Author: David

Grazed from IT Evolutionary Transition. Author: Tim Crawford.

Cloud computing has turned the technology world on it’s head. Some argue this is a bad thing. However, I believe it is a great thing and something we need. For some time, businesses have requested more and more from IT organizations. Several years back, cloud computing came about and provided a significant opportunity for IT organizations and the businesses they serve. However, cloud is not just a change in technology.

New Paradigm

With significant changes in innovation come changes in the way we think. Cloud is no exception. It presents a new way for delivery of services. For IT organizations, this means changing who delivers the services. It means thinking differently about how services are delivered and how relationships are maintained. Further, the fundamental nature of the relationship has changed too from transactional to value. Even within the technology realm, the focus moves from operational to integration. There are many more changes that must be considered when introducing cloud-based solutions…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Maxwell Cooter.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is looking to crack a thorny problem for cloud computing – the ability to run high-performance databases. Applications with I/O intensive workloads rely on consistent response times and that’s not always been easy for cloud to deliver.

AWS’s attempt to tackle this problem is a new service called Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS) Provisioned IOPS. The system has been designed to offer AWS customers the ability to specify volume size and volume performance so that Amazon EBS will deliver that specified performance.

According to AWS, customers will be able to provision an EBS volume through the AWS management console. Currently, users are limited to 1,000 IOPS per Provisioned IOPS volume – although AWS hopes to deliver higher limits shortly…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Today’s IT security is a triple constraint: be ahead of those who are after your data, make your data usable, and comply with the regulations that govern your industry. Moving your business “to the cloud” further complicates this situation. While the cost savings sought by hosting data and processing it in the cloud makes a compelling argument to give up control of your data, the risk of data loss, hacking and loss of credibility can quickly outweigh these potential cost savings.

The standard IT security answer has always been when in doubt, deny the risky request. With the recent incidents such as the LinkedIn™, eHarmony™ and other hacks dominating the news, the decision to move your data to a cloud storage provider seems an easy “no”. Thanks to a little innovation, it is now possible to not only manage but concur the triple constraint. “Responding to the speed of business should not be a crime” said Rob Fioto, CEO and Chairperson of RACE. “We simply needed to provide IT security folks with a stronger toolset so they could safely mitigate the many cloud-based risks.”…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Enterprise cloud storage player Box netted a huge $125 million Series E funding round led by growth equity firm General Atlantic Partners. The cash influx brings the total funding for 7-year old Box to $287 million.

The Los Altos, Calif.-based company will use the money to fund international expansion. “We’re going to scale out the team all round — the top net new priority is international expansion which we already started with the opening of a London office,” Box co-founder and CFO Dylan Smith said in an interview on Monday.

Smith also said the company is girding for an IPO but is in no hurry, reiterating that the company, with about 500 employees, should be in a position to go public sometime next year. “We’re focused on growth and market share and, depending on what the market looks like, that will be the ultimate driver,” he said…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Elizabeth White.

Cloud application auditing and security company, SaaSID, has announced its partnership with big data and business analytics company, EMC Greenplum.

EMC is a global leader in cloud computing, enabling the world’s largest organisations to store, manage, protect and analyse their information: transforming their operations. In July 2010, EMC acquired Greenplum, a vendor of database technology that is optimised for large scale data warehousing and business analytics.

SaaSID’s software provides organisations with a simple way of provisioning, controlling and reporting on cloud-based application use, to extend corporate information security, identity management and governance to the browser. All user interaction with applications managed by SaaSID is provided in a detailed audit trail, to help organisations to maintain regulatory compliance when they adopt cloud-based applications…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

For Rackspace, there’s no turning back from OpenStack now. As of Wednesday, all new customer workloads will deploy on the company’s open source cloud computing platform, leaving the company’s legacy platform for existing customers that want to take their time transitioning to the new cloud. Now, the competition to dethrone cloud king Amazon Web Services really begins. Or does it?

I recently spoke with Rackspace CEO Lanham Napier, who shared his vision for how OpenStack is changing his company from the inside out and how he doesn’t necessarily view Amazon as direct competitor…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Analytics startup Birst wants to plant a cloud seed in your data warehouse to make it accessible to the business users who actually need it. No, it’s not trying to move any data to the cloud, but rather is implementing tried-and-true cloud product architecture to rethink how users interact with their companies’ centralized and valuable data.

The problem, according to Birst Founder and CEO Brad Peters, is that using data warehouses has traditionally been a cumbersome process. Only a limited amount of data — perceived to be the most valuable data — goes in, and doing any work on that data within the warehouse usually requires the assistance of the IT department. As a result, data warehouses have essentially become staging grounds from which data is shuttled via feeds to various departments that analyze it against data on their own systems…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

SUSE® is now helping more than twenty top global cloud service providers accelerate the growth of their businesses by delivering the platform that over 15,000 enterprises worldwide rely on for their mission-critical computing needs. Unique in the industry, the SUSE Cloud Provider Program offers the flexibility to tailor solutions that fit a wide variety of emerging cloud business models. Included as part of the program are tiered pricing – ideal for on-demand computing delivery, cloud-enabling tools that simplify deployment and management of workloads to the cloud, and a variety of enterprise support alternatives.

Since its inception in 2010, the SUSE Cloud Provider Program has helped companies such as Amazon Web Services, 1&1, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, Tencent, SHI, SGI, Verizon and Vodacom Business offer customers of all sizes the ability to run SUSE Linux Enterprise Server via a seamless, pay-as-you-go purchase experience with the widest range of support options…

Grazed from Wall Street Journal. Author: Sonja Cheung.

For angel investor Innovation Works, heaven would likely be filled with a load of Chinese companies using cloud storage as enabling systems–this sector being the firm’s latest investment target as it looks to complete a final close of its second fund later this year.

Mickey Du, part of Innovation Work’s investment team, highlighted U.S.-based company Asana, which uses cloud, as the type of portfolio company the Beijing-based firm is eyeing, although at the seed and angel stages. Co-founded by Facebook alumnus Dustin Moskovitz, Asana has developed task-management software for workplace tasks, and recently received a $28 million Series B round from investors such as Benchmark Capital, Dow Jones VentureWire reported in July…