Author: David

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Agam Shah.

Xerox is offering managed service tools for enterprises that want to reduce the costs of remote printing. Xerox has added features to its Mobile Print app and bundled more security and audit tools so the app can be easily incorporated within existing managed print services in enterprises, the company said Monday. From PCs or mobile devices, users will be able to print documents at remote locations, but the cost and volume of the printing will be monitored by managed-print service administrators.

The features and tools are part of Xerox’s "next-generation managed printing services strategy," said Mike Feldman, president of Large Enterprise Operations at Xerox. The strategy revolves around improving print security, reducing costs, and better utilizing printing and imaging devices in an infrastructure…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Klint Finley.

One of the goals of cloud computing is to cut down on the work it takes to maintain a company’s underlying hardware and software infrastructure. Servers are virtualized, and tools like Puppet and Chef make it easier to manage and configure hundreds or even thousands of servers. Everything from application design to storage management is being rethought thanks to the cloud.

Database management systems are no exception. Salesforce.com has been particularly bullish on a database called PostgreSQL, an open source alternative to Oracle’s flagship database products that can also compete with so-called “NoSQL” databases modeled on the mega-data storage systems created by the likes of Google and Amazon. This year, Salesforce hired Tom Lane, one of the core contributors to Postgres, to develop the open source project and build some internal projects for the company…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Kevin Gruneisen.

At its most basic level, traveling along the IT transformation journey from conventional data centers to the dynamic, intelligent environments of cloud computing is an adventure in self discovery that has a way of changing you as much as your technology. You may start out thinking you know who you are and where you are going, but as you dig deeper into cloud computing, your goals will inevitably change as your awareness of who you are expands.

No Leap of Faith Required

The good news is that it is possible to start the journey toward cloud computing one step at a time from wherever you are, and even realize some efficiencies and performance rewards in the early stages. No leap of faith required. Implementing cloud computing is a pragmatic decision that needs to be executed with a painstaking attention to detail and a deep and broad understanding of your organization…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Eoin Jennings.

As St Jude raged around the UK last month felling trees and bringing commuter trains to a standstill, a collective sigh could be heard: cloud naysayers finally admitting defeat. Whether or not businesses had a mobility or cloud strategy, those tech-savvy employees across the country armed with BlackBerries, tablets and Dropbox accounts were comfortably and productively working away, and their organisations were thankful. For many businesses, it will take these 90mph winds to blow in the seeds of change.

Businesses are adopting cloud services, albeit more cautiously than anticipated. Much has been written about vendors hyping cloud services, and adoption rates not living up to the propaganda. Indeed TechTarget’s Cloud Pulse Survey found that public and private clouds have reached the same level of market penetration at around 25%…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Leading cloud service provider, RapidScale, is quickly becoming the preferred cloud computing provider for carriers. They have established themselves in the rapidly growing cloud industry by developing the first fully managed multi-tenant cloud solution for the SMB market. One of the keys to success for carriers is the CloudCompliance automation software integrated into the bundle. CloudCompliance gives an organization the ability to fall within compliance regulations for any industry. This ability has truly made RapidScale one of the most secure and compliant cloud service providers in the world.

Much of RapidScale’s success with carriers to date is rooted in its all-in-one solution: CloudOffice. CloudOffice is a ground-breaking SMB cloud solution that brings together core business applications, business vertical applications, and key business drivers such as: Microsoft Office Professional, Microsoft Lync, unlimited storage, 24x7x365 We Care Support, Adobe Suite, Microsoft Visio, Microsoft SharePoint, Citrix ShareFile, and a BYOA “Bring Your Own App.”…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

The next two weeks of tech conferences can be boiled down to one phrase: Cloud computing. Another thread worth noting is whether CIOs and their departments will increasingly become irrelevant due to the cloud. Amazon Web Services will kick off its Re:Invent conference in Las Vegas. Last year’s AWS powwow was an inaugural voyage that highlighted a broad customer base and plenty of C-level types running around. This year’s AWS event will be much larger.

The general theme from Re:Invent will revolve around how maintaining a data center just doesn’t make a lot of sense anymore. Infrastructure as a service is the way to go and AWS is racking up case studies everywhere. Salesforce’s Dreamforce conference follows the AWS gathering a week later. Salesforce will talk social, cloud, mobile and being a customer-centric company…

Grazed from GreatResponder.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Object storage provider Cloudian announced its effort with two partners Penguin Computing and Intel to provide object storage product as a bundled solution for Cloud OpenStack users. They are now supporting S3 APIs, The product has great elasticity, and is well integrated with OpenStack’s Nova cloud computing, Penguin Computing that built Glance, Horizon, and Keystone now has a new scale-out and multi-datacenter for  low power consumption and bring a high storage density, This will enable the Intel® Atom™ 64-bit C2000 processor’s to work very efficient. This system will be provided to users by using Penguin’s global network. The software is also available for users to be used on their own hardware servers.

Michael Tso the founder and CEO of Cloudian said “We are excited to work with Penguin Computing and Intel to deliver our carrier grade storage on OpenStack, which precisely addresses the demands of our customers,” he also added “Penguin’s deep enterprise expertise coupled with Intel’s Atom C2000 processors offers industry leading efficiencies at a competitive price. The solution significantly eases the barriers for the adoption of OpenStack in the enterprise.”…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Historically, one of the major worries for enterprises considering cloud deployments has been vendor lock-in. If businesses entrust a significant part of their infrastructure and their data to third party organizations and then find that they are unable to transfer that investment to another vendor, it puts them in a difficult position. To avoid that risk, businesses often chose to invest in private cloud infrastructure rather than trusting in the public cloud.

The major advantage of virtualization technologies and the cloud platforms that are built on top of them is flexibility. Flexibility of infrastructure deployment accords well with modern business’s need for agility. When the conditions of business change, companies like to be certain that the platforms on which they rely can change with them. Openness is a crucial aspect of that flexibility…

Grazed from SeaCoastOnline.  Author: MJ Shoer.

Cloud and mobile computing represent two of the most significant technology developments of the last 50 years.  Dating to the 1960s, we have seen the introduction of the mainframe computer, mini-computers, the PC revolution of the 1980s, the onset of the Internet and now the mobilization of the Internet and global connectivity along with the Cloud. Nothing has seen more rapid growth than the Cloud and mobility. We now live in a world driven by "apps."

Think about the fact that of the 250 million people in the United States over the age of 14, it’s estimated that 235 million of them have a mobile device. That’s a staggering percentage and a technology adoption rate unlike anything we have seen before in human history….