Author: David

Grazed from CIO.  Author: Thor Olavsrud.

t’s an oft-repeated mantra: Organizations engaged in or investigating cloud computing in any of its many flavors are concerned about security. In fact, concerns about security, data privacy and data residency are often cited as inhibitors to cloud adoption. But are the concerns justified? Some security experts say visibility and control are the missing elements.

In a recent study of IT and business executives, CompTIA, the IT industry association, found that 50 percent of respondents cited greater reliance on Internet-based applications like cloud computing and software-as-a-service as a driving factor in their cyber security concerns. But a number of cloud experts say that in many ways data in the cloud is more secure than in an on-premise installation—or at least rapidly becoming that way—especially for smaller organizations that don’t have the resources to dedicate to security technology and expert staff…

Grazed from Investors.com.  Author:  Reinhardt Krause.

As competition in cloud computing services mounts, telecom leaders AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) aim to win a tug-of-war with tech titans Amazon.com (AMZN) and IBM (IBM).

All are battling to provide services to companies that are steadily warming to the idea of buying Web-based, or "cloud," computing services. Companies tap computing resources in remote data centers to cut their spending on servers and storage, and to easily ramp up or down. Research firm IDC says the global cloud infrastructure as a service, or IAAS, market will jump to $14.9 billion by 2014 from $6.6 billion in 2011…

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

Just when the US Postal Service looks down for the count, a self-funded Seattle start-up called PaperKarma figures its destiny is to suppress junk mail on which the post office depends.

The company was started by Sean Mortazavi, who hasn’t given up his day job at Microsoft yet, and PaperKarma’s sole employee Brendan Ribera. The pair has developed a free multi-platform mobile app that lets junk mail-inundated protesters take a picture of the junk mail flooding their mailbox, hit an "Unsubscribe" button and send it to PaperKarma.

The start-up will automatically pass it on to the mailer with Federal Trade Commission-enforced instructions that the recipient be dropped from its mailing list…

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

Centrify is going into the mobile business in support of iOS and Android phones and tablets.

The move involves putting its multi-platform support for Microsoft’s Active Directory on its own cloud so companies can protect the increasing ubiquitous BYOD they need to control and secure whether they’re on the corporate network or not.

It promises an organization can re-use its Active Directory investment without deploying a complex new infrastructure or dealing with yet another "pane of glass" in the form of another standalone management console…

Grazed from CNBC.com.  Author: Bernadette Tansey.

Michael Stoudt was getting tired of all the tasks involved in exchanging financial records with his clients and staffers. They’d email him files, he’d download them to his computer, work on them, and then email them back.

The Allentown, Pa., accountant longed for a common environment where the files could live, always visible to himself, his client, and his part-time employees who worked on the same bookkeeping documents from home. So he tried uploading a few records to the free Web-based file sharing service called Dropbox.

The accountant had taken his first step into the cloud…

Grazed from CIO.  Author: Bernard Golden.

The debate about the economic benefits of cloud computing is intense, and is commonly boiled down to a talking point labelled OpEx vs. CapEx. Very often, like many talking points, the headline conflict is really a stalking horse that conceals the true source of conflict.

In the case of OpEx vs. CapEx, what often underlies the discussion is really an indirect, coded debate about the future of IT infrastructure and operations groups: Will they be operators of assets owned by the larger organization, or will they be operators of assets owned by an external provider?

It doesn’t take a genius to understand why being responsible for operating hundreds of millions of dollars of owned assets, along with all of the people associated with ownership (technical evaluation, vendor relationships, capacity planning, etc.), is typically seen as more prestigious and important than managing assets from an external provider who takes responsibility for all of those areas. An even more nightmarish vision is that infrastructure and operations groups will be cut out of the equation entirely, with application groups taking responsibility for dealing with external providers, leaving I&O with a dwindling responsibility set, managing an ever-eroding installed asset base…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Kurt Johnson.

To many enterprise organizations cloud computing looks – appropriately enough – heaven sent. When a company has a business opportunity that demands more processing capacity, or new applications, or adding hundreds of new users, they can dial it up through their cloud computing service provider with slightly more effort than it takes to get lunch delivered. No capital expenses, no vast spikes in maintenance costs, no resource and skill requirements. The cloud is an IT service that helps business move faster, cheaper and smarter.

So persuasive is cloud computing that companies have been known to plunge into it with gusto while turning a deaf ear to warnings from information security officers, who see gaping holes in the corporate data security fabric where business managers see agility and economic benefit. The security officers are usually right. Then again, so are the business managers…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Alan Priestley.

The annual Cloud Expo Europe (CEE) has been and gone, and as a marker of the industry’s pulse it threw out some interesting insights. CEE is a growing event and each year it features an increasing number of industry heavyweights keen to hold forth on their cloud experiences and how they see the cloud moving forward.

This year was no exception, and if there were any differences from last year’s event, it was that more cloud users were on hand to offer their experience and more vendors were on hand to display their understanding…

Grazed from Silicon Republic.  Author: Gordan Smith.

More than two-thirds of European IT decision makers rate cloud computing as a priority today, but the same old challenges remain: 45pc say security is a barrier to adoption and 40pc are wary of being locked into a single provider.

The findings are from research by the data centre operator Interxion, which polled responses from IT decision makers and influencers at 292 companies in 11 European countries, including Ireland…

Grazed from 4-Traders.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Internap Network Services Corporation (NASDAQ: INAP), a provider of intelligent IT Infrastructure services, announced today that Technology Marketing Corporation (TMC), a global, integrated media company, has named Internap Private Cloud a recipient of the 2011 Cloud Computing Excellence Award presented by Cloud Computing Magazine. Internap is one of only 30 award winners out of more than 200 entries to be selected for innovation and progress in advancement of the cloud.

TMC recognized Internap’s private cloud service based on its deployment with Digital Technology International (DTI), a market-leading news media software company. DTI was looking to construct a private cloud service to support its transition from an on-premise software delivery model to a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) delivery model. The cloud-based delivery model enables DTI’s news media customers to quickly and efficiently deliver premium content and advertising, as well as closely track audience data and manage circulation and billing. By delivering these services via private cloud, DTI is able to consistently improve these revenue-generating solutions to support their customers’ evolving online business models…