Author: David

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Gina Ross.

Adoption of cloud models is moving into a mature stage as more organizations expect to transition key IT operations to the cloud over the next five years, with private cloud deployments leading the way. Today, 61 percent of organizations have at least a portion of their computing infrastructure in the cloud, according to an IDG Enterprise cloud computing report.

Although many enterprises are still trying to identify IT operations that are good candidates for cloud hosting, cloud investments are up compared with last year, increasing by 10 percent for an average investment of $1.5 million, said IDG. Based on 1,358 survey respondents, a key finding shows that 29 percent of companies expect that the majority of IT operations—with the exception of financial and compliance applications—will be in the cloud in the next five years…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Lynn Haber.

It may not be a land rush but larger profitable and growing MSPs are fodder for acquisition in today’s IT market as cloud computing becomes more integral to the way companies think about IT and the solution providers they do business with.  Evidence of this can be found at both All Covered, an IT services company and division of Konica Minolta Solutions US Inc., with more than two dozen locations nationwide, and the AJP Group LLC, a venture capital firm in Raleigh, N.C. In fact, All Covered has 30 acquisitions under its belt over just the last five years.

"Acquisition allows us to accelerate our growth, to bring in technology capabilities we didn’t have prior to the acquisition as well as vertical industry expertise," said Bruce Teichman, director of corporate development at All Covered. To attain a similar level of growth organically would take 20 years, he added. "Buy it and it’s immediate."…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Kelly Sheridan.

Microsoft announced that it will be offering free weekly updates for Windows 8 users later this year. Its new plan, announced this week at its Build conference, will help Microsoft remain competitive in the rapidly changing tech industry, in which most companies already offer updates on a weekly to daily basis.

For decades, Microsoft has released new versions of its Office software about once every three years — too slow for today’s consumers. In a statement to Bloomberg, IDC analyst Marissa Webster said, "Microsoft, on this every-three-year schedule for the massive wave of new products, looks like a dinosaur. Three years is a lifetime in tech these days."…

Grazed from MarketWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Huddle has received the award for ‘Supplier of the Year’ at Computer Weekly’s European User Awards for Enterprise Software. The awards ceremony took place at the 5th annual Cloud World Forum on 26 June after judges Bob Brown from Quocirca, George Lawrie of Forrester Research and Spencer Izard from IDC Research pitted the entries against the tough award criteria. Huddle fought off fierce competition to be crowned the winner.

Since it was founded in 2006, Huddle has grown to around 200 people, with offices in London, San Francisco and New York. It was co-founded by Alastair Mitchell and Andy McLoughlin when they became frustrated with the existing enterprise technology’s inability to help people work together. Through their leadership, Huddle has raised in excess of $40 million in funding and is now used by more than 100,000 businesses worldwide…

Grazed from MarketWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) today announced the formation of the Incident Management and Forensics Working Group, a new CSA Working Group that will focus on the examination of incident handling and forensics in cloud environments.

To better understand the state of the cloud forensics industry, the Incident Management and Forensics Working Group conducted an assessment of current issues and published its findings in the Working Group’s first white paper, entitled: "Mapping the Forensic Standard ISO/IEC 27037 to Cloud Computing."…

Grazed from Xtium.  Author: Shawn Fichter.

Stress, hassle, time. These are all words typically associated with disaster recovery tests. In the past 15 years I’ve spent working in the business continuity space, I’ve seen DR tests be a burden. However if done correctly and properly documented, they don’t have to be. So what do you need to do to ensure you’re prepared for the inevitable? Here are the common questions I’ve heard from customers about DR tests over the years.

What is a disaster recovery test?

A DR test is a process to evaluate the procedures that an organization has in place for ensuring business continuity in the event of a major service interruption or catastrophic event. Tests allow service providers and their customers to ensure the integrity of protected data as well as execute and refine processes for making that data available in the event of a declared disaster…

Grazed from TechWorld.  Author: Sophie Curtis.

Businesses worldwide need to re-think their use of cloud computing, in light of recent revelations around the PRISM and Tempora surveillance programmes, according to independent privacy advocate Caspar Bowden.

Speaking at a House of Commons debate, chaired by Labour MP Tom Watson, Bowden said that the UK is in an “extremely exposed” position, because of its relationship with the US National Security Agency (NSA)…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Michael Endler.

On Thursday, Microsoft clarified the importance of Azure to its transitioning identity. If developers buy into the vision, Microsoft could use the popularity of mobile platforms, including iOS and Android, to become a cloud powerhouse.   During Thursday’s keynote at Microsoft’s Build conference, the company announced several new services for Windows Azure, its cloud computing platform. Microsoft hopes the offerings will inspire developers to make Azure the cloud infrastructure of choice, even for apps that run on non-Windows platforms.

Microsoft also touted not only the growing number of companies that use the platform but also how Azure supports many of the company’s homegrown products, such as Office 365.  Consistent with the Wednesday keynote led by CEO Steve Ballmer, Thursday’s session emphasized that Microsoft is a company in the midst of rapid transition, much of it fueled by the rise of mobile devices…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Salman Ul Haq.

QoS of Cloud service providers has always been evolving and improving over time and is one of the primary discussion points in almost every gathering of Cloud service providers and practitioners. With the shift to Cloud computing around the world, researchers are keen to dig out the active and potential issues of quality of service that can affect the overall performance of a Cloud.

Quality of service standards like Service Level Agreements (SLA) are of immense importance in the multifarious communication protocols of Cloud computing as they facilitate the end users, brokers and service providers to communicate across different Cloud based channels with ease and elevated productivity. QoS aware Clouds are being regarded as the need of the hour because of their augmented usability. Quality of service is the most decisive factor in the Cloud computing as it can build or tarnish the image of the service providers…

Grazed from CloudPro.  Author: Jane McCallion.

Business software vendor Sage has opted for Windows Azure to deliver its Sage 200 Online cloud service.  Aimed specifically at medium-size businesses, this is the second accountancy Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering from the Newcastle-based vendor after Sage One, which was launched in 2011.

However, while Sage One was built on the Amazon Web Services platform, the company has instead plumped for Windows Azure to host Sage 200 Online.  Stuart Lynn, CIO at Sage, told journalists at a media event to mark the launch that Azure had been an obvious choice when deciding to take Sage 200 to the cloud…