Author: David

Grazed from Smart Data Collective.  Author: Paul Barsch.

Grazed from Wired News.  Author: Caleb Garling.

Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of the online retail giant, introduced Amazon CloudSearch today, which lets companies add search functionality to applications hosted in AWS’s cloud environments.

AWS is a kind of virtual data center for companies that don’t want to boot up and configure their own servers. Companies pay for the computing resources they need and can add and remove systems very quickly. It’s used by Samsung, Farmers Insurance and Netflix, to name a few…

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

OpenStack announced Thursday that, as expected, it’s moving to a foundation governance model with a published framework that’s supposed to limit Rackspace’s dominance of the nascent open source cloud platform.

OpenStack is an alternative to Amazon. Citrix started a competing effort to OpenStack last week around its open source CloudStack, which unlike OpenStack uses Amazon APIs. These APIs are supposed to make Amazon, which now also has the open source Eucalyptus in its corner, the de facto standard…

Grazed from Reuters.  Author: Georgina Prodhan.

Microsoft, which was built on the sale of expensive software that is installed on individual computers, has been forced by competition from Google (GOOG.O) and others to branch out into the fast-growing world of cloud computing.

The U.S. software giant said on Thursday it would provide its Live@edu communication and collaboration software to more than 7 million students and half a million teachers through a deal with the AICTE…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudcor today announced, that Fabasoft, a leading European software vendor and public cloud provider, joins other cloud leaders becoming an Elite Gold Partner for its 4th annual Cloud Slam’12 Cloud Computing Conference taking place May 30 – June 1, 2012 in San Francisco and broadcast online.

Fabasoft’s Folio Cloud offers a platform for wide range of business applications, used for both internal collaboration within the business and external international partners and customers.

"We are delighted to extend our collaboration with Fabasoft for the 4th straight year as an elite Gold Partner for Cloud Slam’12," Cloudcor Chairman – Khazret Sapenov said…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babcock.

VMware celebrated the first anniversary of its Cloud Foundry development platform Wednesday, and during the festivities on Hillview Ave. in Palo Alto, which included a cake with a single candle, all I could think of, was: "Why is VMware doing this?"

Why is it a big deal that Cloud Foundry is one year old? Cloud Foundry has experienced 75,000 downloads since it became available as open source code. So what? Those 75,000 downloads would constitute a slow day for MySQL or the Apache Web Server…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Brocade today announced its participation in a new EMC initiative to deliver Proven Infrastructure solutions for customers looking to make the transition to virtualization and cloud. The new EMC(R) VSPEX(TM) Proven Infrastructure, available only through the EMC’s Velocity(TM) Program channel partners, can combine Brocade cloud-optimized networking technologies with EMC unified storage and next generation backup architecture, while enabling customers to leverage their server and hypervisor of choice.

Increasing numbers of small organizations are making the transition toward virtualization and cloud, but many are grappling with the challenge of managing IT infrastructures and ensuring application availability. Further, many do not have the in-house technical expertise or resources available to larger enterprises to smoothly make this transition. To address this need, EMC VSPEX offers customers a simple efficient and flexible means of deploying virtualization and cloud technologies, without added layers of IT complexity or risk. In addition, EMC VSPEX is built upon best-in-class technologies that provide customers with an unprecedented level of flexibility and investment protection…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Indicee Inc. (“Indicee”), the leading cloud business intelligence platform, has been selected as one of just four 2012 ‘NextGen Program’ companies by the Software & Information Industry Association (“SIIA”).

The SIIA identified the final four companies that will take part in their NextGen Program in an announcement made earlier this week. The program recognizes innovative cloud computing companies and provides them with an opportunity to showcase their products at ISV conference All About the Cloud on May 8-10 in San Francisco.

Indicee was chosen from over forty initial applicants and thirteen finalists by a panel of industry judges. The final companies were whittled down to just four winners based on scores across three areas of innovation: product, business model and presentation…

Grazed from NextGov.  Author: Jessica Herrera-Flanigan.

With all the talk about cloud computing, a number of questions have arisen about how secure the cloud really is. Personally, I’m not that concerned. If implemented properly, cloud security may actually be better for cybersecurity if but for one reason: we’ve been down this road before.

While some may argue with the specifics, cloud computing is a modern version of the mainframe services that businesses flocked away from a decade or two ago. Now, in a reversal, many are moving to the "cloud," i.e. moving control of their computing efforts from an internal local function to a centralized computing location.

So as companies and the government ponder security in the cloud, it would be worthwhile to look back before recreating a new security regime. Mainframes, in many ways, were inherently secure. There was centralized control and the main challenges were managing user accounts and access control. These are easy challenges, especially in an distributed network environment when a mainframe has to assess whether users are who they say they are — identification and authentication tools are critical…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

DynamicOps, pioneer of the Operations Virtualization(TM) platform that enables unified cloud automation and management, today announced that Networks Product Guide, a leading technology research and advisory guide, has named DynamicOps as a finalist for the 7th Annual 2012 Best Products Award in the "Cloud Computing" category. These industry and peer awards honor achievements and recognitions in every facet of the IT industry. Winners will be announced in Las Vegas on May 8, 2012.

"It’s an honor to be named a finalist by Network Products Guide for this industry and peer award," said Rich Bourdeau, VP of Marketing, DynamicOps. "This further validates the need for a solution that enables fast deployment and easy management of private and hybrid clouds, and the unique value that DynamicOps brings to the market."…