Author: David

Grazed from Seeking Alpha. Author: Editorial Staff.

In a very short time, phrases like ‘on the cloud,’ and ‘cloud computing’ have become part of everyday corporate vernacular. With more and more companies using this technology to share information with employees, customers, and vendors in real-time, Internet giants like Amazon (AMZN), Google (GOOG), and Microsoft (MSFT) have realized the potential profits for providing cloud-based services — and the potential downfalls when servers fail.

However, with intense competition comes intense scrutiny. During a violent series of thunderstorms in the Mid-Atlantic region a few weeks ago, Amazon faced a temporary shutdown of its EC2 cloud computing services. This shutdown hurt several companies, including the popular dating site, Whatsyourprice.com, because customers could not use the service during peak hours. As a result, the company dropped EC2 and moved to another cloud provider…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Paul Lidsky.

Today’s IT data center is at an interesting crossroads. Faced with typically flat annual budgets and increasing demands from the business, IT organizations have started looking for creative ways to not just meet the needs of the business, but to exceed them – while simultaneously reducing costs and simplifying IT’s overall management required.

A tall order? You bet. Impossible to achieve? It’s certainly a challenge if you plan to use the same legacy infrastructure many data centers have in place today. However, such goals become infinitely achievable as IT organizations begin their migration to private cloud computing. One of the most transformational movements to hit IT in a long time, most organizations will seek guidance for how to best unify servers, storage, and networking infrastructures. Most will also need help with addressing the cultural shifts that are inherent when virtualizing and unifying data center infrastructures and teams that were once disparate. The end result of this migration to private clouds benefits both the enterprises that embark on the transformation as well as the vendors and solution providers best positioned to assist them…

Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Michael Vizard.

Most enterprise IT organizations are not particularly fond of uncertainty, which is why anything to do with cloud computing is at the very least a little unsettling. No one is quite sure which cloud service providers will ultimately prove to be victorious in the enterprise. For example, while there’s almost no doubt that the Amazon and Microsoft Azure clouds will be significant players when it comes to application development, it’s not nearly as clear what role cloud service providers may play in production environments.

In recognition of that simple fact, the folks at GreenButton, a provider of cloud management software that makes it simpler to dynamically invoke compute resources across multiple clouds, have been steadily increasing the number of cloud platforms the company’s software supports. In addition to Microsoft Azure, GreenButton now also supports Amazon and an instance of VMware vCloud running on a cloud computing platform managed by Dell…

Grazed from Talkin’ Cloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Toshiba is taking its business phone systems to the cloud with the launch of VIPedge, a cloud-based business phone system that enables customers to pay for telephony services in a monthly fee subscription package. Starting at $29.99 on average per user, VIPedge is the latest in Toshiba’s forays into cloud computing, putting the vendor up against a variety of services currently being offered — from consumer cloud services to business services from the likes of 8×8 and Mitel.

The announcement of VIPedge rounds out Toshiba’s business telephony portfolio, which already features IPedge and Strata CIX. Available now through authorized Toshiba dealers, VIPedge is being positioned as a cost-effective alternative to on-premise solutions. As with other cloud services, VIPedge is a subscription-based business telephone system service that makes it easy for customers to get going with a negligible up-front cost and fixed monthly fees…

Grazed from OStatic. Author: Sam Dean.

Reuven Cohen has an interesting post up on Forbes’ site, which asks, "Free Versus Open: Does Open Source Software Matter in the Cloud Era?" He writes: "I like open source as much as the next guy but, from a value proposition standpoint, just being ‘open source’ doesn’t sound all that compelling to me. This has become especially true in the emerging cloud computing landscape where APIs and Big Data have become some of the most valuable currencies." In fact, though, as the transition to the cloud and Big Data continue, open source software is playing an absolutely critical role.

Cohen notes that Big Data has become one of the "most valuable currencies," but isn’t the open source Hadoop platform–used to sift insights from extremely large data sets–one of the flagship pieces of software driving the Big Data trend? Hadoop has given rise to promising startup companies such as Hortonworks, focused on training and services surrounding it…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Larry Carvalho.

I recently participated in a panel discussion, titled: "Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) endgame – commoditizing the data center" at the GigaOM Structure 2012 Conference. While software is definitely defining the use of IaaS through Platform as a Service (PaaS), the underlying need for IaaS does not go away. In my opinion, the current pace of infrastructure and data center build out cannot be maintained, leading to a future need of resource sharing in this space.

Resource sharing includes everything that contributes to a data center, especially the physical infrastructure. Several Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, especially in the collaboration space, innovatively optimize their infrastructure to serve their specialized purpose. Facebook, for example, has open sourced their hardware design through Open Compute. Skype, as you know, routes calls and video through their users’ bandwidth, reducing the need for back-end infrastructure…

Grazed from Oregan Live. Author: Mike Rogoway.

The forecast continues to brighten at Cloudability.

The Portland startup plans to announce today that it has landed $8.7 million in investment backing to help market its technology, which helps businesses manage their computing in the "cloud."

Many companies, large and small, have shifted much of their data storage and processing into data centers — large, centralized facilities packed with thousands or tens of thousands of computers. Companies such as Amazon.com and Rackspace lease space in their server farms…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Elizabeth White.

ServiceMesh has teamed with Apprenda, Cloud Cruiser and Derdack, with sponsorship from Microsoft, to create a comprehensive set of cloud enablement solutions named the Private Cloud Solutions Suite (PCSS). By collective effort, the team that created PCSS offers Systems Integrators (SIs) an enhanced market solution for building private clouds using the Microsoft stack that eliminates stop gaps and enables full-spectrum delivery of enterprise private cloud capabilities to customers. Strategically aligned with Microsoft System Center, Hyper-V and Windows Server, PCSS ensures that SIs can attract new revenue from enterprise customers and deliver on outstanding private cloud project commitments.

"Private Cloud Solutions Suite is strategically important to Microsoft private cloud and System Center as our ISV Partner Solutions enhance Microsoft’s industry leadership. PCSS also equips key SI partners with additional technology to help deliver on enterprise private cloud needs," said Sergio Klarreich, Director of Business Development, System Center Partner Ecosystem, Management and Security Division at Microsoft…

Grazed from Talkin’ Cloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

How is Office 365 performing with channel partners moving into cloud services? And how should Microsoft channel partners most effectively compete with Google Apps and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud market? Microsoft Channel Chief Jon Roskill offers some clues and updates from Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 (WPC12).

First, a confession: I missed a face-to-face sit-down with Roskill (sorry about that, Jon) because of my own logistics nightmare. But Roskill was kind enough to answer my questions over email.

Here’s the discussion…