Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Pat Romanski.

Avaya has escalated its efforts to get customers to fast-track to the cloud with the first of several sweeping initiatives that will optimize solutions and processes for delivery of collaboration as a service (CaaS) via the Avaya Collaborative Cloud. Strong demand for Avaya communications and collaboration applications from large and midsize enterprises is driving a focus on expanded scale and reach as well as simpler, faster provisioning that requires fewer resources.

Avaya collaboration solutions, including unified communications, video and contact center via the cloud, offer a new path to greater business agility. While many other areas of IT have successfully adopted cloud-based solutions, the communications infrastructure is one of the last remaining hold-outs due to complexity and concerns around reliability, security and privacy…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Richard Moulds.

The cloud has hit the mainstream. Businesses in the United States currently spend more than $13 billion on cloud computing and managed hosting services, and Gartner projects that by 2015, end-user spending on cloud services could be more than $180 billion worldwide. It is estimated that 50 percent of organizations will require employees to use their own devices by 2017, which will depend on shared cloud storage. All of this requires encryption.

Organizational deployment of encryption has increased significantly in recent years. Its use spans everything from encrypting data in databases and file systems, in storage networks, on back-up tapes, and while being transferred over a public and internal networks. Although this might seem that we are moving in the right direction when it comes to enterprise data protection, there’s a real risk of creating fragmentation and inconsistency – referred to as encryption sprawl – as different organizations deploy diverse technologies in different places to secure different types of data…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Toshiba America Information Systems Inc., Telecommunication Systems Division (Toshiba – www.telecom.toshiba.com ) today announced that its VIPedge® cloud-based business telephone solution has won a 2014 Cloud Computing Excellence Award from TMC, a global, integrated media company.

Presented by TMC’s Cloud Computing magazine, the Cloud Computing Excellence Award recognizes companies that have most effectively leveraged cloud computing in their efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market. The winners of the 2014 Cloud Computing Excellence Award will be published in Cloud Computing magazine…

Read more from the source @ http://www.marketwatch.com/story/toshibas-vipedge-cloud-based-business-telephone-solution-wins-2014-cloud-computing-excellence-award-2014-07-22

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

FrontRange, the Hybrid IT software company, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named the company’s HEAT Service Management platform as a 2014 Cloud Computing Excellence Award winner for the 4th consecutive year. “This award validates FrontRange’s commitment to delivering the most comprehensive solution with world class availability, reliability and security.”

The Cloud Computing Excellence Award, presented by Cloud Computing Magazine, recognizes companies that have most effectively leveraged cloud computing in their efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market. “Being recognized for the 4th consecutive year as a leader in cloud computing is a great honor,” said Kevin J Smith, VP and GM of the Cloud Business Unit at FrontRange. “This award validates FrontRange’s commitment to delivering the most comprehensive solution with world class availability, reliability and security.”…

Grazed from ReCode. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Taking a page from the book of supercomputing, IBM will today announce the addition of a super-fast networking technology called InfiniBand to its SoftLayer cloud computing service. As an industrial strength connection technology intended to create a super-fast connection between computers running in a data center, InfiniBand has the ability to move at speeds as fast as 56 gigabits per second.

That’s fast enough to transfer the contents of a library of 30,000 Blu-ray discs in 24 hours. The technology is widely used in high-performance computing environments and has been used in 222 of the systems on the latest Top 500 list of the world’s most powerful supercomputers…

Grazed from IJCEA. Author: K.Vijay Kumar, Dr. N. Chandra Sekhar Reddy, B.Srinivas Reddy.

Cloud Computing provides data computing to store and retrieve the user data and it is the use of activity of using Computer hardware and software. The primary usage of cloud computing is data storage and capacity of storage for cloud users. Ensuring an IT Services that are provided to a user over a network and Providing a services infrastructure as a service (IaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), or software as a service (SaaS).

Nowadays the Cloud security implementation is the important factor by using various cryptographic algorithms, DES, AES, RSA and ECC. Cloud computing are facing problems like data privacy and other data protection issues. Cryptography is tool for data and computer security i.e. by encryption of data. This paper proposes about the different security techniques, cryptographic algorithm to address the data security and privacy issue in cloud storage in order to protect the data stored in the cloud system…

To read the article, visit http://www.ijcea.com/preserving-data-privacy-security-models-cryptographic-algorithms-cloud-computing/

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Although it’s a European Union change, the service level agreement (SLA) standardization issued last month by the European Commission’s Cloud Select Industry Group – Subgroup on Service Level Agreement (C-SIG-SLA … ’cause that’s a catchy name) could become a global standard. Even if it doesn’t, American cloud providers (among others) will very soon feel its effects, according to an article written by Kenneth N. Rashbaum Esq. and Jason M. Tenenbaum of Barton LLP.

The two lawyers indicated in their article that with the Edward Snowden disclosures of last year, there has been an increasing focus around the world on government and technology company transparency. Those pushing ahead the quickest are in Europe, as the Union has been amongst the strongest advocates for change. And the new SLA standardization for cloud services providers it released on June 6 are its first big step in creating that transparency…

Grazed from BankInfoSecurity. Author: Eric Chabrow.

A big challenge examiners face in conducting forensic investigations in the cloud is that they don’t have access to the servers. That’s just one problem the National Institute of Standards and Technology is addressing. "Many of the traditional approaches are going to be more difficult to apply, and in some cases they won’t work in the cloud," says Martin Herman, senior adviser for forensics and IT at the National Institute of Standards and Technology.

Herman co-chairs NIST’s cloud computing forensic science working group, which has identified scores of challenges forensic experts face in applying their craft in the cloud. NIST has taken 65 of the challenges and published a draft report, NIST Interagency Report 8006: NIST Cloud Computing Forensic Science Challenges. The report aggregates, categorizes and discusses the forensics challenges faced by experts when responding to incidents that have occurred in a cloud-computing ecosystem…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Enterprise adoption of OpenStack is taking off, and value-added security solutions for the open source cloud computing operating system are close behind. This week, Catbird announced version 6.0 of its cloud security platform, which it describes as the channel’s first "security policy automation for private and hybrid cloud environments."

The chief advantage of policy-based security for OpenStack and other cloud environments, according to Catbird, is its ability to work in real time. That means administrators can implement security policies across the lifecycle of virtual machines within the cloud. Catbird hopes that type of security will attract enterprises that run OpenStack clouds and require compliance with major standards, such as such as PCI DSS and HIPAA, COBIT and FISMA Rev4…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Datapipe, a global provider of managed hosting and cloud services, today 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.

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. The platform analyzes 100 percent of AWS usage to provide analysis of patterns and trends based on a single employee, company department(s) and/or overall organization…