Author: David

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Justin Crotty.

Cloud computing is more than just a services model. It’s changing expectations of what IT can do for midmarket and enterprise businesses. Already IT buyers are rapidly moving their cloud utilization from experimentation and rudimentary technologies, to mission-critical applications and workloads. Within the next few years, enterprises are expected to seek even more complex cloud-based automation and business productivity from their cloud providers.

Historically, systems integrators have done well for themselves in designing IT systems and infrastructures, selling and installing the underlying products, and providing ongoing professional support. The legacy IT infrastructure powering the global economy was built by systems integrators one server, one SANs appliance and one switch at a time…

Grazed from EIN PressWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Data privacy and protection remains a major impediment to the broad adoption of Cloud services. In an effort to help Cloud Service Providers and potential Cloud customers objectively evaluate privacy standards, and to support the implementation of Art. 29 WP and EU National Data Protection Regulators recommendations on Cloud Computing, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) launched a new Privacy Level Agreement (PLA) Working Group.

The scope and objective of the PLA Initiative was presented today at the European Parliament as part of the General Data Protection Regulation discussion being led by CSA’s Managing Director EMEA, Daniele Catteddu, in collaboration with Paolo Balboni, Scientific Director of the European Privacy Association and co-chair of the PLA Working Group…

Grazed from Tech Crunch. Author: Leena Rao.

Nebula, a company that allows businesses to deploy large private cloud computing infrastructures has raised $25 million in Series B funding led by Comcast Ventures and Highland Capital Partners with Kleiner Perkins, William Hearts II, Maynard Webb, Scott McNealy, and Innovation Endeavors participating. Also joining the round are Google’s first three investors, Andy Bechtolsheim, David Cheriton and Ram Shriram.

Founded by Chris Kemp, the former CTO of NASA and OpenStack co-founder; Nebula allows businesses to create a private infrastructure and data systems. As Kemp explained to TechCrunch’s Semil Shah earlier this year, Nebula’s infrastructure is similar to Amazon Web Services and runs behind your own firewall in your own data center environment…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

The digital economy is experiencing rapid growth driven by broadband penetration; parallel computing power and storage capacity continue to grow. These developments contribute to the emergence of global markets content for the benefit of rights holders, but also create a new threat – copyright, which could seriously harm the creative industries.

The intellectual property rights are central to share innovations, stimulate creativity and strengthen consumer confidence. But the digital world is in a new challenge – how to find a good balance in a context where the consumer and creator merge, where the marginal cost of copying is zero, where it is extremely difficult to enforce existing legislation and where many consider the access free as a right…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Robert J. Mullins.

Windows Server 2012 Day is finally here, as Microsoft officially launches the server operating system that’s been in development for four years and is geared to serve the current needs of IT for secure but reliable access by workers to corporate data and applications regardless of their location and type of device they are using.

Microsoft experts from the Server and Tools businesses delivered a live streaming presentation Sept. 4, doing a deep dive on Windows Server 2012 features in the data center, in the development and deployment of applications and in the delivery of what the company calls “people-centric IT.”…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, announced today it plans to withdraw its applications to trademark the term "social enterprise."

For nearly two years, salesforce.com has evangelized the term "social enterprise" to describe how social and mobile cloud technologies empower companies to connect with customers, partners, and employees in entirely new ways. When salesforce.com applied to trademark the term in the IT sector earlier this year, members of the social sector expressed concern that it would cause confusion around the meaning of the term. The social sector, including both non-profits and for profits, define the term "social enterprise" as organizations that apply commercial strategies to improve human and environmental well-being such as reducing poverty or improving education…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Jack McCarthy.

With the channel buffeted by changes brought about by cloud computing, partners often look to vendors for support as they try to transform their business. In turn, vendors need to respond by placing more emphasis on programs that can help partners and win their loyalty, according to a report from analyst firm Forrester.

"Cultivating partner loyalty today is a complex, multifaceted endeavor, one that warrants a new vision incorporating new approaches to partner enablement," says the report, titled "Reinforcing Channel Partner Bonds In the Era of The Cloud," by analyst Tim Harmon…

Grazed from Smart Data Collective. Author: Paul Barsch.

As more companies turn to cloud computing, social media and online selling platforms to avoid spending budgets on infrastructure, it is also likely that they are sharing a key business enabler—behavioral data. So what happens when your cloud-based provider shifts from providing infrastructure or a platform for your business to actually competing with you?

Online business Zynga understands while they develop games such as Farmville, Mafia Wars and others that run on Facebook’s platform, it’s also not far-fetched that Facebook could get into the profitable business of gaming. In fact, Zynga is turning away (though not completely) from Facebook to also support games for Google plus and other social/mobile platforms…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

On Tuesday, Netflix put source code for its Eureka mid-tier load balancing technology onto Github so that other Amazon Web Services users can tweak it for their own use. This isn’t the first time Netflix has filled voids in the AWS stack.

Pretty soon we’re going to need a score card to track the increasingly complex Amazon-Netflix relationship. As Amazon dives deeper into streamed video on its own, Netflix, which runs its video streaming business on Amazon Web Services, is getting more proficient at plugging gaps in Amazon’s cloud platform…