Author: David

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

Over the past 30 years, enterprise resource planning (ERP) has become the mainstay application of most companies. These systems sit on mainframes or servers, fussed over by a select bunch of IT people, cosseted and quietly churning through the vital work of keeping the company going. Whether it is supplying all the right information on a just-in-time basis, keeping close control of inventory or just printing out employee time-sheets, the ERP system will be the ultimate controlling mechanism.

The software used always needs to be state of the art and is often so expensive that it can turn CEO’s hair white overnight if it has so much as a glitch: in short, ERP is both mundane and absolutely crucial to any production company’s success…

Grazed from The Vary Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Moving is never fun. That’s true whether the move is between houses, offices or Microsoft (MSFT) Windows Server platforms. But for enterprises migrating from Windows Server 2003 to Windows Server 2012, Rackspace (RAX) hopes to make life a little easier with a "Cloud Assessment" tool it unveiled this week to help analyze and plan cloud computing needs on Server 2012.

With the latest service pack for Server 2003 now more than 6 years old, and with Server 2012 having been on the market for more than a year, it’s making less and less sense to continue running Web and cloud applications on a server platform more than a decade old. Enough cloud users are apparently still doing so, however, that Rackspace thinks pushing them toward an upgrade to Server 2012 is worthwhile…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Warwick Ashford.

Buyers of commercial cloud services – especially software as a service (SaaS) – are finding security provisions inadequate, according to a report by research firm Gartner. Contracts need more transparency to improve risk management, analysts said, with SaaS contracts often have ambiguous terms regarding data confidentiality, data integrity and recovery after a data breach.

This leads to dissatisfaction among cloud services users and makes it difficult for service providers to manage risk and defend their risk position to auditors and regulators. Up to 80% of IT procurement professionals will remain dissatisfied with SaaS contract language and protections that relate to security for at least the next two years, Gartner predicts. “We continue to see frustration among cloud services users over the form and degree of transparency they obtain from prospective and current service providers,” said Alexa Bona, vice-president at Gartner…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Martin May.

Data backup, storage and recovery processes are fundamental services in almost every business. Recent changes in the IT environment, notably the arrival of cloud computing technologies, are responsible for significant advances in traditional data management patterns. Representing one of the most important shifts in computing today, cloud technologies provide greater levels of provisioning and automation, while helping organisations become more flexible and responsive to change.

The cloud has also made a significant impact on companies’ ability to better allocate their computing resources in order to improve application performances, boost efficiencies and reduce operating costs. Companies are under increasing pressure to ensure data backups are performed efficiently and sensitive business data is held in a secure storage repository. Recovery has to be effected faultlessly and reliably against elevated benchmarks for speed, accuracy and completeness…

The new pricing model, outlined in detail on ProfitBricks’ website and also detailed in a white paper titled "The Secret World of IaaS Pricing: How to compare apples and oranges among cloud providers," sets cloud pricing on the path for full adoption by the enterprise.

Grazed from BusinessWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Zadara™ Storage, Ltd., announced today that Toshiba America Electronic Components, Inc. (TAEC) has invested $3 million in Zadara. The two companies will be working together to introduce innovative Storage-as-a-Service (STaaS) products using cutting-edge technologies they have each developed. With today’s funding, Zadara has raised a total of $10 million to date, and will use the additional funds to expand the sales, support and engineering teams.

As everything-as-a-service become a mantra and software-defined efficiencies reinvent the data center, IT teams and service providers alike are looking to accelerate deployment of enterprise-class applications in the cloud but in ways that are private, high-performance, elastic, scalable and flexible…

Grazed from InfoSecurity. Author: Editorial Staff.

An audit of NASA’s progress in adopting cloud-computing technologies has revealed that the space agency’s current use of cloud falls short of expectations in IT governance and risk management. While noting that NASA has been a pioneer in cloud computing, "having established its own private cloud-computing data center called Nebula in 2009 at the Ames Research Center (Ames)," the Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit levies four particular criticisms of its current state of cloud adoption.

The first is that governance needs to be strengthened. "We found that the Agency OCIO [office of the chief information officer] was not aware of all the cloud services NASA organizations had acquired or which service providers they used." Furthermore, only 3 of 15 agency CIOs stated that coordinating with the OCIO was necessary before moving into the cloud. In short, governance is poor if not absent…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Cloud backup and data protection services provider VaultLogix has enhanced its hybrid cloud backup solution with a new version for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and value-added resellers (VARS) called VaultLogix Advantage 11.3.

The company said this new release includes a redesigned backend architecture, which lays the groundwork for future advancements and releases. The company said that the new version does a better job of helping customers to balance their backup and storage needs with the ability to recover business critical data…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

Oracle is preparing to roll out the latest member of its family of "engineered systems" that combine software and hardware, with the upcoming product focused on virtualization. The company will discuss the new system on Aug. 13, during a webcast featuring Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization, according to an announcement on Oracle’s website.

No proper name for the new machine was listed in the post, or a specific general-availability date. An Oracle spokeswoman said Wednesday that no further information was available at this time. Customers who buy the virtualization appliance will be able to "install and deploy [their] virtual infrastructure in just hours," according to the blog post. The system "provides a converged infrastructure powered by Oracle VM server virtualization and Oracle Virtual Networking, dramatically enhancing data center operations," it adds…

Grazed from FedTech. Author: Wylie Wong.

A real-time picture of the battlefield is an essential tool for U.S. combat forces, one that can provide a critical advantage over adversaries. If used effectively, information can be as important a weapon as any in the U.S. arsenal. The Army compiles this picture by sifting through petabytes of data, such as high-definition video from unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as well as from cameras on the ground or attached to soldiers.

But putting the picture together and learning what it means can take hours, a time span that could mean the difference between life and death. The Army plans to speed up the process by equipping combat troops with small cloud computing systems that can quickly analyze extensive video footage and other intelligence to warn soldiers of impending threats…