Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Editorial Staff.

RackWare is a company that builds solutions for enterprises that allows them to dynamically change their cloud on the fly. RackWare’s flagship product is known as RackWare Management Module. This product gives administrators the ability to scale public and private cloud resources up and down. RMM also gives administrators the ability to move the computing loads between the public and private facilities. This advanced flexibility in service delivery affords IT administrators the ability to make the most of their onsite hardware while fully utilizing what the public cloud has to offer.

RackWare can potentially save an organization a bundle of cash on their labor and cloud computing costs by being able to deliver such an agile platform. RackWare’s success has been highlighted by the fact that the company recently took in another $2.3 million in investor funds. This is the second round of funding for the startup as the first round netted RackWare $3 million in funding back in 2013…

Grazed from EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet. Author: Jason Dover.

"Even though you might not realize it, over 95 percent of you are already consumers of cloud computing services." I vividly recall this opening statement by a speaker at a tech conference several years ago, just after he asked everyone to answer by a show of hands whether they were Yahoo and Gmail users. We’re already at a point in the lifecycle of cloud computing where it is beyond the phase of nebulous marketing hype.

The formation of the cloud and the need for the hybrid cloud

Although the mid-2000s marked the beginning of cloud computing as a household name, the concepts were born more than five decades ago. In the 1950s, mainframe computing laid the groundwork of pooled resources in a cloud-like infrastructure shared by dispersed users. Technologists of the 1960s and 1970s introduced the world to a vision of an interconnected globe with access to easily scalable programs, resources and data, regardless of location and without the bounds of a rigid system infrastructure…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Jonathan Eunice.

The marketing pitch for cloud services includes a vision of a steady progression from in-house IT to the perfect, infinitely wise cloud that solves — or at least outsources — all of your IT problems. Every cloud vendor presentation includes some chart showing stages of customer evolution; higher levels of outsourcing invariably trend up and to the right. Buy infrastructure from the cloud (IaaS)? Good. Buy a full platform (PaaS)? Better! Buy your entire software stack from the cloud (SaaS)? Best!

Innovations routinely require evangelism to trigger mainstream user adoption. But while we admire the enthusiasm of cloud proselytizers, let’s recognize that change doesn’t always represent progress. Now, I love cloud computing. I use it regularly, both personally and professionally…

Grazed from CNet. Author: Charles Cooper.

Box on Tuesday became the latest company to remove limitations on the amount of cloud storage it offers business customers. The change affects users who previously paid $15 a month for 1 terabyte of storage. Box already offered unlimited storage to customers choosing a different plan that cost $35 a month.

At the same time, the company announced that it would more closely integrate its products to work with Microsoft’s Office 365 and Outlook starting this fall. The announcement further underscores an industry in transition. With cloud storage costs plummeting, Box and other providers can’t afford to get caught in a breakneck race to the bottom and are keen to play up the ancillary products they offer beyond simply housing files on servers…

Grazed from RiseToTheCloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft’s Azure cloud is now being secured by Barracuda Networks. On Monday Barracuda announced that the latest version of its Web Application Firewall is available through Microsoft’s Azure Gallery. Barracuda is presenting the update at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference being held this week in Washington, D.C.

The update extends support for the Azure platform with automated provisioning and configuration, according to the the Campbell, Calif-based cloud security and storage company. Version 7.9 will be immediately available at no charge to existing customers subscribing to Energize Updates or who have active virtual appliance licenses. The company is listing the software from $4,999 to $61,599 for North American customers, depending on the model…

Grazed from FTFNews. Author: Eugene Grygo.

I concluded late last year that end-user firms and financial technology providers were quietly entering the next phase of the cloud computing revolution. My analysis, based on anecdotal evidence, is that buy- and sell-side firms ignored the cloud hype three years ago and focused on how to alleviate the initial, justified concerns over data security and other operational barriers.

Once those barriers were adequately addressed, application and service providers of all stripes have been tripping over themselves to get on the cloud. The concept, of course, is not new and before the Dot Com bubble burst, there was a lot of excitement over software as a service. What happened in the meantime was that the technologies that support the supposed ephemeral cloud — virtualization, networking equipment, storage software and hardware capacity, security controls and data distribution, in particular — got a lot better…

Grazed from TheVaryGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Rackspace (RAX) has a new strategy for keeping competitive in the cloud hosting market, and it’s all about offering cloud management expertise and support alongside hosting infrastructure. Starting this week, Rackspace will be offering two new managed cloud service plans. The base package, called Managed Infrastructure, provides guidance in cloud architecture, security, development and deployment, in addition to general support and around-the-clock access to Rackspace engineering staff.

The upper-level service plan, Managed Operations, is even more interesting by providing direct management of cloud servers either by Rackspace staff or automated software, at the customer’s choosing. That plan, which also includes everything that is a part of the base package described above, allows customers to build and manage clouds with virtually no investment in in-house cloud expertise…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Jason Bloomberg.

Surveys of IT executives regarding their Cloud Computing initiatives can be strangely misleading. Take for example two studies that fellow Forbes authors reported on over the last few months. Back in March, Forbes contributor Louis Columbus reported that a key take-away from an IBM study was that “Cloud computing has rapidly accelerated from 30% of CIOs mentioning it as a crucial technology for customer engagement in 2009 to 64% today.”

And yet, a recent Forbes article by Joe McKendrick indicated that 57 percent of the executives in a recent Saugatuck survey reported that “they are leveraging the cloud to create new revenue-producing products and services. What is suspicious about these results is that the first study asked whether Cloud was a crucial technology, but not whether they were actually implementing it – while the second survey queried about actual implementations, and yet the numbers (64% to 57%) are suspiciously close together…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Tom Groenfeldt.

Everyone knows how cloud computing works. You log onto Amazon Web Services, pick out the resources you want to use, enter your credit card and start working. But it’s not quite the same thing if you are a global bank planning to move key processes to a cloud environment. For starters, banks tend to be concerned about security and privacy, so many are initiating cloud systems on premises, tucked safely behind their firewalls.

And banks tend to have big, complex applications that may sprawl across numerous servers or even data centers. Managing a complex cloud environment is a task for specialists. Enter BMC with Cloud Lifecycle Manager (CLM) which helps firms develop Amazon-like cloud flexibility in-house. The company recently released CLM 4 for hybrid clouds that enforces IT compliance and change management policies across private and pubic cloud services…

Grazed from CFOWorld. Author: Loek Essers.

Cloud providers seeking business from EU institutions could become subject to more scrutiny from the European Data Protection Supervisor (EDPS). The supervisor is preparing guidance on the use of cloud computing and mobile devices for data transfers by EU institutions to non-EU countries and international organizations.

Part of that guidance could require extra checks for personal data shared with cloud computing services, the supervisor said in a position paper published Monday. "The rapid development of technology, including cloud computing and mobile applications, creates new challenges, which have to be addressed to ensure that the fundamental rights of individuals are fully respected," the supervisor said…