Author: David

Grazed from GCN. Author: Rutrell Yasin.

The Interior Department is working to give employees access to IT resources anywhere, anytime with any device enabled by cloud computing through DOI’s data center consolidation initiative. “I view cloud computing as helping us meet the needs of our dispersed workforce,” said Interior CIO Bernard Mazer.

With 2,400 locations, DOI is all over the place, Mazer noted. “We are there where [telecommunications] carriers are; we are there where carriers aren’t,” he said. As a result, DOI has to use a variety of tools to ensure that employees are supported no matter where they are located – in a refuge, a Bureau of Land Management office, a Bureau of Indian Affairs’ project or a national park in a remote hinterland. This support also includes access to the business applications associated with contract, financial and human resource management systems…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

As cloud computing becomes a ubiquitous part of IT business life, administrator confidence grows–at least according to VMware. The virtualization giant’s third annual Cloud Index says that many Asia-Pacific IT pros now believe they "strongly understand the cloud." But despite increased use and comprehension, investor surety in the cloud isn’t keeping pace. Even companies with huge sales numbers are still unprofitable; is the market headed for a cloud tipping point? Does this get worse for midsize IT before it gets better?

Certain in Singapore

According to the VMware Cloud Index 2012, Singapore tops the list with 82 percent of respondents confident in their knowledge of the cloud. The study covered 10 economies in the Asia-Pacific region, with nine of those boasting numbers above 70 percent. Only Malaysia came in under that mark, but 66 percent is still a solid percentage given the immaturity displayed by many cloud services. Among the top drivers of cloud adoption in the region were optimizing IT and reducing costs; interestingly, cost also made it into the "top cloud concerns" along with data privacy and security. Singapore and Hong Kong especially expressed concerns about data privacy and residency, despite efforts by their governments to encourage local data centers over foreign owned interests…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.

In a conference in Orlando, Florida, Gartner Inc. revealed that the central focus of IT consisting of social media innovations, mobile devices, web information, and cloud computing can disrupt the whole IT environment. Addressing at least 10,000 participants, Gartner Vice President David Cearley said that at the rate things are going the mobile experience is overshadowing the desktop experience. Cloud computing, together with mobile devices, is set to alter the modern corporation’s primary architecture of computing. Instead of focusing on client-server, IT shops must now set their sights on cloud-client architecture.

With this new type of architecture, it is also possible for skill sets necessary for enterprise software development to be altered significantly. The front-end interface must have better designs and development teams must gear towards HTML5 Web browser opportunities aside from the usual mobile device operating systems. Cearley also claimed that consumers have fresh expectations. As such, application developers and architects must obtain new design skills to meet these new expectations…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Diana Kelly.

On Sept. 27, 2012, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISACA (formerly the Information Systems Audit and Control Association) released their Cloud Computing Market Maturity study. It offers an important review of the state of cloud computing services, and specifically how information security is affecting cloud computing adoption. Cloud services swept into markets a few years ago promising fast ramp-ups and low prices, but little in the way of security. This isn’t uncommon in the cloud industry: Despite security professionals’ pleas for organizations to build security in, it’s still a reality that excellent business benefits (for example, in the case of wireless networking) trump security — at least during the heady days of early roll-outs. With maturity comes security, but how mature is the cloud market? And what does that mean for those of us who have to manage our data in the cloud?

The joint CSA/ISACA survey addresses the maturity question. Though fairly small in sample size (a total of 252 responses) the distribution of the sample is impressive. The results include responses from managers and organizations from around the globe, and both large and small size organizations responded. One fact to note: 173 of respondents identified themselves "… as a cloud service provider, integrator or consultant …," indicating that the respondents were already at a fairly high level of maturity because of their involvement as providers of (or consultants on) cloud services…

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: Michael Feldman.

The epic supercomputing event of the year, SC12, will be booting up next week in Salt Lake City, Utah, attracting HPC digerati, vendors, press, and analysts from around the world. And even though the DOE won’t be there in full force this year, big crowds are still expected. This year’s event should deliver plenty of fodder for those looking to keep up on the latest and greatest in the field, especially in the cutting edge areas of accelerators, big data, cloud computing, exascale supercomputing, and green HPC.

In fact if you take a look the SC12 conference schedule, those five topics just mentioned dominate much of the technical program this year. Eye-balling the listed sessions, there are 48 on accelerators (GPUs, Xeon Phi, DSPs and FPGAs), 37 on big data, 32 on cloud computing, 20 on exascale, and 19 on green computing. Of course, there’s also the usual fare of presentations on interconnects, parallel programming, storage technology (although curiously, not much specifically on flash storage), software development tools, and various HPC use cases…

Grazed from The Drum. Author: Steven Lepitak.

“The Cloud is here to stay” proclaims Phil Worms, director of marketing at hosting company iomart Group when talking about data connectivity following the launch of 4G in the UK. “I’ve seen so many terms for the internet over the years, such as The net, Web 2.0 and so forth,” he states when asked what the future holds for the internet and mobile communications.

The Drum is speaking to iomart, the headline sponsor of this year’s Social Buzz Awards, to ascertain the company’s views on how the way that we access; share and store data is impacting on marketing services…

Grazed from The Asahi Shimbun.

Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corp. released a midterm management plan that focuses heavily on expanding its cloud computing services abroad while cutting hundreds of billions of yen in costs.

According to the plan released on Nov. 8, the telecommunications giant expects overseas sales to reach $20 billion (1.6 trillion yen) in fiscal 2016, nearly double the $11.6 billion reported for the year through March 2012. The company said it will target prospective growth segments in emerging economies to make up for its sluggish domestic performance, particularly in fiber-optic businesses…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Kevin Kwang.

The telecoms industry will continue to be shaken up by cloud computing in terms of the need to offer relevant software and build up a strong independent software vendor (ISV) ecosystem–both of which traditionally are not telcos’ strong suit.

In addition, these market players will have to enhance their channel partner networks to scale their operations and reach out to more customers. These were just some of the 10 predictions made by IDC Asia-Pacific for the telecoms sector between 2013 and 2016…

Grazed from ARN. Author: Rimin Dutt.

Dell has launched an expanded Cloud client computing portfolio in Australia. The new desktop virtualisation and Cloud client solutions enable workers to use any app on any device, according to the company. Dell’s Desktop Virtualisation Solutions in Australia will address the cost and complexity challenges of virtual desktop adoption.

DVS Simplified and Dell Wyse endpoints are available in Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, India, Singapore, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia and Vietnam. Dell has also announced new support for Citrix HDX 3D technology for thin and zero clients, enabling organisations to virtualise and centrally deliver 3D graphics-intensive applications like CAD/CAM, 3D solids modelling, and HD multimedia…