Author: David

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: J. Nicholas Hoover.

The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) released a five-year strategic plan Tuesday outlining how the agency will navigate a possibly decreasing military and IT budget and military priorities that are increasingly shifting away from Afghanistan and Iraq.

From a technological standpoint, DISA is looking to facilitate an increasingly enterprise-oriented Department of Defense that shares IT resources across numerous services, relies heavily on cloud computing and mobile technologies, and continues to push the boundaries of cybersecurity…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

The cloud, shorthand for “cloud computing”, is transforming all aspects of personal life, business, and society. With that transformation comes deep interest in economic justification, as well as a bit of fear, uncertainty, and doubt. CLOUDONOMICS: The Business Value of Cloud Computing (John Wiley & Sons; September 2012; $60.00) looks well beyond the ephemeral specifics of particular service provider offerings or technologies, and instead uses understandable examples to explain how the cloud can be wielded strategically to create profitable revenue while delivering clear benefits to customers.

Written by cloud computing thought leader Joe Weinman, the book demystifies business models and economic benefits of the cloud, offering insights to business executives in virtually any industry–CIOs, developers, architects, IT managers, academics, students, investors, and policy-makers…

Grazed from Mashable. Author: Editorial Staff.

For executives who have long relied on traditional data servers without issue, switching to the cloud can seem like an unnecessary risk. After all, the imagery evoked — a fluffy, floating entity far from your control —doesn’t exactly scream security.

Truth be told, the vast majority of concerns about cloud computing are groundless; like most every revolutionary technology, it’s weighed down by a lot of misconceptions.

Unfortunately, we couldn’t get Adam Savage and the Myth Busters team over to tackle cloud computing’s naysayers, but we’ll do our best to debunk the 5 biggest myths about cloud computing:…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Basho says its Riak CS object store will fit nicely into the CloudStack open-source cloud platform. As service providers and enterprises look for Amazon S3 compatible storage, entries like Riak CS and DreamHost’s new Ceph-based store could be viable options.

Basho, the company behind the Riak CS distributed object store, is joining the Apache CloudStack Project and will work to integrate its storage with the CloudStack open-source cloud platform.The company is contributing some, but not all, of the code to the project. CloudStack is the cloud platform backed by Citrix(s ctrx) as a rival to the OpenStack cloud and Basho will work with Citrix on this integration…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

There’s very little argument that WAN technologies have helped shape many organizations now do business. Self-service and data delivery over the Internet, referred to as cloud computing, is helping organizations grow organically, while still keeping costs stable. With increased bandwidth and better technology behind the cloud, this solution can be a powerful tool for any business.

Cloud Options

But what type of deliverables does the cloud really offer? Disaster Recovery, Backup, Test/Dev and other capabilities of the cloud have helped create an interesting solution set for organizations to choose from. Aside from just knowing what the cloud can offer, organizations and managers must be able to explain the benefits of the cloud in a top-down model. This means that if managers know the end goals of a cloud strategy, while the engineering staff is left clueless, the success of the entire project can be limited. The main goal here is to understand the various solutions that the cloud can bring to an organization, and how to show these benefits to the entire IT team…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Charlie Osbourne.

A new cloud computing company, Numergy, has been created by French operator SFR and IT group Bull in partnership with government investment firm Caisse des Depots.

Headed by formerly president of IT services group Capgemeni subsidiary Sogeti France Philippe Tavernier, the company aims to provide cloud-based services to governments, businesses innovative start-ups around France and Europe. Based close to Paris, the new firm hopes to eventually support 400 employees and generate sales worth 400 euros ($503 million) in four years…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Brandon Butler.

While big-name players such as Amazon, Google, IBM, Verizon and VMware sit atop the burgeoning cloud computing market, an entire ecosystem of early stage startups are looking to stake their claim, too.

And why not? As Ignition Partners’ Frank Artale sees it, enterprises are on the precipice of the next major shift in computing and venture capital firms are "very aggressive" in looking for companies that can help customers ease their transition to the cloud…

Grazed from ChannelPro. Author: David Blackman.

When cloud computing first made its appearance some years ago it was heralded as the start of a revolution within the IT industry. IT companies and resellers, eager to climb aboard the bandwagon, rushed to bring new ‘cloud-based’ services to market, and the concept quickly gaining a momentum all of its own. Gartner[1] went so far as to predict that 20 percent of businesses would own no IT assets at all by 2012.

The analyst house wasn’t alone in its views; when questioned for the Acronis Global Disaster Recovery Index at the end of 2010, businesses estimated they would have 30 percent of their infrastructure in the cloud in the next twelve months, an increase of 87 percent. However, the reality of the situation was that those companies only grew their cloud-based infrastructure by 19 percent…

Grazed from Gadgets and Technology. Author: PR Announcement.

A new book from IT Governance Publishing, the specialist publishing arm of IT Governance, is helping companies protect business information in the Cloud.

Securing Cloud Services: A pragmatic approach to security architecture in the Cloud explains how to establish an appropriate set of controls to manage the risks.

The book’s author, Lee Newcombe, is an experienced enterprise architect currently working at Capgemini, one of the world’s foremost providers of consulting, technology and outsourcing services…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: John Omwamba.

When industry pundits forecast in 2006 that the usage need of data would surpass that of the voice market, not many could not conceptualize such a market outlook. Five years later and the ratio would pitch data market at nearly 70% of the mobile market and growing. The mobile technology has witnessed tremendous advances in recent years such that experts have reckoned that mobile cloud will colligate cloud computing in the next few years.

Mobile cloud computing is set to impact and transform the mobile communication landscape and the whole computing infrastructure. This means that cloud computing services, whether at home or at the work place, is getting more accessible and more utilized. So what more does the future hold for mobile cloud computing?…