Author: David

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…

Grazed from Tech Crunch.  Author: Mike Butcher.

BaltCap, a leading venture investor in startups in the Baltics region, has signed a €1 million investment in Clusterpoint, an enterprise software startup created by Latvian programmers and backed by seed investors in the UK and Baltics.

Clusterpoint has built a database platform designed for cloud computing infrastructure which they claim is highly scalable. They are competing against open source solutions such as MongoDB…

Grazed from Dark Reading.  Author:  PR Announcement.

CloudPassage, the leading cloud server security company, today unveils Halo NetSec, an easy and automated solution that provides advanced network access control for servers running in public clouds. Halo NetSec provides administrators with easy-to-manage perimeter controls designed for dynamic cloud environments, addressing a top security concern related to cloud adoption. “Cloud computing has ushered in a new set of security risks and challenges that are not addressed at the IaaS level, and traditional firewall defenses do not adequately translate into the cloud,” said Andrew Hay, senior security analyst for 451 Research.

“A host-based server security solution designed specifically for cloud environments picks up where the IaaS leaves off, providing organizations with the scalable security they need to consider when migrating traditional on-premise systems to the cloud.” A recent CloudPassage survey of IT managers revealed that the lack of perimeter defenses in the public cloud is a critical issue, with 45 percent indicating it’s their top concern. Halo NetSec addresses this concern head-on by combining centralized host–based firewall management that is purpose-built for dynamic cloud environments with two-factor authentication and a powerful API…

Grazed from The Washington Post.  Author: Michael Chertoff.

A grave threat is said to be stalking Europe. No, it isn’t the financial crisis and the potential demise of the euro. It’s the “rapacious” U.S. approach to privacy — which portends, for those engaged in the development of cloud architecture, a coming “clash” of privacy laws.

According to Viviane Reding, the European Union’s justice commissioner, cloud-based companies that collect personal data are violating fundamental human rights. “We . . . believe that companies who direct their services to European consumers should be subject to EU data protection laws. Otherwise, they should not be able to do business on our internal market,” Reding wrote in November. “This also applies to social networks with users in the EU. We have to make sure that they comply with EU law and that EU law is enforced, even if it is based in a third country and even if its data are stored in a ‘cloud.’ ”…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

Cloud computing consultancy Cloudscaling is realigning its business around the open-source OpenStack framework, and it has a message for the world: If you want to use open-source software but operate like Amazon Web Services, we’re your man. The company, which has helped build public clouds for the likes of Korea Telecom and Internap, is putting its consulting muscle behind a new OpenStack-based software platform that is built with webscale in mind.

For the uninitiated, OpenStack is a set of open-source cloud-computing building blocks currently being developed and used by a large number of IT heavyweights. Founded as an open source project in July 2010 by Rackspace and NASA, OpenStack members now include Cisco, HP, Dell, Citrix and dozens more vendors. Many are already selling or in the midst of creating software and/or services based on the technology…

Grazed from Globe and Mail.  Author: Nick Rockel.

Two years ago, Cadillac Fairview Corp. looked to the cloud and liked what it saw. In search of a cheaper way to manage its e-mail environment, the Toronto-based commercial real estate giant settled on Google Inc.’s Gmail.

Cadillac Fairview has run services like payroll through outside providers for at least 15 years, says senior vice-president and CIO Scot Adams. But the past half-decade has seen an explosion of affordable cloud-based applications for business. Through their powerful networks and data servers, Google, Microsoft Corp. and can replace in-house technology services, ranging from e-mail to computing platforms…

Grazed from OnApp.  Author: PR Announcement.

OnApp has announced the appointment of Carsten Sjoerup as Chief Technology Officer. OnApp cloud software enables hosting companies and service providers to create their own next-generation cloud services, so they can compete with cloud providers such as AWS. As CTO, Carsten will lead OnApp’s development teams in the UK, Malaysia and Ukraine.

Carsten has more than 15 years’ experience in senior software development, architect and management roles, with a more recent focus on cloud computing and Software as a Service (SaaS). He was previously Vice President of research and development at GROUP Business Software AG as well as CTO of its cloud division. Prior to that he held other senior management positions in software development…

Grazed from CloudCow.  Author: Hoofer.

Mobile phone providers are beginning to add numerous cloud services to the lineup of basic service plans.  Not so long ago, mobile phone service plans would provide a number, but not much else.  Fast forward 2012…  Now it’s not at all uncommon to have a whole list of value-added services that either come as a default provision, or as pay-for modules that can be turned on for a nominal monthly service fee.

Examples of such services are cloud storage, content sharing, social networking plugins, cloud gaming, and the list goes on…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

WHAT: ServiceMesh, provider of market-leading enterprise cloud platforms for Global 2000 companies, will present enterprise cloud best practices and moderate the Private Cloud track at Cloud Connect 2012, February 13-16, at the Santa Clara Convention Center. ServiceMesh representatives will be available at booth #422 to deliver live demonstrations of the ServiceMesh Agility Platform, the industry’s most comprehensive policy-based governance, security and lifecycle management solution to unlock the business value of cloud computing by dramatically reducing the costs, risks, and time-to-market for delivery of IT services.

ServiceMesh vice president of strategy Dave Roberts will present a session titled "Applications at Scale." This presentation will discuss key methods and technologies necessary to support today’s massively scalable applications in cloud environments. Mr. Roberts is also the moderator and track chair for the Private Cloud Track, which focuses on hybrid and private cloud architectures and their impact on infrastructure, network, and storage decisions…