Author: David

Grazed from SC Magazine.  Author: Stephen Lawton.

As cloud computing becomes ubiquitous, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are looking to it as a way of securing their data more efficiently at a potentially lower cost. While service providers tout the cloud as more secure than a corporate data center, experts are not as certain.

At issue is how the company negotiates its security agreement with the cloud provider. Some vendors offering services to consumers or small businesses, such as Amazon Simple Storage Service, write into their user agreement that the provider is not responsible for any data security at all. At the other end are companies such as Carpathia Hosting of Dulles, Va., which provides cloud services to the CIA and the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. Between these poles are many options.

The question a CISO must address before contracting with a cloud provider is: For how much security is the company willing to contract and how much will remain its own responsibility, says Simon Crosby, CTO and co-founder of security start-up Bromium…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Alex Barrett.

Like a hurricane barreling up the coast, cloud computing is gathering strength and expected to make landfall shortly. In some IT shops, cloud is already here, bringing the winds of change along with it.

But unlike a natural disaster, cloud computing doesn’t destroy everything in its wake – merely transforms it.

In the data center, IT operations managers who have experimented with cloud — private, public, and otherwise — report it’s already had a profound effect on the way they run their IT environments and do their jobs. And they expect even more changes to come…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Maribel Lopez.

Cloud computing is top of mind for computer geeks, information technology (IT) providers, web and mobile start-ups, and most CIOs (chief information officers), but should other senior executives care?  After all, can CxOs afford to take time out from global growth concerns, foreign corrupt practice allegations, dysfunction in D.C., and other business exigencies merely to immerse themselves in abstruse technology plumbing?  To be a leadership priority, “computing” in general and the “cloud” in particular—a network-centric, pay-per-use, on-demand service model for IT—would have to be strategic.

It’s been argued that “IT Doesn’t Matter,” since IT is available to anyone, and thus is a commodity like electricity.  Therefore, this argument concludes, IT can’t be a source of strategic competitive advantage.  This line of reasoning seems plausible at first glance, but conflates IT’s infinite malleability and algorithmic possibilities, often limited only by imagination, with its more mundane physical incarnation—computers, storage, and network gear—and therefore fails to explain how a Google or Facebook—started from scratch with no brand, no assets, no preferential access to resources, no marketing, no sales force, no regulatory protection, in fact, with nothing more than ideas and business concepts encapsulated as IT—could rocket from dorm room project to multi-billion dollar annual revenues in short order…

Grazed from Technorati.  Author: Blake Dukes.

The cloud has become the Holy Grail of business technologies. Every day dozens of new stories and blog posts pop up, touting the fantastic impact and developmental leaps being made by companies switching over to some form of cloud computing, whether that’s Software, Platform or Infrastructure as a Service. But another use for cloud services has emerged: IT as a Service. In this model, cloud services are used not only to increase a company’s computing capabilities and make their technology more agile, but also to supplement or free up their in-house IT staff. There are several benefits for companies that begin using ITaaS…

Grazed from ChannelInsider.  Author: Michael Vizard.

Over the years a huge percentage of the custom application development being done by corporations has been outsourced to the channel. Whether it’s modernizing COBOL applications using developers in India or creating mobile computing applications by relying on the expertise of independent application development houses, the channel in many ways dominates application development these days.

With the rise of platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings in the cloud, however, that independence is being threatened. In addition to being optimized for only one or two development languages, PaaS environments come with a lot of application management tools that ultimately serve to lock developers into a specific platform. Worse yet, it’s difficult to develop composite applications that span multiple clouds. Customers obviously need that capability because just about every application ever built is dependent on another for one service or another…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Tanmay Deshpande.

PaaS is nothing but uploading your small kernel of code with business logic and the PaaS service provider will run that code on allocated computing and storage instances. The aim of PaaS is to let the developers concentrate on developing their code rather than creating and maintaining their ecosystem required for it. When Google launched App Engine in 2008 it had very basic functionalities but gradually it has evolved to support much good functionality like Channel APIs.

But when it comes to language support, selection of cloud, selection of database, control over database, Cloud foundry gives great amount of flexibility as compared to App Engine. Also, when it comes to supporting Java packages also, Google App Engine doesn’t allow developers to free their arms as there are quite a few important packages which are still not part of App Engine’s white list…

Grazed from Talkin Cloud.  Author: Joe Panitierri.

Cloud Computing and cloud services stocks closed April 2012 on a high note, and our Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index is up roughly 28 percent since January 1, 2012. The most recent weekly winners included SolarWinds (NYSE: SWI), Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN), Equinix (NASDAQ: EQIX) and Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTSX).

For the week ending April 27, 2o12, cloud computing and cloud services stocks rose 3.21 percent, though many of our Talkin’ Cloud Stock Index members saw small declines on the final day of trading this month (April 2012). And in broader markets, there are concerns about the U.S. economy potentially slowing…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudremedy™ by Be Specific Consulting is a new service introduced to troubleshoot and enhance Cloud Computing implementations. The service works at any stage of a Cloud strategy by applying a simple yet entirely business-focussed methodology to correct elements which are not working as desired for the business.

Cloudremedy aims to use a client’s chosen or existing hardware and software assets. If there is no hardware, software or software subscription in place, Cloudremedy focuses on finding the most suitable technologies which can fit with the business and budget requirements without vendor bias. Cloudremedy differs from other solution provider’s services as it does not require clients to purchase equipment or software through Be Specific Consulting or commit to a long term contracts. Be Specific Consulting will work with solutions in almost any location…

Grazed from New Europe Technology Online.  Author: Nerea Rial.

LG, the South Korean technical giant, is set to branch into the cloud computing market with  the beta version of the LG Cloud on  1 May.

This new service will allow users to upload their content to the company’s servers and stream it to all of their devices. They will have access to heir stored photos and videos on smartphones, PCs, smart TVs, and set-top boxes.

LG Cloud will compete in the market against the S-Cloud of Samsung, which is expected to launched alongside the Galaxy S3 during its Samsung Mobile Unpacked event on 3 May…