Author: David

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Paul Korzeniowski.

The emergence of cloud computing has given InfiniBand a boost in acceptance. Touted as the high-performance networking option of choice at its inception at the turn of the millennium, InfiniBand struggled to gain wide acceptance in the enterprise — but it did find niche acceptance. The networking option has established itself as the interconnect of choice in many high-performance computing applications, replacing propriety technologies, such as Quadrics and Myrinet.

The need for similar capacity has emerged in the cloud market. Typically, cloud data centers consolidate server, storage and network functions in central locations. As system configurations become denser, the need for higher bandwidth network connections — especially from server-to-server and server-to-storage — becomes clearer…

Grazed from Mashable. Author: Matt Petronzio.

With thousands of film and TV titles available, Netflix is a cloud computing giant — and it needs to be, since it makes up one-third of North American Internet traffic during peak hours. Imagine, then, if it were your job to push Netflix into the cloud, working every day to make the service more accessible and efficient for more than 36 million subscribers in 40 countries.

This dream job belongs to Adrian Cockcroft, director of architecture for Netflix’s Cloud Systems team. As chief cloud architect, Cockcroft works with development managers and engineers across the company to ensure that Netflix is using the cloud to its fullest potential…

Grazed from ExecutiveGov. Author: Editorial Staff.

The National Security Agency has started developing a cloud computing platform intended to help secure the government’s network infrastructure, FedScoop reported Friday. David Stegon writes NSA has reached out to the country’s open source community by allowing developers to collaborate in shoring up the cloud infrastructure’s code for the cloud infrastructure.

NSA aims to use the agency for mobile devices and to manage security, according to the report. Army Gen. Keith Alexander, head of NSA and Cyber Command, told a Northern Virginia Technology Council event in Tysons Corner, Va. Friday that modern cloud technologies could help defend the government’s network from cyber attacks, Fedscoop reports. Alexander said cloud technology could adapt to cyber threats without human intervention and help protect the Defense Department’s more than 15,000 domains, according to the report.

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Editorial Staff.

In the past several years, as cloud computing has become one of the top IT priorities, we can agree that, for the most part, we’ve overcome the primary concerns associated with the technology – security, reliability and performance. With these concerns at least partly alleviated, it’s important to now look at how to quickly locate your data in the cloud. While the cloud is a revolutionary delivery platform for its scalability, flexibility and freedom to place a company’s most powerful IT assets in the hands of any user, there’s one capability that your cloud may complicated: access to relevant knowledge.

The move to the cloud, plus the continuity of enterprise systems, plus social media, plus growth in unstructured content, equals fragmentation and an inability to find relevant knowledge. Beyond the challenge of a highly heterogeneous environment, the reality is that cloud environments, combined with an increased number of data channels, pose one of the biggest knowledge gaps facing companies today. Cloud-based systems house critical information, and with the amount of data doubling every 12 months, it’s another place where knowledge may be lost. Cloud-based systems contribute to an already crowded chaos of applications, databases and online resources…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Hundreds of enterprise IT experts from around the world will come together in San Francisco on June 17 and 18 when the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) will host Forecast 2013, ODCA’s premier cloud computing and big data event. Forecast is where the ODCA Board of Directors, which includes IT leaders from BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Deutsche Bank, Disney Technology Solutions and Services, JPMorgan Chase, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., National Australia Bank (NAB), NTT Data, T-Systems, Terremark and UBS will gather with ODCA members and industry to collaborate on moving enterprise ready cloud implementations based on ODCA usage models forward. Forecast is taking place at the Westin St. Francis hotel in San Francisco’s Union Square.

