Author: David

Grazed from Gov Info Security.  Author: Eric Chabrow.

Cloud computing gives the jitters to those charged with protecting their organization’s IT systems and data. After all, vital data flow through the Internet to servers that often are beyond the control of an enterprise’s IT security organization. And, to gauge that concern, Information Security Media Group, publisher of GovInfoSecurity, has just fielded Cloud Computing Security Survey 2012.

The survey will examine not only cloud security concerns, but how security leaders address these concerns through policy, technology and improved vendor management. Survey takers will be from all sectors and from around the globe and include IT, IT security and business managers and professionals involved in their organization’s cloud computing efforts…

Grazed from Information Management.  Author: Justin Kern.

Those were prime expectations for the near-term of cloud computing from discussion topics during an update on cloud standards held Thursday between U.S. and European standards organizations. The virtual summit was led by the Open Data Center Alliance and held in conjunction with the Distributed Management Task Force (DMTF), standards consortium OMG, storage and networking standards group SNIA, and the European telecommunications and network standards group, ETSI. All of the organizations are doing their own work with end users and vendors to establish cloud standards, which are then discussed among the organizations in bi-weekly calls.

Although representatives from the five organizations stopped short of exact timelines and strict guidelines in the discussion, they each provided insight on the direction of standards in the coming year…

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

Apple is going to launch the iPad 3, or whatever they call it, the first week of March at a special event in San Francisco according to AllThingsD, a prophecy the punters regarded as being as good as a statement from the company.

As a result Apple Thursday hit an all-time high, teasing the magic $500 number, with a closing price of $493.17, up from $315 last June, after seeing $496.75 during the day.  The blog figures street availability a week or so later.

The dingus, the same size as the iPad 2, will reportedly be built on a way faster chip with improved graphics and a 2048×1536 Retina Display – "or something close to it," the blog said…

Grazed from TechWorld.  Author: Sophie Curtis.

Grazed from FierceBioTech IT.  Author:  Suzanne Elvidge.

Many companies, especially biopharma and bioinformatics companies, end up with a pool of unstructured and semistructured data, these days dubbed "Big Data." U.S.-based global IT company EMC is planning an R&D center in the Skolkovo Foundation’s Innovation Hub in Russia to create cloud infrastructure solutions and Big Data analytics technologies focusing on bioinformatics, as well as energy efficiency.

The innovation hub, which is also known as "Russian Silicon Valley," is still in the planning and construction stages but will be a high-tech business area to include the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skolkovotech), research institutes, a business incubator, and R&D, technologies development and commercialization centers, as well as housing. EMC will also collaborate with Russian universities, government agencies, and local and multinational companies in the local area…

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

Apple quietly wrote a letter to ETSI, the European Telecommunications Standards Institute, in November asking it to set basic rules for the licensing of standards-essential patents and to make its patent-wielding members commit to the principles.

Apple clearly had Google and its Android acolytes in mind in writing the letter. Motorola Mobility and Samsung are asking ludicrously high sums to license IP that’s supposed to be available on fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory terms (FRAND). They have also sued alleged infringers like Apple and Microsoft demanding product-stopping injunctions.

Apple wants all this to stop. It wants ETSI to insist on appropriate royalties, a common royalty base and no injunctions…

Grazed from Cloud Pro.  Author:  Jennifer Scott.

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Jean-Marc Seguin.

In our last installments on the benefits of cloud computing, we started looking at the maturity of IT – people, processes and technology. Before you start making changes in the organization steam rolling toward the goal of a private cloud, it’s important that you understand where you are today so that you can plot the right trajectory, and as you progress toward your goal, make course corrections as needed.

As I mentioned recently, this is not a clean-cut exercise. As we try to examine these areas in your organization and rank them, you will find areas that can be scored more mature and other areas that can be scored less mature on the same topic. This is normal. Depending on the areas of focus, improvement may vary. Let’s take a look at those areas:…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

It’s like 1999 all over again. The rise of the cloud, and thus the movement to the placement of data and applications outside of the firewall, leads to the reemergence of application integration. That’s why several new companies are coming online that support cloud computing integration directly, and why existing enterprise application integration (EAI) providers are dusting off their integration technology and pushing it at the cloud.

I get a kick out of these small companies that believe that integration is something they just thought about. Indeed, I hear many of the same arguments from then that now-traditional enterprise providers made back in the late 1990s when integration debuted as an architectural discipline…