Author: David

Grazed from Hartford Business.  Author: John A. Lahtinen.

It is estimated that the cloud computing market will reach nearly $250 billion by 2016, an astounding $170 billion increase from 2011. In addition, more than half of Global 1000 companies are expected to store data in the public cloud in the next four years.

Cloud computing involves the delivery of on-demand resources through a computer network — typically over the Internet — permitting a separation between a user’s computer and the actual resources they use. In essence, cloud computing delivers computing as a service rather than a product. A cloud can be public (Amazon Web Services), or private (internal corporate)…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Gilad Parann-Nissany.

More and more enterprises now rent space or servers on the cloud to store data. However, the fact that such data remains outside the ambit of the enterprise’s security system and invisible to the enterprise poses a serious security headache.
Porticor Virtual Private Data, an Israeli based start-up now offers technology that allows organizations to encrypt data held in the cloud.

The service, which includes a Virtual Appliance and an agent software, offers standard AES 256 or Blowfish encryption that has a maximum key length of 2048 bits. A unique “split-key” method adds to the security. The customer holds the master key, common to all data objects such as a disk or the file in the application, and Porticor holds the other key, which is unique for each data object. When the application accesses the data store, Porticor uses both parts of the key to encrypt or decrypt the data. The service encrypts the master key when in use to prevent hackers from stealing it…

Grazed from IT Web.  Author: Brandon Bulter.

CA Technologies has launched a disaster-recovery software-as-a-service offering that combines on-site data protection with a cloud-based service, using Microsoft Azure’s infrastructure.  Called ARCserve D2D on Demand, the offering combines on-site and off-site data backup and recovery.

Read: How to go hybrid

Background: How to become SaaS savvy…

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

In a move up the proverbial stack, Amazon’s cloud now includes a Simple Workflow Service (SWF), or orchestration service, for building scalable, resilient, fault-tolerant, distributed applications that run both on-premise and/or in the cloud, blurring the distinction between them, a move that’s ultimately good for the cloud if it increases the enterprise’s comfort level with the cloud.

Amazon imagines it being used for media processing, web application back-ends, business process automation, data analytics batch processing and of course migration to the cloud…

Grazed from The New York Times.  Author: Quentin Hardy.

This was a milestone week for enterprise computing: The cloud won.

On Tuesday, Dell reported lower earnings, and said sales in the current quarter would fall 7 percent. On Wednesday, Hewlett-Packard, that other stalwart of enterprise hardware, also reported lower earnings, and also projected a lower outlook for both the quarter and the year.

Meg Whitman, H.P.’s chief executive, said a full transformation of H.P. might take as long as five years…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Darryl K. Taft.

In an aggressive move against its key competition, IBM announced new resources to help customers migrate from competing hardware platforms while also claiming Big Blue recorded nearly 2,400 competitive displacements in 2011 for its servers and storage systems.

IBM said nearly 40 percent of the 2,400 displacements came from HP and more than 25 percent came from Oracle/Sun. In addition, IBM said it gained 570 competitive displacements in the fourth quarter of 2011.

Meanwhile, IBM also announced new initiatives for its Migration Factory to continue helping clients quickly and securely migrate core applications and databases to a new IBM-based environment. New resources include workshops to facilitate the transition from competing servers to IBM systems, and migration to a cloud computing solution built on Power Systems. In addition, customers who want to migrate from HP or Oracle/Sun technologies to a Power Systems-based infrastructure are now eligible for new funding services for the migration process…

Grazed from Corporate Counsel.  Author: Brad Breckinridge.

Thousands of Americans export data overseas every day without U.S. government authorizations and don’t even know it. How? By using cloud-computing services, ranging from personal services like Gmail to large-scale enterprise data storage solutions. While cloud-based services have become a valuable tool for improving efficiency, outdated government regulation leaves cloud users exposed.

Here’s an example. Imagine you’re an engineer working for a small firm in Indiana that uses a cloud service for data storage. One day you realize the company’s aluminum valves, used only by U.S. customers, could be improved with a redesigned “butterfly” mechanism. You revise the design specifications on your desktop computer and click “save.” Your company’s cloud provider routes your document to its network’s least burdened location—which happens to be in India—for storage…

Grazed from Silicon Republic.  Author: Carmel Doyle.

The Minister for Jobs and Skills Ruairí Quinn TD is launching the Citrix Academy Network at IT Sligo this afternoon. The aim of the network is to equip students from computing programmes at IT Sligo with advanced technical skills so they can pursue IT careers in areas such as virtualisation or cloud computing.

IT Sligo is the first higher education institution in Ireland to join the network. The first 25 students have recently started the course at the institute, while an additional 55 students are expected to begin the accreditation process by the end of the year…

Grazed from CBSNews.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Computer maker Dell Inc. said Friday it bought AppAssure, a company that specializes in remote data storage and computing, as part of Dell’s strategy to press into the field of Internet-based systems known as cloud computing.

Dell did not disclose financial terms of the deal…