Author: David

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Cloud is not only disrupting the way organizations acquire and utilize business applications and computing power, it is also changing the way software and systems are sold and supported. The Cloud is redefining the role of the channel and the nature of channel relationships in the software and technology industry.

A year ago, THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace and Rising Tide Media launched an executive forum, called the Cloud Channel Summit, to bring together leading vendors and channel companies to discuss their mutual challenges, share best practices and showcase their success stories. The success of last year’s inaugural Summit encouraged us to host the second annual Cloud Channel Summit again at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, CA on Monday, November 5…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Abby Shagin.

Life is easier with your head in the clouds, right? Perhaps. But does the same hold true for your company’s data? Are there risks to implementing this progressive solution into your business? The answer is yes.

Like most things in life, the benefits come with risks—it’s just a matter of knowing if the benefits outweigh the risks and vice versa. Let’s take a look at some grounded facts about cloud computing to help you decide if you are ready to go up, up, and away…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

To support the expanding role of the network in deploying cloud services, Cisco announced today that Peak 10 Inc. has achieved the Cisco® Cloud Provider Certification with a Cisco Powered Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) designation.

The Cisco Cloud Provider Certification recognizes Peak 10’s investment in building, owning and operating its own data centers to offer cloud services in a multitenant environment to end customers. Additionally, as a Cisco Powered IaaS designation, Peak 10’s cloud offering is deployed using Cisco’s Unified Computing System™ (UCS) infrastructure…

Grazed from Ping! Zine. Author: PR Announcement.

Edgewebhosting Inc., a leading provider of mission-critical managed hosting services, today announced that its CloudPlus managed cloud hosting service has achieved VMware vCloud® Powered status, illustrating to customers that the company’s cloud services are underpinned by VMware’s leading virtualization and cloud computing technology, namely VMware vSphere® and VMware vCloud® Director™. A member of the VMware Service Provider Program (VSPP), Edge provides its VMware vCloud Powered service as a set of cloud computing services across a common platform, supporting the largest set of existing applications and offering distinctive application mobility uniquely available from VMware.

“We are excited to join the VMware vCloud Powered program and are committed to providing our customers the performance, security and application portability they require to maximize the effectiveness of cloud computing,” said Michael Altman, Chief Operating Officer…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Don Cleveland.

Human rationality is quickly becoming a castaway in the study of economics and psychology. That humans make decisions irrationally is an irrefutable precept as evidenced by empirical research. What these studies have uncovered is than when it comes to dealing with the emotions that naturally arise in the decision making process, avoiding risk trumps rational decision-making. The key issue is how the issue is framed to begin with.

One of the problems with cloud computing is overcoming its name. For most people, “the cloud” does not relate to some diagraming by computer scientists to illustrate how cloud computing operates. That frame of reference is only relevant to a narrow portion of tech savvy professionals. When most people here the word, “cloud” they unconsciously begin framing a set of references like: dreamy, foggy, haziness, overcast, and overshadow. Without being aware of it, putting one’s valuable data in the cloud becomes a lot more like driving one’s children around in an exploding Pinto from the 1970s than purchasing the latest technology…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Dan Woods.

Every part of the world of business computing is getting cloudier. By that I mean that computing resources are becoming virtual. Instead of running on a physical machine, our applications run on virtual machines, ones created by software and controlled by APIs. This is happening in data centers who are using VMware and other virtualization technologies to increase utilization and flexibility, and in public and private clouds created by the likes of Amazon and Rackspace that provide on-demand computing resources.

In the face of all of this hardware becoming software, It is easy to think that we can forget about the physical world. But this is not true, especially when it comes to the network layer. I recently started studying a company called Gnodal, which creates a new kind of Ethernet-based, ASIC-accelerated switch that can dynamically optimize the flow of network traffic. Learning about this technology has convinced me that more and more companies are going to face a large bump in the road as their infrastructure becomes more virtual…

Grazed from Financial Post. Author: Adrian Tan and Alvaro Flores.

More and more start-ups, entrepreneurial and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are migrating to the cloud and grappling with new tax considerations and challenges. Ernst & Young’s latest Global information security survey reveals 45% of companies have already deployed or are evaluating cloud services. What’s more, cloud revenue growth is expected to experience a 26% compound annual growth rate from now until 2014. That’s five times faster than the IT industry as a whole.

Cloud computing has the potential to increase the effectiveness of IT initiatives, reduce the cost of in-house operations, increase operational flexibility and generate a competitive advantage in global markets. The cost efficiencies of cloud computing, in particular, can enable start-ups and SMEs to implement IT services without substantial upfront investment. But while the benefits may be clear, the risks are too often overlooked…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Andi Mann, vice president for strategic solutions at CA Technologies, for one, questions whether CIOs are the right individuals to talk to about the success of cloud computing. And he takes the original Navint Partners report – which was based on qualitative interviews with 20 CIOs – to task.

“Twenty CIOs are happy, so far, with cloud computing. But what about their bosses, their employees, their organization’s partners and their customers?” he asks. “Are they happy?” In order to understand the business success of cloud computing or any innovative technology, Mann points out, “we need to (a) talk to more than just CIOs, (b) be certain we’re asking all the right questions, and (c) hit a larger sample than just four percent of the Fortune 500.”…

Grazed from ITWorld Canada. Author: Howard Solomon.

Traditionally, Canadian organizations are slow to adopt technology and cloud computing is no different. But the country manager for EMC Corp., which sells storage and virtualization solutions, isn’t frustrated by our conservatism.

“It doesn’t because the whole ‘big bang’ approach to go [entirely] to the public cloud is a difficult approach to make,” Michael Sharum, said in an interview Wednesday at the EMC Forum, a day-long seminar in Toronto to showcase its solutions…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Rohan Pearce.

Elasticity — the ability to ramp up or down computing resources depending on need — is one of the key benefits of cloud computing. Not being shackled to their own, in-house hardware means organisations can dial up the amount of resources they need to crunch big data sets, run their Web presence during spikes and troughs in demand and process periodic jobs without needing the internal resources necessary to cope with peak demand.

But although the IT department may be less likely to have to run out to buy a new server or two, they will still have to make decisions about the purchase of resources from a cloud provider. Of course, cloud computing will let you change your mind and respond to changes in an organisation’s demand, but, according to a group of Microsoft researchers, there may be an easier way to go about it, with benefits for both providers and ‘cloud consumers’…