"Enterprises worldwide are leveraging ODCA usage models as the foundation for cloud implementations that are open, interoperable and secure," said Marvin Wheeler, executive director, Open Data Center Alliance. "Forecast is ODCA’s once-a-year event where attendees learn about best practices for building and deploying enterprise ready cloud implementations, share cloud and big data success stories, and get the latest information on ODCA usage models. We look forward to welcoming the global cloud and big data communities to San Francisco on June 17 and 18."…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

The cloud is forcing enterprises and vendors alike to reconsider what business they are in. And for many enterprises, the growth of private cloud capabilities puts them only a step away from becoming cloud solutions providers themselves. For confirmation of this, just ask the tech vendors themselves. In the latest annual report on the future of the software and services industry from the Software & Information Industry Association, there are the predictable levels of boundless optimism and market-speak that you expect from tech vendor executives.

But there is also an acknowledgement that cloud computing, in all its various forms, is shifting the dynamic between providers and consumers of technology services and solutions. In fact, there’s an undercurrent of thought that it’s not clear anymore who a “provider” and who a “consumer” may be. The report, based on contributions from 37 top executives at software and cloud companies, surfaced some interesting observations:…

Grazed from InfoQ. Author: Grischa Ekart.

CloudMunch Inc last month officially announced the launch of its freemium full-stack DevOps platform – a dashboard of pre-integrated tools for version control, build management, validation, automated testing, deployment and cloud connectors. The software is hosted and managed as a service (SaaS) eliminating the need for developers to setup their own set of tools.

Starting at $100 a month for private and free for open source projects, the product includes a wide range of features covering DevOps and Continuous Delivery from development to production. CloudMunch claims its platform significantly simplifies deployment of applications and infrastructure. The ambitious feature set includes:

• GitHub integration with intuitive project import into CloudMunch
• Java, JavaScript, php, .NET, Ruby projects are supported
• Simplified Jenkins for Continuous Integration
• Developer tools integration such as most version control systems, Jira, Bugzilla…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Paul Venezia.

From the mainframe days to the client-server model to VoIP phone systems to mobile devices and BYOD, IT has grown to accommodate the needs of the organization. As the workplace became more computerized, IT grew to encompass and manage those new frontiers. Year after year, IT saw nothing but increase in scope.

But today, with the percolation of SaaS vendors, IT is seeing business units heading outside of the IT organization for solutions, for better or for worse. For the very first time, IT is seeing its footprint reduced. On the face of it, this should make IT’s job easier. Rather than meeting with IT to define the hardware and software requirements to implement a new solution for a business unit, the business manager — or any employee — can drop a credit card number into a SaaS portal and start using a hosted service immediately. IT doesn’t even need to know this is happening…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Marten Mickos.

Why is it that open source wins in infrastructure software? Why do websites run on Cassandra and MongoDB? Why are the biggest clouds in the world built on Linux and open source hypervisors? How come the leading cloud management platforms are open source?

The answer is surprisingly simple. The solution has emerged over the past two decades thanks to Apache, Linux, MySQL and other enormously popular software technologies. When you provide software to people who can and want to develop or maintain software themselves, the code needs to be open. If you provide software to a consumer or to a business, it’s about the service and the business benefits, not about openness per se…

Grazed from InternetEvolution. Author: Charlotte Erdmann.

Despite growing cloud adoption in some public and private sectors, overall, cloud computing is receiving a lukewarm reception in Germany. According to the Global Cloud Computing Scorecard compiled by the BSA Group, last year, Germany lagged behind in terms of cloud readiness. Ranked third in 2012, Germany now has to content itself with fourth place after the United States topped Germany, despite an economic crisis and infrastructure problems. Down just one place? That may not sound too bad at first. But the news isn’t good for German businesses and government agencies.

BSA — an advocacy group for the global software industry — generates its scorecard based on factors such as security; cybercrime incidents; data protection; freedom of trade; support for international trading standards; copyright; and the expansion of broadband networks. It’s this last point where Germany’s being left behind, having been eclipsed by Japan, Australia, US, Singapore, the United Kingdom, and Korea. And compared to Germany, Both Canada and Poland have made strong strides forward…