Author: David

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

IBM made waves in the cloud computing market when it acquired SoftLayer for $2 billion in early June. Three months into the integration process, SearchCloudComputing spoke with Dennis Quan, IBM’s vice president of SmartCloud Enterprise, to discuss Big Blue’s plans for its new Infrastructure as a Service property.

Quan is responsible for the technology platform underlying all of IBM’s cloud services. His involvement in cloud computing started in 2007, when his team built IBM’s first cloud with Google and the National Science Foundation, and he has held numerous technical leadership positions with IBM over the past 14 years…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Michelle McNickle.

As the use of cloud computing grows, so do the threats that endanger a cloud environment. Seungwon Shin, Ph.D., assistant professor at the graduate school of information security at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, recently developed a framework that uses OpenFlow to implement more granular security monitoring for cloud service providers.

Shin detailed the creation and implementation of this framework in his research paper, CloudWatcher: Network Security Monitoring Using OpenFlow in Dynamic Cloud Networks, which he completed as a PhD student at Texas A&M University. We asked Shin to expand on the challenges network administrators are facing today with regard cloud security, and how CloudWatcher uses OpenFlow to enable security in multi-tenant cloud environments…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Tony Kontzer.

Calling the IT mega trends of cloud, big data and mobility “tremendously disruptive and tremendously opportunistic,” Joe Tucci, the CEO of storage giant EMC, delivered a keynote at Oracle’s OpenWorld conference Tuesday that aimed to position the company’s expanding technology stack at the center of those trends.

The anchor of EMC’s strategy is the so-called “software-defined data center,” which enables control layers to be abstracted from the underlying infrastructure, allowing for pooling of processing cores, network resources, storage –you name it…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: David Grimes.

The next two years will be an exciting period of innovation for cloud computing, especially as more and more businesses fully realize the advantages of adopting cloud services. While cloud’s appeal originally stemmed from the potential to reduce IT infrastructure costs, today’s cloud technology is increasingly adding value through its ability to drive business growth. The next wave of cloud is a huge turning point for businesses that now have the opportunity to transform their entire approach to IT.

We live in an era where technology is rapidly advancing and businesses need to evolve their infrastructure in order to remain competitive. Cloud adopters can immediately access the innovations that come with this next wave of cloud, and in turn improve their own operations and services. Instead of viewing each innovation as a new purchase, companies can transition from a CapEx model to an OpEx model by deploying ‘as-a-Service’ solutions. This allows businesses to continuously iterate their products and services…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Charles Costa.

Cloud computing has allowed professionals at midsize businesses to stay connected while on the go; as reliance on cloud services increases, however, data center architects are scrambling to find suitable locations for new data centers. Although it is logical to assume future data centers will be built near high-population areas, a recent article from Fast Company discusses how cloud services might literally be housed in the clouds — or just above them — in the near future.

For the sum of $100 million, data centers could be constructed at a low orbit, providing midsize companies with affordable access to archival storage where high-speed access is not required. Some of the most notable cost-saving features unique to space data centers include solar power and full automation and self-healing of the server hardware…

Grazed from Wired. Author: SUJATHA PEREPA.

It’s no secret that cloud computing is transforming businesses across industries and creating a paradigm shift by delivering hosted services through the internet with unabated cost benefits and business innovation. But while the private sector is building on cloud computing’s myriad benefits, government organizations have also aggressively begun to capitalize on them.

As an IBM solution architect and a trusted advisor to many of our government sector customers, I’ve seen how the financial constraints of the past five years have deeply affected how agencies deploy their solutions. These agencies are pressed to seek optimized business models while measuring their performance and service deliveries more closely — hence their inclination towards shared services…

Grazed from InfosecurityMag. Author: Harold Byun.

Cybercriminals are clever and know how to evolve – you’ve got to give them that. They’ve proven this once again with their latest cyber-attack strategy, the Watering Hole Attack, which leverages cloud services to help gain access to even the most secure and sophisticated enterprises and government agencies.

Attacks Used to be Humorously Simple

In earlier days, attackers operated more simply using emails entitled “ILOVEYOU” or poorly worded messages from Nigerian generals promising untold fortunes of wealth. Over the years, the attacks have evolved into complex spear phishing operations that target specific individuals who can help navigate an organization’s personnel hierarchy or identify digital certificate compromises that lead to command and control over the enterprise infrastructure. In either scenario, the success of the attacks has always been predicated on the fact that users are humans who will occasionally click on or open something that is suspect or compromised…

Grazed from TMCNet. Author: Laura Stotler.

A new cloud server provider has entered the fray, moving out of beta and making its infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offerings available to the public. Charlotte, N.C.-based CloudServers.com, which specializes in both Windows and Linux hosting, has made its debut. The IaaS provider is offering a number of features to distinguish itself from competitors.

These include instant provisioning, on-demand scalability, auto-healing technology and secured monthly billing so the pricing remains consistent. The market for IaaS services is currently on fire. There is no question that IaaS comprises the fastest growing segment of the overall cloud computing market, with Gartner (News – Alert) projecting 47.3 percent growth this year…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews. Author: Jonathan Brandon.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the British Standards Institute (BSI) Wednesday announced the launch of a certification programme for cloud service providers designed to improve confidence in cloud computing among consumers and enterprises.

The STAR certification programme includes an assessment of the security of cloud service providers, measuring how well these companies measure up to the ISO/IEC 27001:2005 information management system standard, and the CSA Cloud Control Matrix, a set of 11 criteria developed by the organisation which measures the capability levels of the cloud service providers including compliance, data governance, facility security, human resources, information security, legal, operations management, risk management, release management, resiliency and security architecture…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Josh Manchester.

Cloud computing, simply stated, is the ability to use files and applications over the Internet instead of hosting, storing, or processing them on locally managed hardware. Thanks to a series of advances in data storage, security, and transmission, individuals and enterprises can now store their data remotely in a third party facility. Because the data and software in use is not physically stored, it’s as though it were floating in a cloud.

You can easily understand cloud computing from the history of personal computer software over the past decade. Ten years ago, a consumer purchasing a new computer would be extremely conscious of the machine’s processing power as well as the size of its random access memory (RAM) and its hard drive…