Author: David

Grazed from RadioInk.  Author: Rob Green.

The hot technology buzzword in computing today is the “cloud.” You see this used all over the place from consumer services like Apple’s new iCloud™ or Pandora to business services from companies such as Oracle or IBM but what does this mean to radio? What is the cloud? Does radio have a place in the cloud? Does radio care and if so, why?

Let’s start with what “the cloud” is. Simply put, having something in the cloud just means that where you used to operate your own servers (either on your site or more likely in a data center) that performed all of your digital services (ad management, trafficking, automation, hosting, streaming, etc.), you can now run your digital services on computers that someone else manages and maintains.  Furthermore, cloud companies’ offer a host of important but low-level services that you don’t have to think much about anymore including fault-tolerance so your services are always “on”, ability to add new capacity automatically, disaster recovery, and more.  This means cloud computing can dramatically lower your costs and will certainly lower the cost of launching new services and maintaining them…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Kevin McLaughlin.

Hewlett Packard (NYSE:HPQ) on Monday unveiled a new storage service support model and gave partners a sneak peek at a cloud computing partner specialization that’s slated for launch in November.

On the storage side, HP is now giving select partners the option of selling their own branded services backed by HP support. The new model, dubbed ServiceONE Partner Support for HP Storage, will be available for select partners in March with a worldwide rollout slated for later this year…

Grazed from MartketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Wyse Technology, the global leader in cloud client computing, took home first place wins in 148App’s Best App Ever Awards, with Wyse PocketCloud Pro winning Best Android Remote Access App and Wyse PocketCloud Explore winning Best Android Business App. Wyse PocketCloud Pro also came in second place for Best iOS Remote Access App, with Wyse PocketCloud Explore earning honorable mentions for Best Android Mobile Office App and Best Android Remote Access App. Wyse PocketCloud was the most awarded app across the Mobile Office App, Business App and Remote Access App categories…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: James Staten.

South Korea has better broadband than we do. Australia has faster wireless networks. And according to Forrester’s Internet Population Forecast, by 2013 the number of online consumers in emerging markets will dwarf those in the US and Western Europe. In Forrester’s Forrsights Budgets and Priorities survey, these same countries are putting far more priority on cloud computing than we are. Does this mean we could lose our lead in cloud?

We all know that cloud computing is an agility play and that our business colleagues are more excited about it than us in IT. We also know that it’s much easier to invest in public cloud services due to their economic model and ubiquitous delivery capabilities – heck it’s an Internet-based service. And we know that organizations with less in-house IT are able to leverage cloud services more readily. On top of all this, according to Forrester’s Global Tech Market Outlook For 2011 and 2012, the markets increasing their investments in IT goods and services the most – nearly twice that of other regions – are Latin America, the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Africa…

Grazed from CIO.  Author: Rebecca Merrett.

Businesses may need to let go of the old ways of doing things and start moving into the future of Cloud computing if they are to stay ahead of the game, according to the former chief information officer of the United States Federal Government, Vivek Kundra.

As a former CIO, Kundra knows all too well what it means to keep churning out projects using an old model that doesn’t work. He has long maintained, when working for the US government, the status quo as an old model was not sustainable…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Ed Zwirn.

The decision to migrate company information-technology functions to the cloud or elsewhere is usually broken down as a set of specific cost-benefit calculations. However complicated the weighing of the startup savings and the longer-term returns involved in outsourcing IT, it at least appears to be a rational process.

But for sure, turf battles and human egos also enter the picture. And they receive the focus in a study by Subrata Chakrabarty of the University of Nebraska and Dwayne Whitten of Texas A&M, recently revised.

For their research they break company executives into two camps: On the one hand are IT executives like the CIO and head of IT; and often opposing them, "business executives" — aka CEOs, CFOs and COOs…

Grazed from Bloomberg.  Author: Ari Levy.

Rackspace Hosting Inc. (RAX), the biggest competitor to Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) in the market for Web-based data centers, rose 9.5 percent in early trading after sales and profit topped analysts’ estimates.

Rackspace shares climbed to $53.89 at 8:15 a.m. in New York after closing at $49.23 yesterday before it reported results.

The company runs a fleet of data centers, letting customers store their websites and applications on its servers. It competes with the Amazon Web Services business in the public- cloud market, where customers rent computing power along with related services. Rackspace’s revenue in that area jumped 86 percent last quarter to $58.5 million, the San Antonio-based company said yesterday in a statement. Sales in the traditional dedicated server business, where the company manages specific machines for customers, rose 23 percent to $224.8 million…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

If you don’t think that Amazon Web Services is the king of cloud, just look at what other cloud companies are announcing this week. Even paragons of the private cloud world are trying to cloak themselves in the glow cast by Amazon, which is squarely in public cloud realm.

On Monday, Citrix Systems said its new Citrix CloudStack 3 will let customers of all sizes build their own “Amazon style clouds.” The offering is actually the next release of Cloud.com, a private-cloud provider (and service) that Citrix purchased last July.

The new CloudStack, the first to come out under the Citrix brand, adds new support for Swift, the OpenStack object storage technology. And CloudStack 3 includes a “cloud-optimized version of Citrix XenServer as a core-integrated feature,” according to Citrix. Public cloud powers Amazon. Rackspace, GoGrid and SoftLayer all use XenServer or Xen virtualization. Having said that, CloudStack 3 will also support rival KVM, OVM, vSphere and Xen virtualization, Citrix said. CloudStack 3 is now in beta and will be broadly available later this quarter. The product also adds support for Swift, the OpenStack object storage technology…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Insight Enterprises, Inc., a leading technology provider of hardware, software and service solutions, today announced the InsightCloud Solution Center, which provides businesses and public sector clients a destination to learn, shop and manage cloud solutions. This first release features cloud-based messaging, security, infrastructure, and collaboration solutions with an enhanced shopping experience and management capabilities for messaging workloads.

With new solutions, dynamic content, and the ability to purchase and manage cloud solutions all in one place, the InsightCloud Solution Center offers clients these three key benefits:

— LEARN all about cloud computing and the benefits of cloud-based solutions, even chat live online with one of our Cloud Solutions Specialists.

— SHOP through our cloud solutions catalog and purchase these solutions through a simple shopping cart experience.

— MANAGE and provision cloud solutions from one place, and gain access to InsightCloud Client Care support and other cloud professional services…

Grazed from IT Wire.  Author:  Beverley Head.  

According to recruitment specialist Hudson ICT people “cloud is king”. The organisation found that people with market tested cloud skills and security specialists are in particular high demand by Australian enterprises and can command significant salary hikes.

The company released these findings from its 2012 salary and employments insight report today, which also revealed that the majority of employers last year provided their ICT staff with a modest salary increase of 2-4 per cent, and a similar level of increase is anticipated this year.

In all 52 per cent of ICT employees got a rise last year, while 27 per cent managed to score an increase of 10 per cent or higher…