Author: David

2nd Watch, Inc., a software and cloud-computing consulting company, has been recognized by Microsoft for its commitment and expertise providing cloud solutions with an invitation to join the SMB Cloud Champions Club. 2nd Watch is the only company in the Inland Northwest, and one among only three hundred in the nation, awarded the Cloud Champions Club designation. The company has also been recognized as a Microsoft Cloud Accelerate partner.

 In addition to its Microsoft Partnerships, the SMB Cloud Champions Club and the Cloud Accelerate Program further extend 2nd Watch’s resources to assist and manage client migrations to Microsoft’s Office 365 online products.  The Cloud Champions Club connects partner businesses with tools they can use to grow their cloud-based services with resources ranging from technical professionals to business and marketing funds. The Cloud Accelerate Program provides additional software and marketing benefits as well as Core Silver Competency benefits. "The Cloud Champion Club and the Cloud Accelerate partner designations are testaments to our team’s experience and drive toward saving companies money and providing a more mobile and agile product," stated 2nd Watch’s President Jeff Aden.  "Gone are the days of managing exchange on premises, and along with that are lower costs that require less maintenance."…

In the 25 years since Richard Stallman wrote the GNU General Public License, free and open source software (FOSS) have become pervasive in computing: Linux, Apache HTTP Server, MySQL and more can be found in large numbers of enterprises across the globe. And open source is now increasingly undergirding cloud computing as well.

"Open source is certainly at the foundation in terms of building out cloud technologies," says Byran Che, senior director of product management at Red Hat and responsible for its cloud operations offerings, management software and Red Hat Enterprise MRG, (Red Hat’s Messaging, Real-time and Grid platform). "If you take a look at market share in the server space, as you look at traditional data centers, about 70 percent are running on the Windows platform and about 30 percent are running Linux. As you take a look at what operating systems people are choosing to build applications on in the cloud, the ratio flips completely."…

Chief Information Officers who are poised to build their next internal network have some serious decisions to make. With cloud computing and virtual machines changing the way we utilize networks and deploy solutions, the next generation of networks will be very different.

TechRepublic reports that 70 percent of enterprise organizations are already gearing up for the increased complexity that mobile devices bring to the infrastructure world. The good news is a properly built enterprise solution will serve an organization far into the future. The potential reusability and resiliency offered by virtualization means that companies would be getting a lot more for their money…

NTT Data, the service provider, has formed a business unit devoted to cloud services. It will be led by Marv Mouchawar as president and he will report directly to CEO John McCain.

Mouchawar and his team will be responsible for the overall strategy, portfolio, sales and delivery of services.

NTT Data Cloud Services is supposed to draw on the strengths and resources offered by NTT Data globally and in collaboration with the NTT Group of companies including NTT Communications, NTT DOCOMO and Dimension Data…

Iron Bow Technologies LLC, an information technology solutions provider, announced today that it has achieved the Cisco Cloud Builder designation within the Cisco Cloud Partner Program to support the expanding role of the network in deploying cloud services.

This designation recognizes Iron Bow’s competencies to consult, design, deliver and implement Cisco end-to-end cloud solutions for both government and private enterprise customers. As a Cisco designated Cloud Builder Partner, Iron Bow has met the rigorous required competencies across all cloud infrastructure components (security, networking, computing, storage and virtualization solutions), cloud management applications and a formal cloud professional services practice…

In an effort to address some of the most pressing cloud computing challenges and requirements its members have identified, the Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has released five new usage models, which are available for download now.

These new usage models are designed to help better manage security and infrastructure issues across cloud computing applications, while at the same time identifying the specific innovations and standards that are required for widespread adoption of cloud services, says Allyson Klein, ODCA representative and a director with Intel Corp.

“Members are committed to using usage models to guide their planning and purchasing of cloud services for internal cloud deployments, as well as public cloud services.” she says. “Vendors can utilize the usage models to help integrate requirements into future solution delivery plans.”…

Cloud computing has been described by some of the more radical thinkers as a profound challenge to the heart of software freedom [1]. There’s some justification to this accusation.

First, you need more than your software’s source code to take your cloud activity into your own hands. Although open source gives you the freedom to use, study, modify, and distribute the software, it doesn’t necessarily allow the use of the place it runs or the APIs needed to access that place. As such, considering your software-freedom-derived business flexibility [2] in the area of cloud computing is more complex than for in-house desktop or server solutions…

The concept of big data is simple, as most good ideas are. Big data gives us the ability to use commodity computing to process distributed queries across multiple data sets and return result sets in record time. Cloud computing provides the underlying engine, typically through the use of Hadoop. Because these commodity server instances can be rented as needed, big data becomes affordable for most enterprises.

We always make discoveries as we use new technology, both good and bad. In the case of big data, the path to success will come with key lessons. But given the novelty of big data in real-world deployments, there are major questions for which we don’t yet have answers — so be extra careful in these areas…

Hitachi, Ltd. and Microsoft Japan Co., Ltd. today announced that they collaboratively provide global cloud solutions by combination of Hitachi Cloud Computing Solutions and Microsoft(R) global data center. Hitachi cloud computing solution will be enhanced by this collaboration in order to satisfy Japanese customer’s broad needs including globalization.

As usage of cloud computing is rapidly expanded in enterprise IT systems, cloud computing is evolving to be used in cooperation with mission critical system (mainly in form of hybrid cloud), while cloud computing conventionally has been used in a limited part of enterprise information system (mainly in form of public cloud and private cloud)…