Author: David

Grazed from AutomationWorld. Author: Dave Greenfield.

The reliability and low cost of cloud computing is no longer in doubt. When you have providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft offering 99.99 percent uptime and some of the biggest companies in the world using their services, questions of robustness and dependability can be easily answered. Cloud services also offer the bonus of only paying for what you use, easy and low-cost scalability, improved collaboration possibilities, and huge savings on IT support costs.

But concerns about the cloud do still exist for many manufacturers, especially around security and availability. When using public cloud services, all information sent through those networks can be a target for hackers simply because it is on such a network. In addition, the government can access your information on a public cloud without a search warrant, and there can be concerns with bandwidth overload or problems accessing your applications when you have no Internet access. Beyond these issues, there are also concerns about latency and connection failures compared to a direct network connection…

Grazed from TechRepublic.  Author: Brian Taylor.

Grazed from Centrify.  Author: Corey Williams.

I am a typical enterprise knowledge worker. I extensively use Microsoft Office.  I switched from a Windows PC to a MacBook a few years ago. But during these past couple of years, either I, my department or my enterprise has adopted a TON of SaaS apps that now fit into my daily workflow.

As I stop and evaluate the consequences of this phenomenon, I am stunned at how screwed up and brittle my daily workflow has become.  But before I go into what some of these issues are, let me paint a picture of my typical SaaS app usage: 

• For file sharing and syncing, I use both Box and Dropbox
• For CRM and customer support, I use Salesforce, but I also use Dunn and Bradstreet, RainKing, Data.com and others
• For email, we recently moved to Office 365…

Grazed from FierceEntperpriseCommunications.  Author: David Weldon.

Though he never lived, a century and a quarter after his first appearance, Sherlock Holmes is still known as the greatest consulting detective of all time. Which is why it is so fitting that a new cloud- and analytics-based initiative looking to solve some of today’s most complex information challenges has been named Sherlock.

The Sherlock cloud computing effort is based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and looks to duplicate the great problem-solving skills of the fictional detective.  According to a recent report at HPC Wire, Sherlock is being aided by SD Technologies and Chickasaw Nation Industries, as well as a number of academic, industry and government stakeholders…

Grazed from FierceEnterpriseCommunications.  Author: David Weldon.

The results of more studies on cloud computing were recently released, and they confirm the rapid rate of adoption of cloud-based applications.  Verizon released the results of its latest study about the cloud, the "State of the Enterprise Cloud Report," indicating that the use of cloud technology for storage grew by 90 percent from January 2012 to January 2013. The use of the cloud for memory increased by 100 percent during the same period, the study said.

The Verizon study found that the growth rate for virtual machines being deployed on the cloud increased by 35 percent during this time.  These dramatic results aren’t surprising when taken in the context of another cloud computing survey from Dimensional Research. The survey was commissioned by cloud business intelligence provider Birst…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: James Urquhart.

I wrote in July about how cloud computing isn’t the same for every enterprise, and the true implications of this have been becoming clearer to many over the last several months. VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service, in particular, offers a view of an entirely different cloud story targeted at a largely different buyer audience than the likes of Amazon, Microsoft or Google.

What VMware’s story most demonstrates to me is the one question that matters more than any other when it comes to cloud buying patterns: To what extent does a company engage in software development to define its business?  The answer to this question will determine the mix of technologies and services that company will demand — at least for the next few years…

Grazed from Skytap.  Author: PR Announcement.

Skytap Inc., the leading provider of self-service application development environments in the cloud, today announced it was recognized by Seattle Business magazine as the cloud computing vendor in the 2013 Tech Impact Awards. The awards program recognizes Washington-based software, information technology and mobile-app companies that are making an impact on business operations across various industries, including mobile, cloud and analysis.

Skytap was honored at an awards ceremony on Thursday evening at the Renaissance Hotel in Seattle, and will be featured in the October issue of Seattle Business magazine. Other winning companies include PayScale, Simply Measured, Tableau Software, and Zillow…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Caitlin White and Michelle Boisvert.

Enterprises wary of moving mission-critical data off-premises to a public cloud provider such as Amazon may find an OpenStack private cloud fits the bill.  But private clouds can be costlier than public clouds, and relatively few IT employees have OpenStack skills.

"We had quite a bit of developer need for self-service; we were spending quite a bit of time on deploying images for developers and just needed to get out of that for my team," said Joe Specht, senior director of system infrastructure at Seattle-based Tableau Software.  Tableau adopted Metacloud’s "Private Cloud as a Service" product a little more than a year ago to help out…

Grazed from Security Sense.  Author: Chandan Bhattacharya.

Grazed from Bloomberg.  Author: Aaron Ricadela.

Oracle Corp., the world’s largest database-software maker, will boost operating margins by shifting to services delivered via the Web from software installed on computers, Chief Financial Officer Safra Catz said.

Oracle will be more profitable as technology spending is directed toward cloud-computing tools, Catz, who is also co-president, said at a meeting with analysts in San Francisco yesterday. Analysts project on average that Oracle will reach an operating margin of 48 percent for the fiscal year through May, compared with 39 percent in the previous year …