Author: David

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Six Degrees Group today announces it has raised GBP 8 million in new funding from Penta Capital and that it has completed the acquisition of Cloud Computing Centre (CCC), a Surrey-based managed cloud hosting expert established in 1999.

CCC focuses on the cloud market and brings over 100 mid-market hosting customers who spend an average of GBP 36,000 pa. The acquisition takes Six Degrees Group’s run-rate position to GBP 50m revenue and GBP 12m EBITDA. CCC’s cloud platform is highly complementary to the existing Six Degrees technology and they are also a Microsoft Gold Partner and Silver Hosting Partner, bringing incremental skillsets for Microsoft Hyper-V to the Group…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

For companies wanting to put their workloads on a public cloud without having to sweat the details, AppFog has a bold proposition.

AppFog’s platform as a service, available as of late Wednesday, abstracts out the tweaking and tuning of cloud servers, databases and storage. And, if you want to run your work on Amazon and then move it to, say, Rackspace, or Microsoft Windows Azure, or the HP Cloud, you can do so with the click of a button, according to AppFog CEO Lucas Carlson.

The Portland, Ore.-based company, which started out as a PHP-specific PaaS called PHPFog, has broadened and adjusted strategy in the past year, adding support for Java, .NET, and Node and other popular languages and deciding to restructure its foundation atop standard Cloud Foundry technology. That means it can run across the major public clouds, now supporting the aforementioned Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft and HP offerings with more to come. “We will be adding them like mad — we’ll have an all SSD cloud soon,” Carlson said…

Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Arthur Cole.

Familiarity with the cloud is on the rise, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t significant challenges ahead.

For one thing, the fact that the cloud provides a dynamic new infrastructure capable of propelling user and data productivity into the, well, stratosphere, is only half the picture. The other half is the process of migrating data and applications into that new infrastructure. And in that regard, the cloud holds all of the headaches that accompany the standard migrations that IT has come to love so well.

The upside is that most of the major cloud providers have a vested interest in making it as easy as possible to deploy new services, and some of them are willing to let you even choose an alternate cloud provider…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Heather Clancy.

It stands to reason that Microsoft would be extremely interested in SMB opinions about cloud privacy, given its big push into the cloud with Office 365 and its associated services, like Lync Onine.

That security and privacy would and will be a large part of cloud purchasing decisions is also pretty much a given. Whenever I write about this topic, it gets considerably more attention than other things. (An example here: "7 ways SMBs can make cloud storage and backup safer.")

But did you know that privacy policy is a make-or-break selection criteria for 59 percent of small businesses?…

Grazed from Fast Company. Author: Neil Ungerleider.

If computers and technology were aircraft, most of the aviation industry would still be flying biplanes–the people whose business is hurtling your through the sky are way behind the curve in cloud computing.

Slowly but surely, that’s changing.

The Federal Aviation Administration, like the rest of the federal government, is slowly migrating to a system of remotely based systems. Airlines and airports are moving to cloud-based servers for sensitive flight information, too. A variety of platforms and software packages now target the aviation market. But the industry on whole still uses infamously outdated computer technology. So how do they get clunky old systems into the cloud … and what are the risks for flyers and airlines?…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Grant Gross.

Cloud computing services from outside the U.S. are trying to exploit perceived weaknesses in privacy laws to drive business away from U.S. providers, according to some representatives of the tech industry.

Deutsche Telekom and other companies are marketing their cloud products as more private than those from U.S. vendors because of the Patriot Act and other laws, representatives of the Business Software Alliance and Rackspace told a U.S. House of Representatives subcommittee during a hearing Wednesday.

Foreign cloud computing vendors are spreading "fear, uncertainty and doubt" about U.S. privacy standards, Justin Freeman, corporate counsel for Rackspace, told members of the House Judiciary Committee’s Internet subcommittee…

Grazed from The Sydney Morning Herald. Author: Matthew Hall.

Experts don’t often agree, especially in IT, but when it comes to cloud security it appears some finally do.

Is cloud computing secure? It depends, is the answer.

It is also the reason why the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), an organisation that counts BMW, Deutsche Bank, Disney and National Australia Bank as members, is still attempting to end ambiguity and define cloud security stardards for businesses. An assurance model proposed by the ODCA a year ago, is still under revision, after a proof-of-concept threw up more questions than it answered…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Todd R. Weiss.

To help business clients discover all of Google’s available cloud services, the search giant this week unveiled its new Google Cloud Platform Partner Program to bring consultants and vendors together to help customers learn how the cloud can help them.

And that, according to analysts, will be a good way for companies from small to large to really explore all that the cloud might have to offer them, without having to do the research, planning and configuring on their own.

"Clearly there’s a huge horse race underway for many of the large cloud and enterprise vendors who have been staking out their market shares in this huge cloud opportunity for the enterprise," said Dana Gardner, principal analyst with Interarbor Solutions. "We’ve seen lots of movement in this direction from traditional enterprise vendors toward the cloud and from traditional Web services portals and SaaS providers, too. So here we have Google recognizing that the cloud is not just a self-service application over the Internet to get the job done, but that customers do need to have good service and support."…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Tintri, a producer of purpose-built VM-aware storage appliances, has closed a $25 million D round led by Menlo Ventures. Existing investors NEA and Lightspeed Venture Partners joined in.

It says the round was oversubscribed and brings total investment to over $60 million.

Tintri plans to use the money to accelerate R&D and sales operations as well as support global expansion. It says it’s grown 100% a quarter on average since it launched last year, attracting 100 companies including Alliance Bank, F5 Networks, Tibco and Mitsubishi Electric Information Network Corporation as customers…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Marc Jones.

Last week I read Rob Vandenberg’s article on cloud adoption, which covered the benefits of cloud computing for the government, and noted that Washington could save between $5.5 and $12 billion by migrating their systems to the cloud. As Rob pointed out, there’s a mad rush — indeed, a mandate from former U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra — to move to the cloud over a fast 18 months to collaborate, store files, and run high-capacity applications.

The cost savings are the silver lining. But there’s a dark cloud on the horizon, and it’s one that literally all coverage of the federal government’s leap to the cloud has, to date, overlooked. It’s something that could send much of the anticipated $12 billion in savings up in smoke…