Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Antony Savvas.

Many enterprises mix-and-match multiple clouds depending on their needs, and that is where cloud deployments can get complicated. The developing cloud market is seeing organisations increasingly working with a blend of different cloud infrastructures, whether that be private, public or a mixture of the two by using hybrid clouds.

With these options having to be matched with a variety of cloud services, such as infrastructure-as-a-service, platform-as-a-service and well established software-as-a-service offerings, organisations need the right kind of cloud deployment support. Businesses deploying a blend of clouds to handle different types of application workloads means cloud management platforms must include a policy-based governance engine to make sure the right workload is matched to exactly the right cloud service…

Grazed from GlobalNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Racemi, a provider of automated server migration software, has closed a $10 million Series C round of venture financing. The round included new investors, led by Milestone Venture Partners, along with existing investors Harbert Venture Partners, and Paladin Capital Group.

The funds will be used to further scale Racemi sales, services and engineering to meet growing demand for its cloud migration software, which automates the process of migrating workloads to public, private and hybrid clouds. "The increasing adoption of cloud computing presents a tremendous opportunity for Racemi and this round will help accelerate our efforts to enter new markets and deliver the truly unique capabilities of our solution," said Lawrence Guillory, CEO, Racemi…

Grazed from ITWorldCanada. Author: Don Sheppard.

Some systems managers still believe the promise of cloud computing exceeds the technological reality. They cite the “ities” – security, customizability, longevity, quality, reliability and others – as being key inhibitors to adoption and valid causes for corporate hesitation. In my opinion, the elephant in the room is really the loss of control that happens when ICT becomes cloud-based and widely accessible to the public.

Giving up direct control has to be one of the hardest things corporate managers have to do (or more correctly to re-do). The basic premise seems to be that if it’s under your control, then nothing much can go wrong! Is the loss of cloud control a valid fear? Cloud systems are typically (but not universally) characterized by:

Read more from the source @ http://www.itworldcanada.com/blog/is-loss-of-control-the-biggest-hurdle-to-cloud-computing/95131#ixzz36KBNTYdZ

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Editorial Staff.

The enterprise IT industry faces a massive transition. The economics of cloud computing are causing IT organizations to rapidly adopt lean practices. The provisioning, installation and management of IT infrastructure is a $400 billion industry, with more than 1 million employees in the US. The quality, affordability and efficiencies of cloud computing are displacing more costly and error-prone traditional computing models. The days of the system administrator are numbered.

Starved for talent

The good news is that this cloud has a silver lining. The global economy is increasingly driven by software and the need has never been greater for developers and IT operators who can support DevOps, a new process of agile IT. DevOps, a portmanteau of Development and Operations, requires managers with a much wider perspective of technology development, where the IT Operator is responsible for provisioning servers, development of software and delivery of a complete service to the final customer. It’s a big change from the siloed approach of the last 20 years, where IT operations and development were not only separate but often hostile to each other…

Grazed from CNBC. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing company Rackspace could take itself private, as a source told TechCrunch the company has been negotiating with a private equity firm to fund the transition. Rackspace could make the announcement this week, TechCrunch reported. Rackspace, which is currently public, would not confirm to TechCrunch whether it was considering going private.

The company, which competes with Amazon.com, Microsoft and Google in a crowded cloud computing sphere, announced in May that it had hired bankers in an effort to partner with or be acquired by another company. At least three companies, including HP and IBM, have offered to buy Rackspace, TechCrunch said, citing a source within the company. Rackspace currently has a market value of $4.8 billion, and an acquisition could value it at upwards of $6.1 billion, TechCrunch wrote. Rackspace shares rose in pre-market trading Wednesday.

Grazed from CloudComputing News. Author: Editorial Staff.

Last week, the news that Code Spaces suffered a breach that overnight put the company out of business and cost their clients untold millions reminded everyone in the IT community how devastating a major data security breach can be for our companies and clients. At Logicworks, we manage highly available, compliant cloud infrastructure on Amazon Web Services, and in the wake of this catastrophe, we decided to publish a list of AWS security best practices.

Data security is not binary. Best practices are to use defense in depth and continuously evaluate what improvements can be made and how the threats are changing. AWS, and public cloud computing in general, provide many new capabilities, but along with that come new threats and new tools to counter them. Here are some of our recommendations to improve AWS security and build a good foundation for a secure scalable environment…

Grazed from LSE.ac.uk. Author: Dr. Monica Horten.

A judgement handed down in the US Supreme Court recently has underpinned the claim of a group of broadcast companies that royalties were due from a cloud-based service relaying copyrighted content. The ruling also raises a looming threat of new liabilities for the nascent cloud computing industry.

The case of ABC Inc et al vs Aereo Inc, concerned whether or not a cloud service transmitting broadcast television to computer users over the Internet infringes copyright law. In brief, the Supreme Court ruling means that it does, but it is in the detail of the ruling that the cloud liability is implied…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Bull is launching a new range of bullion(TM) servers designed to speed up the implementation of Big Data and private Cloud infrastructures. The latest bullion systems feature a suite of leading-edge technologies for the next generation of Data Center. The bullion S servers have been developed by Bull with the aim of delivering an innovative response to the new requirements created by the massive explosion in enterprise data and the challenges of Data Center modernization and optimization.

Featuring an architecture designed to support up to 240 processing nodes and exceptional memory of up to 24TB, the bullion servers are engineered for performance and in-memory computing. Powerful, reliable and scalable, the new bullion models are designed to be the most efficient enterprise servers for Data Center optimization, information systems modernization and transforming raw data in real value for organizations…

Grazed from InfoTech Group. Author: Steve Saslow.

What a different world we live in than the one most of us grew up in, am I right? – Mobile technology. A wealth of information our ancestors couldn’t have dreamed of at our fingertips. A computer just recently passed the Turing Test for the first time, and Google is making investments in research and development firms that aim to “cure” aging.

Unlike the brave men and women who braved the primitive Earth before us, carving out their survival wherever they stood, today’s men and women can run businesses and work for corporations from the comfort of their own homes or even while moving swiftly around the planet…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Stacey Collet.

DreamWorks Animation knows the magic of the cloud. Since 2003, the famed studio has held its product development, design and manufacturing functions in a hybrid cloud environment, long before the storage option was even called "cloud." The cloud gives the Los Angeles-based company "massive flexibility in both human and digital capital," says DreamWorks CTO Lincoln Wallen, adding that it gives "any artist access to any movie from any site, anywhere, on any project… instantly."

It also allowed DreamWorks to move from producing one movie every 18 months to three movies a year. A blockbuster solution, no doubt. But things proved trickier when cloud options were weighed for corporate and back-office functions. In 2012, DreamWorks switched email systems from Microsoft Exchange to Gmail on the Google Apps platform to create a uniform framework for its 2,600 employees, half of whom used Linux for creating animation and the other half Microsoft tools for corporate functions…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itworld.com/cloud-computing/425298/how-recover-after-cloud-computing-misstep