Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Shawn Drew.

IT insiders have been touting the potential benefits of public, private and hybrid clouds for years, but since the sector is often prone to exaggeration, IT managers would be wise to read up on the subject before investing resources into cutting-edge tech. Now, however, yet another survey of IT professionals shows that the purported cloud computing benefits are, in fact, quite real — and midsize business that strive for a competitive edge must learn how best to embrace this new commonplace technology.

Benefits Shine in New Survey

The new survey, from the Harvard Business Review (HBR) and covered by Forbes, asked 527 HBR readers with positions in large and midsize businesses around the world to answer questions regarding their business — and what benefits, if any, they have found or expect to find in the cloud…

Grazed from MapCite. Author: Editorial Staff.

To understand where you’re going, it always helps to look where you’ve come from. Cloud computing has come a long way since its inception, when Amazon was still only known for selling books and movies, Myspace was considered "cloud," and experts argued on the true definition of cloud computing — though the latter can still be true.

By delving into this cloud computing history and timeline, IT pros can learn from past ups and downs and have a clearer idea of where the cloud market is heading — though, of course, there are always unforeseen hiccups that can alter its course, such as the PRISM scandal. This cloud retrospective aims to give a high-level view of cloud’s history and question what that means beyond 2014…

To see infographic and read more from the source, visit http://www.mapcite.com/posts/2014/july/cloud-computing-timeline-illustrates-clouds-past,-predicts-its-future.aspx

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Jim Duffy.

Big Switch Networks this week is unveiling an SDN controller designed to bring Google-like hyperscale networking to enterprises. The software, called Cloud Fabric, runs on bare metal switches and allows users to build cloud “pods” where racks of servers, switches and applications can be grouped logically to serve a specific function, such as an OpenStack private cloud (http://www.networkworld.com/article/2172063/cloud-computing/gartner-analyst-slams-openstack–again.html), Hadoop big data cluster, or a virtual desktop infrastructure.

This is in contrast to operating, provisioning and monitoring each individual business application, such as SAP or Oracle or Microsoft Office, as its own silo. Cloud Fabric works with Big Switch’s SwitchLight operating system on spine switches, and SwitchLight OS on leafs. Optional components are an OpenStack plugin and SwitchLight virtual switches on leafs…

Grazed from CSIAC. Author: Editorial Staff.

The latest information on using Cloud Computing in the field of Data Mining

Analysts see room for growth on Hadoop, other ‘big data’ technologies

Article by Alan R. Earls. Richard Winter, president of consulting firm Winter Corp. in Cambridge, Mass., says there are two principal development trends taking place in connection with “big data” and big-data technologies. First, traditional data warehouse vendors are investing in scalability improvements to better accommodate growing volumes of transaction data. And second, new open source technologies such as Hadoop, MapReduce and NoSQL databases are emerging for use primarily as data warehouse alternatives in tackling other forms of big data — Web activity logs and sensor data, for example. http://searchdatamanagement.techtarget.com/news/2240102604/Analysts-see-room-for-growth-on-Hadoop-other-big-data-technologies…

Grazed from MMEConsulting. Author: Steve McEvoy.

How fast does your Internet connection need to be?

If you have a terrible Internet connection you can stop reading now and give up on the Cloud (until your Internet options improve). Any Cloud Practice Management App (PM App) needs a reliable Internet connection with decent speed. This is the most important part of your Cloud adventure. You are about to make your Internet Connection business critical. Get this part wrong and you are going to suffer immensely. For that reason I’ve spent a fair bit of time below getting into the details (sorry about the length but I think it will be worth your time).

Reliability of your Internet connection is paramount. If the Internet goes out for a few minutes each day (a.k.a. Flakey) this will drive you insane and dramatically impact your Practice. In my experience Practices that move to the Cloud often discover that their Internet connection has been Flakey without really knowing it…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing is proving to be a must-know technology for today’s employees. New research suggests cloud ranks high as a technology that simplifies information so firms can remain at their most competitive. With that trend continuing to catch on, this responsibility is set to increase for the future IT professional.

Cloud-Minded Professionals

A recent survey by Solar Winds, featured in the Cloud Computing Journal, concluded that the rise of cloud services will continue to affect how IT professionals work. Some traditional responsibilities may become unnecessary as a result, but it is ultimately the role of the IT professional to evolve with cloud technology. IT will be expected to understand their cloud services, including how to manage and integrate them into existing infrastructures. The IT landscape will increasingly depend on these services…

Grazed from CIO-Today. Author: Jennifer LeClaire.

Working to woo dvelopers with a new initiative that promises to spark community and teamwork, Cisco has launched a new developer program dubbed DevNet. The program aims to drive an open community of software Relevant Products/Services developers — including ISVs, customers and systems integrators and channel partners — to help them build Cisco-enabled apps faster.

Susie Wee, vice president and CTO of networked experiences at Cisco, said the company is encouraging developers to adopt APIs across its products while also fostering integrations with third-party products. DevNet’s overarching goal: fueling software innovation. “As Cisco adds powerful software and services to our market-leading hardware portfolio, we recognize that developers are critical to creating value for our customers,” Wee said…

Grazed from GCN. Author: John Moore.

With pressure on government to streamline IT operations to control costs and spur performance, a growing number of city IT managers are pursuing the latest hardware architectures and tools to renovate their legacy data centers. But while the emphasis on physical devices may seem like a hardware renaissance, the cloud is still very much a part of data center overhauls.

In such cases, agencies are using cloud in a backup role, a resource that soaks up spikes in data center workload or as a disaster recovery utility. The city of Asheville, N.C. , for example, found that traditional disaster recovery involved a high, fixed capital expense. As a consequence, city’s budget only supported disaster recovery plans for applications it absolutely needed to protect – enterprise resource planning (ERP), for example, said Jonathan Feldman, Asheville’s CIO…

Grazed from MBTMag. Author: Adam Stern.

As adoption of cloud computing gains momentum within the manufacturing sector, there’s a corresponding growth in infrastructure-related services, including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) — a way to provide access to compute resources in a cloud-based environment. What sets IaaS apart is that the resources consist of virtualized hardware — infrastructure that is virtual as well as physical. IaaS offerings range from virtual servers to network connections to load balancers.

The major appeal of cloud server hosting is that the software (and with IaaS, the hardware), is virtualized. The hardware resources that support IaaS are pulled from multiple servers and networks, located across multiple off-site data center and maintained independently of the manufacturer using the service. The company pays a monthly fee to access these resources as needed. It’s the responsibility of the cloud service provider (CSP) to ensure ongoing maintenance of the hardware and virtualized services. And now that enterprise ERP solutions can live and prosper in the cloud — and that CSPs can install, manage, update, protect and support ERP software for a low monthly fee — the question has shifted from “to migrate or not to migrate?” to “which cloud environment suits us best?…

Grazed from GlobeNewswire. Author: PR Announcement.

TargetX, an industry leading CRM provider for colleges and universities announced their new "Cloud" suite of bundled services for Recruitment, Retention and Advancement data management and engagement solutions. Built on the proven Force.com platform of Salesforce.com, the worldwide leader in customer relationship management and a pioneer in cloud computing, these unparalleled services address longstanding gaps and challenges in the student communication lifecycle.

"Today we are launching a suite of services for higher education professionals, and of the many new exciting developments, we are thrilled to identify many new opportunities to better ensure student success," announced Sasha Peterson, CEO of TargetX at the company’s annual users conference called the CRM Summit—held this year in Las Vegas…