Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: David Grimes.

It is highly unlikely to find anyone today that doesn’t see cloud computing having an incredibly bright future given the significant cost, agility, and operational advantages it provides to organizations of almost every size and industry. But believing in the power and future of the cloud doesn’t mean IT has to turn its back on more traditional, physical solutions. The smart strategy is one that combines the most advanced products, technologies, and providers to deliver the best solution possible, whether it be physical, virtual or hybrid.

The term “hybrid” is arguably as overused today as “cloud.” For many in the industry, the term is used to discuss the mix or use of both internal and external cloud solutions (public and private cloud by enterprise). However, a less common definition, but arguably a more common implementation, is to describe the use of a mixed architecture including both cloud and a traditional, single-tenant hosted infrastructure…

Grazed from Federal Times. Author: Nichole Blake Johnson.

One of the most attractive benefits of cloud computing can also be one of the hardest to prove: cost savings. Agencies often lack the details needed to compare their pre-cloud costs — for hardware, software, labor and the like — with cloud-computing fees.

“It’s kind of a shaky premise to say we are moving to the cloud and going to save all this money, and they [organizations] don’t have a sense of what they’re spending today and how much they will save,” said Ed Anderson, a research director at Gartner whose focus is the cloud computing market. “I see a big danger in that because cost savings is the No. 1 justification for moving to cloud.”…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Stephen Delahunty.

The Office of Management and Budget introduced the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy in February 2011, putting federal agencies at the beginning of the cloud adoption curve. Since then, federal IT teams have been evaluating, planning, and implementing cloud services, an exercise that by every indication will be an essential part of the IT planning process for years to come. This article analyzes the state of cloud computing in federal government with new, exclusive data collected by InformationWeek Government. Our third annual Federal Cloud Computing Survey, conducted in September, was completed by 103 federal IT pros.

The question isn’t so much whether there’s been progress, but how much. Are government organizations moving past early-bird projects and turning to the cloud as their first choice when looking to meet new IT requirements? Which issues stand in the way of cloud deployment? Do agencies want private or public clouds? Our survey shows that a sizable majority of respondents have work under way or plans to advance their agencies’ cloud strategies. More than half of these agencies have identified use cases for cloud services, and 46% have evaluated cloud products and services. Fifty percent of all respondents say their agencies are moving ahead with cloud adoption or are in the early stages of doing so; last year that percentage was 40%…

Grazed from AMEInfo. Author: Editorial Staff.

Users worldwide are exposed to increasing amounts of unprotected data due, in part, to the explosion of connected devices, the internet, social media, cameras, sensors and user generated content. Industry experts predict that up to 90% of corporate data such as documents, webpages and email, is usually unstructured and potentially accessible.

Addressing cloud computing and security concerns during Gitex Technology Week, 14th to 18th October 2012, Intel and McAfee will focus on tackling four key areas that include; securing cloud data centers, securing the network connections, securing the devices that connect to cloud services and accelerating the development of unified standards for cloud security…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Christine Burns.

If you visit the popular tech-focused job site Dice.com and search for cloud computing related jobs, you’ll get more than 3,800 hits. According to Alice Hill, managing director of Dice.com, that’s up 72% over last year.

Basically, cloud is a segment of the jobs market that is going gangbusters. On the day Hill’s team culled the list as part of the research conducted for this article, the No. 1 position that employers were looking for was Cloud Architect. The rest of the top 10 are:

— Cloud Software Engineer

— Cloud Sales Executive

— Cloud Engineer

— Cloud Developer…

EC2 Instance Types – Pricing, Comparison, and our Favorites