Grazed from ITBusiness.ca.  Author: Shawn Freeman.

It’s not every day that NASA creates a position just for you.  NASA did just that for Chris C. Kemp in 2010. The tech pioneer became the space agency’s first Chief Technology Officer for Information Technology, appointed to lead and nurture IT innovation at the U.S. space agency.

Kemp focused on cloud computing, open-source software and open government, and prior to becoming CTO for IT, partnered with Google and Microsoft to help create Google Moon, Google Mars, and Microsoft World Wide Telescope. He also led the development of OpenStack, an open-source cloud project, with the goal of enabling any organization to create and offer cloud computing services running on standard hardware…

Grazed from PC Magazine.  Author: Michael Miller.

In my last post, I talked about how cloud computing, and in particular Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), is and is not particularly flexible. Flexibility comes from a model that doesn’t require any data center hardware and from a series of extensive APIs that are an integral part of the best SaaS offerings. But at the same time, SaaS applications are inflexible in that they don’t allow much customization to the core software itself and that typically every customer has to be running on the same, most current version with no options.

As I look at it, I’m beginning to think that the areas in which cloud applications are most inflexible may actually turn out to be one of their strongest features. I can argue that traditional client-server applications have offered too much flexibility, and large organizations in particular have spent too much time, effort, and expense in customizing them. We all know examples of organizations that have spent millions (or sometimes, tens of millions) of dollars on customizing their ERP solutions, perhaps with limited upside…

Grazed from FCW. Author: Colby Hochmuth.

Cloud computing has become ubiquitous for the federal IT workforce, as many if not most agencies have begun to move functions like email or data storage into the cloud. But approaching cloud as a software-defined environment is still a relatively new concept in government.

A software-defined approach holistically automates network, computing and storage capabilities and opens the lines of communication between them, according to Anil Karmel, founder and CEO of C2 Labs Inc. and former deputy chief technology officer at the National Nuclear Security Administration…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

The rise of cloud computing means that many enterprise IT resources have moved out of IT’s control. Indeed, many people went directly to Amazon Web Services, Google, or Microsoft for IT services, bypassing IT altogether. IT leaders have no one to blame but themselves for this shift. Although there are certainly very responsive IT organizations, many more have not provided solutions at the speed the business needs.

When the cloud arose, users took the initiative and solved their own problems. I can’t blame them. Ironically, as organizations use more and more cloud resources, IT has a new way to reassert itself, even if users continue to get their own services. That way is the service catalog, a collection of public cloud and local services stored in a huge registry, much like in the days of SOA…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Lawrence Garvin.

One of the significant developments emerging as a result of cloud computing and software-defined infrastructures is a blending of the system administrator and network administrator roles. With this convergence in mind, I can’t help but wonder what the future holds in store for the toolsets that IT pros in each of these traditional roles have come to rely on.

Before we explore this issue further, though, let’s set the stage by taking a closer look at the demise of the distinction between sysadmins and network admins. Historically, the demarcation between the two happened at the RJ-45 socket on the NIC. Anything that involved the cable, switches, routers, etc. was not the concern of sysadmins. Likewise, if the light was blinking on the NIC, anything happening inside the box was not the problem of network admins…

Grazed from DarkReading. Author: Krishna Narayanaswamy.

Organizations are adopting the cloud in a big way. Today, representing about 23% of IT spend, cloud computing has accelerated because it allows people to get their jobs done more quickly, more easily, and more flexibly than they can using traditional computing tools. Set to account for 60% of cloud services in 2017, software-as-a-service has proliferated in enterprises and has now reached a tipping point.

IT has responsibility for some cloud apps. Most IT departments I’ve talked to say they have responsibility for a handful of cloud deployments, maybe 10 at most, and further estimate that they have 40-50 total apps running per organization. In reality, they have an average of 461 cloud apps, according to our latest Cloud Report, an aggregated, anonymized measure of cloud app usage from the Netskope Active Platform…

Grazed from VirtualizationReview. Author: Editorial Staff.

It’s a perfect fit and it isn’t a new trend, but Big Data’s migration to the cloud seems to be accelerating recently. The advantage of running your Big Data analytics in the cloud rather than on-premises — especially for smaller companies with constrained resources — are numerous and well-known. Oracle Corp. summed up some of the major business drivers in an article titled "Trends in Cloud Computing: Big Data’s New Home":

• Cost reduction
• Reduced overhead
• Rapid provisioning/time to market
• Flexibility/scalability…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Michael Brown.

There is no denying that cloud technology has afforded the business world with countless innovations and brand-new opportunities. But could it be that things are just getting started? This article from EnterpriseTech.com, reporting on research on the future of cloud computing, expands on the notion that the cloud still has plenty up its sleeve. Managed service providers that are currently capitalizing on cloud file sync or sharing, or MSPs that hope to in the future, may very well have even more opportunities to consider down the road.

Technology plus Technology Equals Exciting Opportunities

“When combined with other emerging technologies like 3-D printing, the survey echoes previous academic surveys predicting that cloud computing could even help usher in a new era of design and manufacturing,” states the EnterpriseTech article on the survey. The combination of cloud technology and other new technologies in many different industries is creating opportunities that couldn’t have even been imagined before…

Grazed from CIO-Today. Author: Jennifer LeClaire.

Despite their recent alignment in some areas, Microsoft now seems to be aiming square for Salesforce Relevant Products/Services.com’s jawline with its latest CRM Relevant Products/Services software Relevant Products/Services release. Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is hoping to gain major momentum among U.S. government agencies with its new cloud computing solutions. The well-rounded infrastructure Relevant Products/Services includes Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform, its Office 365 productivity apps, and now Dynamics CRM for customer Relevant Products/Services, or in this case, constituent relationship management.

In a Thursday blog post, Microsoft’s VP for the U.S. Public Sector Curt Kolcun announced updates to Microsoft’s cloud offerings, spanning infrastructure, data Relevant Products/Services, productivity, mobility, and more. The crux of the announcement is that Dynamics CRM Online will be joining Office 365 and Azure in servicing U.S. federal, state, and local governments agency…

Grazed from WallStreet and Tech. Author: Kevin McPartland.

Security and compliance are certainly concerns for buy-side firms looking to use the cloud, but it shouldn’t hold everyone back from cloud-based technology. Cloud computing has been discussed on Wall Street since the early days of Salesforce.com circa 1990. Depending on how it is defined, the “original cloud” could date back even further, to the founding of Bloomberg and the widespread use of mainframe computers in the 1980s. But despite those early beginnings, Wall Street today is underutilizing this resource and its potential competitive advantage.

Greenwich Associates research shows that 80% of buy-side firms utilize vendor hosted execution management systems (EMS). Web-delivered applications, often referred to as software-as-a-service (SaaS), are also common, ranging from customer relationship management (CRM) to email to market data terminals. For the largest firms, internally built applications delivered in this way often consist of a pretty front end hooked up to a legacy back end. The cost and ease-of-use benefits of these approaches cannot be understated; however the capabilities of these approaches only scratch the cloud’s surface…