Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Initiated by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA) and developed under the Information Technology Standards Committee (ITSC), the MTCS is a Singapore Standard (SS 584:2013) that specifies stringent security and operational requirements for CSPs to encourage adoption of sound risk management and security practices. The certification specifies three tiers of security certification, with level three being the highest. Ribose’s level one MTCS certification was awarded after thorough evaluation by BSI (British Standards Institution), a participating Certification Body for the MTCS standard.

IDA Assistant Chief Executive Khoong Hock Yun said, "Cloud computing is a key enabler for Singapore’s drive to become a Smart Nation. Security of the cloud is a critical concern answered by the Multi-Tier Cloud Security standard. We are heartened that global industry players have taken a keen interest in it and are signing on to adopt the measures."…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

The idea is pretty simple and actually pretty old: Use a distributed architecture on large databases to quickly return the data requested. This approach runs the database query across many servers at the same time, then combines the results as they return from hundreds, perhaps thousands of servers in the cluster.

This idea has gotten new attention because it is the core idea behind MapReduce, the parallel processing model used by Hadoop in big data analytics. These types of distributed workloads have been used for years, typically with a homogeneous server cluster, meaning it works across lots of the same servers. That homogeneity restricts you to one server cluster or one cloud — thus, one resource type and cost. But not any more…

Grazed from YahooFinance. Author: Anupama Shukla.

The rapid technology advances have affected all the spheres of life. The preference and growing popularity of smartphones and tablets has brought a rapid shift in the personal computing environment. IDC reported that the second quarter of 2014 saw a decline in worldwide PC shipment, falling to 1.7% on a year-on-year basis.

Microsoft (MSFT) has responded to the PC decline, the falling popularity of Windows operating system and Office, and the growing adoption and prominence of smartphones, tablets, and bring-your-own devices. It announced that the next updated version of Windows—Windows 9—will embrace the operating systems of Windows, Windows Phone, and Xbox into “one single converged operating system.” Windows 9 is expected to be launched in 2015…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Steve Burke.

The pace of hybrid cloud computing adoption is accelerating in a “game-on, change or die” scenario that is paying big dividends for the national solution provider, GreenPages Technology Solutions CEO Ron Dupler said Monday. GreenPages’ own cloud computing management as a service platform is set to double through the first quarter of next year as more companies adopt hybrid cloud computing strategies, said Dupler in keynote presentation before 80 customers and 118 top IT executives at the 18th annual GreenPages cloud summit. What’s more, GreenPage is set to end 2014 with a robust 12 percent increase in annual sales to $130 million, Dupler said.

“The [hybrid cloud] game is truly on,” Dupler said under the backdrop of the summit theme Game On: Visions & Strategies For Cloud Era IT Organizations. “Customers are looking at us to really execute in the cloud now. There is no more debate. Customers are acknowledging cloud and they are operationalizing cloud strategies. We are seeing tremendous traction with our CMaaS [Cloud Management as a Service platform] with an accelerating pipeline.”…

Grazed from CloudCommunications. Author: Frank Griffin.

Access to resources is one of the difficulties SMBs face as they try to navigate the business world. In today’s environment technology is a critical component of an organization’s makeup, and no matter what kind of industry you’re in, having a digital presence and using information and communications technology (ICT) is essential. In the past, the CapEx/OpEx of IT infrastructure priced the vast majority of SMBs from implementing these solutions as part of their operations, but that is no longer the case.

Cloud computing now makes it possible for even the smallest of businesses to deploy SaaS (News – Alert), PaaS, and IaaS at affordable price points. In an article written by Michael Brown on mspmentor.net, he points to a recent study showing executives in the U.S. believe having cloud services has delivered a significant value to their business…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

The primary mission of computing has always been to automate business. The secondary mission has been to automate the automation, a quest that grows ever more urgent as data center technology achieves such towering complexity it threatens to collapse under its own weight. The private cloud is the latest attempt to boost the efficiency and agility of the vast assortment of hardware and software sprawled across data centers.

The idea is to pool compute, storage, and network resources and manage them from a central software control point rather than scrambling to provision, monitor, manage, and reconfigure all that infrastructure manually. Predictably, the organizations with the most experience designing and running shared infrastructure are the public cloud service providers themselves…

Grazed from SarbOx. Author: Editorial Staff.

Datapipe, a global provider of managed hosting and cloud services, has announced that the Datapipe Cloud Analytics for Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform has been recognized with a 2014 Cloud Computing Excellence Award. The award honors companies who have effectively leveraged cloud computing capabilities while bringing forth new, innovative offerings to market. An advanced managed service offering, Datapipe Cloud Analytics for AWS utilizes data-mining and intelligence tools to track AWS patterns, providing in-depth analysis of areas such as usage, spending, security and governance.

“Datapipe is being honored for their achievement in bringing innovation and excellence to the market, while leveraging the latest technology trends.” Designed to assist global customers using AWS for both hybrid and public cloud deployments, Datapipe Cloud Analytics offers a cost-effective management approach from a single solution…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Klint Finley.

Matt Pfeil drove from Austin to San Antonio with only one thing in mind: stopping Jonathan Ellis from quitting his job at the cloud computing company Rackspace. Ellis had emailed his colleagues, including Pfeil, to say he planned on leaving Rackspace to start a new company around Cassandra, a sweeping open-source database originally created by Facebook to help juggle the scads of digital information generated by its popular social network.

Pfeil had worked with Cassandra at Rackspace, so he knew the value of the project, but he didn’t want Rackspace to lose Ellis. When he wasn’t writing code, Pfeil helped with the company’s recruiting efforts, and that made it especially difficult to see Ellis leave. The two met for lunch at a tiny Thai restaurant in San Antonio, and Pfeil brought a long list of reasons why Ellis shouldn’t quit. But soon, his plan started to backfire…

Grazed from DBTA. Author: Editorial Staff.

Scientists from IBM, AT&T, and Applied Communication Sciences (ACS) have announced a proof-of-concept for technology that reduces set up times for cloud-to-cloud connectivity from days to seconds. This advance is a major step forward that could one day lead to sub-second provisioning time with IP and next-generation optical networking equipment and enables elastic bandwidth between clouds at high connection request rates using intelligent cloud data center orchestrators, instead of requiring static provisioning for peak demand.

“This technology not only represents a new ability to scale big data workloads and cloud computing resources in a single environment but the elastic bandwidth model removes the inefficiency in consumption versus cost for cloud-to-cloud connectivity,” said Douglas Freimuth, IBM Research senior technical staff member and master inventor…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jon Oltsik.

According to ESG research, 63% of mid-market (i.e. 250 to 999 employees) and enterprise (i.e. more than 1,000 employees) are currently using Software-as-a Service (SaaS), 33% use Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), and 27% employ Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) today (note: I am an ESG employee).

Additionally, 72% of all firms are increasing their spending on cloud computing initiatives this year. Wasn’t IT risk supposed to put the brakes on cloud computing deployment? Security professionals are still quite concerned. In a recent ESG research survey, infosec pros identified numerous cloud security risk areas as follows:…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkworld.com/article/2459955/cisco-subnet/cloud-security-priorities-and-synergies-with-enterprise-security.html