Author: David

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

‘Helix Nebula – the science cloud’, set up earlier this year to support the massive IT requirements of European scientists and create a cloud computing market for the public sector in Europe, has today announced the initial deployment of its first flagship applications in high energy physics, molecular biology and natural disaster recovery.

A collaboration between big science and big business, Helix Nebula joins the forces of leading IT providers and three of Europe’s leading research centres (CERN(1), EMBL(2), and ESA(3)), and has now received EUR1.8 million funding from the European Commission. The initiative strongly supports the Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe: It stresses a unified approach to data protection regulations and lightweight, efficient governance; it also has ambitions to support European economic development by making its services available to the wider community.

First results of the initiative’s on-going Proof of Concept (PoC) phase now show that CERN, EMBL and ESA succeeded in deploying challenging scientific applications each involving tens of thousands of jobs running at data centres operated by Atos, CloudSigma and T-Systems…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Despite some setbacks, such as the recent Amazon Web Services outages, cloud computing is beginning to cross from the experimental phase to production systems that businesses can rely on. This has not been an overnight occurrence: Enterprises have been quietly getting smart about cloud computing technology and applying it where appropriate.

Despite years of cloud hype by vendors, you rarely hear about enterprise successes. That’s because when enterprises make cloud computing work, they view the application of the technology as a trade secret of sorts, so there are no press releases or white papers. Indeed, if you see one presentation around a successful cloud computing case study, you can bet you’re not hearing about 100 more…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Editorial Staff.

Considering the major industry buzz and media hype around cloud computing over the past three years, the actual uptake of the solution has not been warranted, finds Frost & Sullivan.

In a rush to maximise cloud revenue and attract customers, providers are now creating platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services that ride on top of their cloud infrastructure services, or underlie their cloud software services.

In addition to development platforms, providers are offering platforms that comprise functionality for delivery, administration, and integration of software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based software. Moreover, in the complex ecosystem that exists to deliver SaaS applications to business users, PaaS services represent an important jump-off point for collaboration and integration among multiple vendors and participants…

Grazed from New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.

Fueled by an accelerating move to cloud computing, and by a boom in associated telecommunications services, worldwide information technology spending is increasing somewhat faster than expected, according to industry analysts at Gartner.

Over all, people will spend $3.6 trillion on information technology in 2012, the research firm said. This represents a 3 percent increase from 2011, when $3.5 trillion was spent, Gartner said, and is up from the 2.5 percent increase projected three months ago.

The increase, while modest, is notable because it is happening in the face of a financial crisis in Europe, slow growth in the United States, and a slowdown in China’s economic growth…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Gery Menegaz.

You hear that Mr. Anderson? That is the sound of inevitability…Risk! With the recent Amazon Cloud outage many are suggesting that it brings Cloud Computing into question. And that Cloud Computing will now be more difficult to sell. I disagree.

Whether you’re considering the implementation of a cloud strategy, taking on a merger with the hopes of increasing revenue, or are thinking about implementing a new, emerging technology there is risk involved. How you manage that is risk is critical to business continuity.

The first step in managing risk is to understand the types of risk that organizations face. According to Robert S. Kaplan and Anette Mikes, whose recent article Managing Risks: A New Framework, risk falls into one of 3 categories. Preventable, Strategic, or External risk…

Xactly Corporation, the leader in cloud-based incentive compensation and sales performance management (SPM), today announced that data center fabric deployment and technology leader Xsigo Systems, Inc. has dramatically reduced compensation administration time for its growing sales team with Xactly Incent.

Xsigo develops data center fabrics that consolidate server connectivity to help enterprises achieve a more agile, software-configurable infrastructure for the private cloud. The rise of cloud computing has put a strain on traditional data center architecture and networks, resulting in a brisk uptick in demand for more efficient virtualized data centers, bolstering Xsigo’s global business.

As Xsigo’s sales team scaled up from 30 to 60 reps to meet the market demand, its operations team struggled to manage the increasing complexity of sales compensation on spreadsheets. With the addition of each new rep, sales operations had to make significant updates to comp structure – revising quotas, shifting territories and developing new comp plans – all time-intensive processes that kept the company from being as nimble as it needed to be. The company had already licensed an SPM solution from Callidus, but after a competitive review, decided to make the switch to Xactly to support an internal overhaul of its compensation initiatives. Xsigo chose Xactly Incent because its cloud-based architecture was flexible enough to meet its current and future demands, as well as for Xactly’s responsive, knowledgeable team.