Author: David

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Zath Cruz.

According to a recent IDC research, the segments of the government sector that are least enthusiastic about cloud computing are the local governments, which is ironic at best as they are the ones who stand to benefit the most from a shared-resource model compared to on-premises IT.

Based on the research, which surveyed over 400 IT employees from local, state, and federal governments, it was the local IT guys who were “least optimistic” about cloud computing, with 14.7 percent of the group stating that cloud wasn’t important at all to them. When it comes to federal IT guys, there was only 10.4 percent who responded the same way, while defense department federal IT people had 8 percent, and state IT has the lowest at 7.1 percent who considered cloud as not important…

Grazed from MSP News. Author: Shahin Pirooz.

Moving to the cloud can mean different things to different people, and it all comes down to what exactly is being delivered as a hosted solution. As CTO at CenterBeam, I’ve heard from a lot of customers frustrated when moving to the cloud because they ended up having to do much of the work themselves.

They thought the cloud was going to simplify IT management, but in many cases, the consumer-class solutions that are offered from companies such as Amazon and others that offer Infrastructure as a service (IaaS) only solutions created more work in terms of integrating all the pieces to ensure they worked properly together…

Grazed from Phys.org. Author: Editorial Staff.

A new class of organic materials developed at Northwestern University boasts a very attractive but elusive property: ferroelectricity. The crystalline materials also have a great memory, which could be very useful in computer and cellphone memory applications, including cloud computing.

A team of organic chemists discovered they could create very long crystals with desirable properties using just two small organic molecules that are extremely attracted to each other. The attraction between the two molecules causes them to self assemble into an ordered network — order that is needed for a material to be ferroelectric…

Grazed from: ITWeb. Author: Ugan Naidoo.

Cloud providers should have a documented process for handling access rights, including employees entering or leaving the company, or changing roles. Regular audits should be performed to confirm that all privileges match current roles and needs.

Once access security is understood, it is important to determine how the systems housing your most sensitive information will be secured and the data itself controlled. This will mean considering how to secure virtual and multi-tenant environments.

Access control tools can be configured to restrict access to individual virtual machines based on the privileges of each hypervisor administrator identity. This helps ensure that even in a shared environment, only the appropriate administrators have access to an organisation’s virtual machines. Because virtual environments are so dynamic, security controls must be automated, and individual virtual machines must be managed in a way that conforms to their required security…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Doug Woodburn.

The industry body behind a new security stamp for cloud computing providers is confident it will carry the same clout as an ISO badge.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) is rolling out what it claims is the world’s first security-focused certification scheme for cloud computing providers, in partnership with the British Standards Institution (BSI).

The CSA Open Certification Framework is divided into three tiers: a basic, self-certification tier that is already available; a second, independently assessed tier set to go live next year and that draws on ISO 27001; and a top tier structured around a continuous monitoring-based certification that is still under development…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Typesafe, a maker of application development software and services with offices in Silicon Valley and Cambridge, said Wednesday it’s raised $14 million in a Series B venture capital round.

The company’s platform combines the Akka middleware framework and the Play web framework with Scala, an open-source programming language developed with cloud computing in mind. The stack “can scale to the largest workloads in cloud computing and virtualized enterprise data center environments,” while still integrating “seamlessly” with Java infrastructure, the company said.

Typesafe was founded in 2011, and in May of that year raised a $3 million round. Company co-founder Martin Odersky, who serves as the company’s chairman and chief architect, is the creator of Scala…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CompuCom Systems, Inc., the leading IT outsourcing specialist, has formed a strategic relationship with BMC Software (NASDAQ: BMC) to deliver the business benefits of cloud computing and accelerate the speed with which a client can realize its value.

The cloud is not just an IT strategy; it is a business strategy. Organizations have many things to consider as they contemplate migrating applications and services from traditional data center environments to a cloud delivery model. CompuCom’s 25-year history of building intimacy with clients while maintaining technical excellence was the catalyst to incorporate BMC’s industry-leading orchestration and automation platform into the company’s innovative IT Service Management model…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Rackspace CTO John Engates said the company’s new monitoring service, based on its Cloudkick acquisition two years ago, will give customers a better way to monitor the performance of their cloud resources. As more companies consider cloud deployment, tools like these are becoming essential.

A new Rackspace service will give its customers a better view into how their cloud infrastructure is working around the world, according to John Engates, Rackspace CTO.

Launching Wednesday, the new Rackspace Cloud Monitoring service comes out of Rackspace’s purchase of Cloudkick two years ago. The availability of such services that provide a better view into how a company’s cloud workloads are running is increasingly important as more companies evaluate moving more tasks into cloud infrastructure…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

The beauty of Amazon Web Services is they’re easy to set up and run. The problem with those services is they’re easy to set up and run. Now Amazon is offering companies a better way — with a little prep work — to track those costs.

Amazon is making it easier for companies to track and price out the cloud services they’re deploying with a new cost allocation process.

The fact that Amazon Web Services are so inexpensive and easy to spin up is both a blessing and a curse for companies. A blessing because internal developers can try out new stuff fast and cheap; bad because it leads to cloud cost sprawl where companies find it difficult to track and monitor cloud usage and the costs of which — let’s face it — add up. Even cheap services cost money. A post on the Amazon Web Services blog outlines how corporate users can tag those services to make billing less of an, um, adventure…

Grazed from InformationWorld. Author: Doug Henschen.

It’s time to lay to rest two common myths of the cloud computing era. One is that configuring enterprise applications–whether deployed on-premises or accessed in the cloud–is easy, which is far from true even if it’s easier than customizing an application. The other myth is that you can’t customize cloud-based apps.

Unless we kill these myths, we expect too much, or too little, from our applications.

There is no doubt that IT shops are increasingly using software’s built-in configuration tools rather than coding their own customizations, and there are several reasons for the move toward configuration. For starters, IT teams have been complaining for years about the burden of maintaining their ERP, CRM, supply chain management, human capital management and other enterprise apps. More than half (54%) of the 338 business technology professionals who responded to our just-released InformationWeek 2012 Enterprise Applications Survey cite "changing, upgrading or optimizing existing applications" as their most time-consuming challenge…