Author: David

Grazed from Talkin Cloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Attunity is bringing its CloudBeam managed SaaS platform for Amazon Web Services (AWS) out of the private beta phase and into public beta. It’s not quite ready for official launch, but now that the company has launched the public beta, it is bringing out two high-performance data movement services — upload to cloud and replication between cloud regions. “Attunity CloudBeam helps users realize the promise of cloud computing by alleviating the Big Data bottleneck and infrastructure maintenance challenges,” said Matt Benati, vice president of Global Marketing, in a prepared statement.

Attunity first announced CloudBeam back in July when it brought the private beta to customers for testing. CloudBeam was designed to be simple cloud service providing high-performance solutions for moving Big Data in, out and across AWS cloud data centers as quickly and easily as possible…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Another busy week for Amazon Web Services which added new compute instance types, cut prices on others, and upped the limit on provisioned IOPS for EBS volumes. Amazon is getting busier as more public cloud options come on line.

Some computing and storage tasks require faster data input/output than others. That’s why in August, Amazon Web Services said customers could, for an additional fee, allocate up to 1,000 Input/Output Operations per Second (IOPS) per EBS storage volume. On Thursday, the company doubled the limit to 2,000 IOPS per EBS volume according to a post on the very busy AWS blog. Faster storage input/output is important in database and transaction processing applications…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

As InfoWorld’s Ted Samson pointed out this week, Microsoft is intertwining Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, and Windows Azure to help developers build multiplatform, cloud-friendly apps. And it announced a batch of new services and functionality for its cloud platform, including the extension of Windows Azure Mobile Services to support for Windows Phone 8. The move should provide easy cloud-based mobile application development for those loyal to Microsoft platforms. Microsoft even provides a store to sell these Azure-built applications. But something’s still missing from Microsoft’s cloud picture.

The core issue is that a company the size of Microsoft should be doing more leading and less following. All the technologies and services Microsoft annonuced this week for its cloud ecosystem were born, proven, and executed by other companies, such as Apple, Google, and Amazon.com. Microsoft is looking much less innovative than these competitors, and so it’s much less likely to capture and hold the emerging $50 billion cloud computing market…

Grazed from ChannelPartners. Author: Editorial Staff.

Public cloud services are creating a strange dichotomy, having both a positive and negative impact on IT services spending. That’s according to a new report from Gartner, the tech researcher, which says public cloud services are simultaneously cannibalizing and stimulating demand for external IT services. Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) adoption – the most basic and fundamental form of cloud computing service – has expanded beyond development and test use cases.

"Public cloud adoption is accelerating and public cloud services do, and will, cannibalize IT services spending in the coming years, most notably in the data center," said Bryan Britz, research director at Gartner. "At the same time, public cloud adoption offers service providers the opportunity to accelerate externalization of spending for the non-public cloud workloads and IT operations and service management responsibilities in tandem with clients pursuing a public cloud initiative."…

Grazed from EastDay. Author: PR Announcement.

MICROSOFT Corp has chosen Shanghai as the first city in China for commercial and public cloud computing services, Microsoft and the Shanghai government said yesterday. "It’s a milestone agreement to show Microsoft’s commitment to China," said Ralph Haupter, chairman and CEO of Microsoft China. "Microsoft will continue to expand and accelerate investment in China, driving the next era of innovation and opportunity."

The cloud agreement enables customers in China to access Microsoft’s Office 365 and Windows Azure services operated by 21Vianet in China, the world’s biggest personal computer and Internet market…

Grazed from InfoSecurity.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has warned about US government claims that a Megaupload user lost his property rights by using cloud storage has implications for all data stored by any user or company with any cloud provider, including Amazon’s S3, Google Apps or Apple iCloud.

When the FBI took down Megaupload at the end of last year, it also seized the servers and all of the files they contained. But Megaupload had many legitimate users who used the service to store their own proprietary files. Kyle Goodwin is one such user, and with the help of EFF he has been seeking the return of his property…

Grazed from InsiderMonkey. Author: David Woodburn.

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ:MSFT) has been getting some momentum for its Office 365 platform and its cloud computing services, including Azure. a couple of recent announcements have just solidified that growing momentum, as Microsoft (MSFT) has moved itself into a branch of the federal government and into China in separate deals that will feature Office 365.

These two deals my bode well for the firm as the cloud-computing universe continues to expand, and certainly investors in Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) stock like billionaire fund manager Seth Klarman of Baupost Group, may be optimistic…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Ben Cole.

Cloud computing and mobile-device use are changing the way companies produce information — and in doing so, they’re creating new challenges for organizations looking to develop data governance best practices. But could this trend toward data governance actually help organizations struggling with information management?

Certainly, cloud and mobile are radically changing the way businesses think about data and access: Recent statistics released by Forrester Research Inc. show that by 2016, the number of smartphones in the U.S. alone is expected to grow to 257 million. Forrester also predicts that by 2016, iPads and other tablets will be users’ primary computing devices…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Seeking new revenue streams and operational efficiencies, many businesses are re-tooling their infrastructure, development and operations to deploy applications into private clouds. However, the challenges of legacy architecture, up-front investment requirements, and team skills have been obstacles to wider acceptance of cloud initiatives. WSO2 Vice President of Technology Evangelism Chris Haddad will explore how early private cloud adopters are realizing a multitude of benefits at Cloud Computing West 2012. The conference runs November 8-9, 2012 at the DoubleTree Suites in Santa Monica, CA.

In his presentation, “Investing in Cloud Initiatives,” Chris will examine how early private cloud adopters are successfully adapting their IT business models, vendor-provided infrastructure, and practices to gain cloud benefits. Additionally, Chris will outline:…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Rick Blaisdell.

Cloud computing has been a hot topic during the last few years for technology specialists all over the world. Cloud computing has been adopted by many enterprises, but still challenges continue to rise. With all the articles and documentation on this subject, there are many myths that have developed over time. So here are the most common myths regarding cloud computing: security, data loss and performance.

Security is compromised in the cloud

Without a doubt, this is the most talked about point. In order to be a successful service provider, cloud providers have to assure the customers or prospects that their data is secure. The security risks that exist in the cloud are no different than the ones that exist in-house. The greatest advantage when outsourcing to cloud is that providers are permanently focused on improving controls and procedures so that the data is always secure, while enterprises might neglect this focus from time to time. So one could argue that a risk could be to remain in a physical environment. Most cloud computing providers also offer the customer different levels of security protection, which allows for more enhanced security…