social media workshop on cloud, we discussed the effect of cloud computing on employment and decided to write a joint blog post addressing this topic. A few months ago, one of us read “Race Against the Machine” by Brynjolfsson and McAfee. The authors argue that digital innovation has “changed how the economic pie is distributed, and here the news is not good for the median worker. As technology races ahead, it can leave many people behind. Workers whose skills have been mastered by computers have less to offer the job market, and see their wages and prospects shrink.” Their statement is not an opinion. It is the conclusion of a long, thorough study of empirical data. For the sake of discussion, we will assume it is correct.

Since Brynjolfsson and McAfee talk about innovative technologies that enable machines to replace human workers, the first question we asked ourselves was: can we apply that result to the ongoing cloud revolution? After all, the cloud is a matter of optimization through consolidation, not of replacing workers with machines. Still, the net effect of the consolidation is replacing workers with automated mechanisms. So, the real question is: if the results do apply to the cloud, then would the balance between created and destroyed IT jobs make it so that few people would lose their jobs, if any?…

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP SE’s software chief may have one of the toughest jobs in the technology industry: dragging the IT operations of 45,000 businesses into the era of cloud computing. Bernd Leukert, a 20-year company veteran, was promoted to the executive board after the sudden departure of chief technology officer Vishal Sikka in May. Now Leukert is breaking with his predecessor’s focus on fighting Oracle Corp. (ORCL:US) in the database market, and is responding to customers of its market-leading enterprise software who want a clear path for moving their applications to cloud-based systems.

“There is confusion,” Leukert, 47, said in an interview at SAP’s headquarters in Walldorf, Germany. “There’s no debate anymore in the IT industry that the cloud will be the preferred consumption model,” he said, referring to the shift toward delivering software via the Internet instead of installed on clients’ servers. “A road map is something we owe the market.”…

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: Wolfgang Gentzsch.

Stuttgart HPC Center (HLRS) director Michael Resch will present the ISC Cloud keynote on “HPC & Simulation in the Cloud – How Academia & Industry Can Benefit,” at the conference this September. ISC Cloud, the fifth in the series, will take place September 29 and 30 in Heidelberg, Germany.

As an HPC cloud skeptic in 2011, Resch characterized cloud computing as hype and predicted it would eventually go away. In the following interview with Wolfgang Gentzsch, Chairman of the ISC Cloud Conference and President of the UberCloud, Resch explains why he has come to think much more favorably of HPC cloud over the last three years…

Grazed from CSC. Author: Dr. James Serack.

When I think of the quaint phrase “horseless carriage,” it conjures up for me an image, in black and white, of startled men in bowler hats pointing to a newly invented passing motor car. There was a time when carriages were drawn by horses so the adjective “horseless” was required to communicate the new invention from what was then the norm. But within a decade those motorized vehicles had become the new norm, and the phrase became obsolete. Now we of course just call them cars, and almost everyone owns one.

Recently while in California, waiting for the walk light to cross a busy urban intersection, I felt a bit like those men in the hats. When the traffic light changed to green, ALL the lead cars moved silently forward for several meters – and I found myself surprised by the prevalence of “hybrid cars” on the road. I did not yet expect them to be so common. Maybe soon we also won’t need the “hybrid” adjective as they become the norm on roadways. And significantly, while we get used to the idea, those who live in places where hybrids are common are already taking the next steps to develop new habits and practices for getting the best performance from the next generation of “plug in” hybrids…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Spanning Cloud Apps wants to help Salesforce.com (CRM) administrators with protecting Salesforce1 customers from data loss. The Austin, Texas-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) backup company on Wednesday unveiled Spanning Backup for Salesforce1 Mobile, a new mobile app for Salesforce administrators looking to manage and monitor automated backups and restore activities within the Salesforce platform.

The company said the new product offering allows Salesforce administrators to monitor the statuses of backups; track activities; and receive proactive udates for backup and recovery activities. "Salesforce is investing heavily in mobile, and Spanning wants to be an integral part of the Salesforce ecosystem," Spanning CEO Jeff Erramouspe told Talkin’ Cloud in an interview…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Joseph Tsidulko.

Almost two-thirds of America’s corporate leaders who participated in a recent study believe adoption of cloud computing is good for business. That’s according to The Path to Value in the Cloud survey conducted by Oxford Economics, an international advisory firm, and released by telecom provider Windstream.

Oxford Economics queried 350 executives from across the United States. One-third of the respondents were CEOs, CTOs or COOs; the rest held other executive positions at their companies. The results shed light on how business leaders view the changing IT landscape and shift to virtual infrastructure — insights that solution providers can leverage to sell products and services…

To view slideshow and read more from the source, visit http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/cloud/300073609/corporate-america-agrees-cloud-is-good-for-business.htm

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

SanDisk Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK), a global leader in flash storage solutions, and Super Micro Computer, Inc. (NASDAQ: SMCI), today announced that the SanDisk ULLtraDIMM(TM) solid state drive (SSD), the industry’s first enterprise-class, ultra-low latency, memory-channel connected storage solution, will begin shipping in Supermicro’s Green SuperServer(R) and SuperStorage platforms. Adding flash storage on the memory bus provides Supermicro(R) with a powerful solution to help customers address growing data center application performance requirements without a significant infrastructure investment.

"The ULLtraDIMM SSD was designed to expand the reach of flash storage throughout the data center and scale to meet the requirements of any enterprise application – no matter how bandwidth or capacity intensive," said John Scaramuzzo, senior vice president and general manager, Enterprise Storage Solutions at SanDisk. "We are very excited to partner with Supermicro in offering this innovative, ultra-low latency storage solution to help their customers accelerate the performance of their cloud, virtualization, HPC and other applications and experience the benefits of a flash-transformed data center."…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

In 2013, public IT cloud service spending was estimated at $47.4 billion. Research firm IDC predicts that by 2017, spending will more than double to $107 billion. And within the next four years, the growth rate of the IT industry as a whole will be 5 times what is today. Certainly some of that spending will go to cloud-based file sharing.

Companies are beginning to view cloud computing in a different light and IT departments are feeling the pressure to roll out the new technology quickly, securely, and cost efficiently. The cloud is not just being seen as an alternative IT solution. It’s a way to foster innovation, gain a competitive advantage, and create more personalized connections with customers inexpensively, if it’s deployed correctly, that is…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Hannah Pullen-Blasnik.

In a presentation at the 2014 TDWI Executive Summit in Boston, consultant and author David Linthicum discussed the impact of cloud computing on business intelligence and data analytics — and the opportunities it presents to organizations. Describing big data analytics in particular as "the killer app for cloud computing," Linthicum offered tips and advice on designing tiered data architecture for cloud analytics uses.

According to Linthicum, who is a senior vice president at Boston-based consultancy Cloud Technology Partners Inc., a solid architecture is the key to unlocking the potential benefits of cloud platforms. Linthicum said many cloud-based BI and analytics systems lack a well-grounded architecture, which he argued isn’t the fault of IT architects, but rather a result of the corporate focus on short-term — and often shortsighted — plans…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Editorial Staff.

For many, the cloud removes processing power constraints from the equation, allowing to think freely and creatively. The costs don’t increase much, or at all: using a single computer for 1000 hours costs the same as using 1000 for an hour. So cloud computing allows tackling big ideas and data, even for those without the proper infrastructure.

Pharmaceutical companies, large enterprises and even the layman benefit from the availability of the cloud, already pushing the available technology to its limits. But there is, you’d probably agree, the difference between a company that merely stores data in the cloud and a company that utilizes the bleeding-edge benefits that cloud computing can provide. The latter is what we’ll be concentrating on in this article…