Author: David

Grazed from Channelnomics. Author: Chris Gonsolves.

There isn’t much doubt or debate: Cloud computing and the “-as-a-service” models of information technology are the most important and disruptive enterprise technologies to surface in decades. cloud security stormAlso true: The cloud is one major security snafu or data breach away from collapsing before its complete value is ever realized.

Such a catastrophe appears to be inching closer to reality, as evidenced by a new survey making the rounds from the Ponemon Institute and Thales e-Security. On the surface, the report purports to show how cloud acceptance is continuing unabated, driven by ever-increasing zeal for new services at lower costs. But beyond the heady adoption numbers, there’s a chilling disregard for basic security. Even organizations that should know better, the survey shows, are playing fast and loose with their data in the cloud and fumbling even the most fundamental tenets of data integrity with poor encryption practices…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Stephen Lawson.

Cloud storage provider Livedrive introduced an app for Google’s Chromebook on Thursday that is designed to give Livedrive customers access to their files stored online, which can total as much as 5TB.

The Chromebook is designed for online use only and comes with just a 16GB SSD (solid-state disk) plus an SD card slot for additional storage. Livedrive is offering the free ChromeOS app in order to let its customers with Chromebooks expand the device’s virtual storage capacity…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Linda Tucci.

Just how green is cloud computing? Is cloud computing more or less energy-consuming compared with the typical local data center a company owns and operates for its own use? How about compared with a co-location facility, sited for maximum energy efficiency? Or in contrast to a managed hosting data center, where the average power usage effectiveness, or PUE, is an ideal 1.0? What’s the green differential in buying services from a bevy of cloud computing providers versus consolidating the enterprise’s servers and applications in a private cloud maintained behind the corporate firewall?

Most CIOs can’t answer these questions because the energy efficiency of cloud is not their problem but the cloud owner’s problem. That kind of punting may be a lost opportunity for CIOs wishing to make the case that cloud computing is in the plus column for green…

Grazed from TheStreet. Author: James Rogers.

Only three years ago, companies were nervous about the potential security and management risks of sending critical data and services into the "cloud." Today, the cloud-computing industry has developed so rapidly that Rackspace(RAX) has put its faith in open-source cloud technology.

Rackspace developed OpenStack, an open-source cloud operating system in 2010, and is now cranking up its efforts around the technology. Earlier this month the San Antonio, Texas-based firm announced OpenStack-powered versions of its flagship Cloud Server offering. Rackspace also unveiled a Cloud Databases offering and a Control Panel product for managing the services, both built on OpenStack.

"We’re working hard to build an open-cloud company," Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier said during an interview. Rackspace, he added, will launch additional open-cloud services during its third and fourth fiscal quarters…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Sourya Biswas.

With so many cloud options in hand, convergence is the need of the day. This was the focus of HP’s big recent push into cloud computing (See: “Waiting for Cloud Standards Is Like Waiting for Godot” ). Now, Indian IT consulting major Infosys has announced the launch of the Infosys Cloud Ecosystem Hub as an integration mechanism to bring all cloud services under one roof. It promises to enable “enterprises to create, adopt and govern cloud services across the ecosystem.”

It features a “smart brokerage feature” that claims to provide “an enterprise-wide decision support mechanism to select, compare and deploy cloud services from across providers. Decisions can be based on evaluation of over 20 parameters such as quality of service, technology compatibility, regulatory compliance needs and total cost of ownership of application workloads.” I had covered the concept of cloud brokering earlier (See: How The Cloud Broker Can Help Your Business)…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

For many in enterprise IT, cloud computing seems like a dream come true: There’s no need to spend your days negotiating with hardware and software vendors, and you don’t have to worry about running out of space in the data center.

However, as a new technology, cloud computing is missing pieces, and you must take them into account as you move forward, or not, with your cloud implementations. Right now, I see three large holes that need to be filled; let’s examine each.

Service governance addresses the management of cloud computing services. These mechanisms need to allocate services to authorized users, provide service discovery, and enforce pre-determined policies…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Data Collective is a new venture capital firm focusing on seed-round investments in big data startups, from the infraastructure level up to analytics and applications. Among its collection of portfolio companies are Kaggle, MemSQL, Continuuity, Parse, Keen.io, Meteor, MongoHQ, Citus Data and Piston Cloud.
big binary

For almost two years, Data Collective has been lurking in Silicon Valley’s shadows, investing seed money in a slew of big data and cloud computing startups without ever showing its face to the public. On Thursday, the firm officially launched with a unique partnership model and an investment portfolio that should make any dataphile drool…

Grazed from EquityBulls. Author: Editorial Staff.

Unisys announced that entries are open for the fourth annual Cloud 20/20 competition, which recognises innovative thinking among students across India in addressing the technical challenges of cloud computing. In an evolution of the contest, this year participants are being asked to put theory into practice by working in teams of four, supported by two project guides, to showcase live cloud computing projects.

The topics for this year focus on the real-world challenges of implementing successful cloud computing solutions. This year’s contest topics include: Automation for Cloud Computing; Virtualization; Application Development for the Cloud; Security Issues in the Cloud; Moving Workloads from Datacenters to the Cloud; Consumerization of IT; Potential Future Technologies, Open Source Technologies and Disruptive Technologies. Registration for the contest closes on September 5, 2012…

Grazed from NewsObserver.com Author: Aaron Ricadela.

Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Meg Whitman, in her drive to boost profitability, took another step toward dismantling the computing empire former CEO Mark Hurd built with $24.3 billion in acquisitions.

The company is writing down the value of its enterprise-services business by $8 billion and shuffling management at the top of the division, Hewlett-Packard said Wednesday. That follows an announcement in May that Whitman is eliminating 27,000 jobs, many of them from that unit. The write-down reflects the dwindling value of Electronic Data Systems, bought by Hurd for $13.2 billion in 2008. The deal pushed Hewlett-Packard into the low-margin business of information-technology outsourcing, handled more efficiently by rivals such as Wipro Ltd. and Tata Consultancy Services. It left the company ill-equipped for the shift toward cloud computing, making it a laggard in services that help clients deliver software over the Internet…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jeffrey Burt.

SevOne officials are unveiling an update to the company’s network and cloud performance management appliances, which can be used in a peer-to-peer cluster environment to enable the monitoring of millions of objects across networks.

The ability to cluster the SevOne appliances in a P2P fashion allows for significantly greater scalability than in competing network performance management tools, and that scalability is become more critical as big data, exponential network growth and a rapid increase of endpoints—such as mobile devices—become more prominent in with the rise of such trends as cloud, virtualization and consumerization of IT, according to SevOne CEO Mike Phelan.

Legacy networking performance monitoring weren’t made for the modern IT environment, Phelan told eWEEK…