Author: David

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

Paul Maritz has been chief executive of VMWare since July 2008. VMWare’s server virtualization has made possible a vast consolidation of the computer business toward commodity chips and open-source software. It was also critical in the shift to “cloud” computing. A native of Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mr. Maritz joined Intel in 1981. From 1986 to 2000 he was at Microsoft serving on its executive committee and overseeing Microsoft’s expansion into client-server corporate computing. He then founded a computing company which in 2008 was acquired by EMC, which also owns VMWare. The following is an edited version of an interview with Mr. Maritz:

What is your most interesting business opportunity?

Fifty percent of the world’s computer applications now run on virtualized servers. We are deliberately trying to make a transition with this company, from a server transformation proposition to overall information technology transformation…

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

As predictably as the sun rising in the east, Oracle Monday rejected the slashed $272 million award for damages that the presiding federal court judge decided it should get from SAP for its admitted copyright infringement rather than the $1.3 billion the jury awarded Oracle in late 2010 following a captivating and highly publicized trial.

Oracle told the court it wants the new trial it was offered to "vindicate" the jury and its property rights as well as to avoid risking its right to appeal the court’s decision.

SAP, which agreed to pay a $20 million fine to the US government to avoid criminal prosecution, said it was "disappointed."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Sourya Biswas.

This is the eighth in a continuing series on startups raising funding. You can read the first six in the series here:  Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money:  1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7

Today, there are two startups in focus – Symplified and Tidemark.

Tidemark (http://www.tidemark.net/)

California startup Tidemark, which promises to provide “Enterprise Performance Management Built for the Cloud,” raised $24 million in Series C funding led by Redpoint Ventures, with Greylock Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, and entrepreneur Dave Duffield participating. Earlier, it had raised $6.3 million in Series A and $5 million in Series B rounds…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author:  PR Announcement.

Telx(R) today announced that it has entered a strategic alliance with Appcore, a leading global provider of enterprise private hosted cloud services. Under the terms of the partnership, Telx is now providing its 1,000+ colocation customers across 17 C3 Cloud Connection Centers direct, dedicated access to Appcore’s turnkey private hosted cloud solution via the Telx Cloud Xchange.

"The partnership between Appcore and Telx is an important strategic alliance for enterprise and service providers wanting to deliver the benefits of private cloud to their customers. Telx is a world-class data center operator ideal for the Appcore Onsite Private Cloud solution. Through this alliance, we are able to bring a customer’s branded, private, dedicated cloud service online in 30 days or less with gold global support, enabling them to reap the rewards of cloud computing without the headaches of building it themselves," said Brian Donaghy, Appcore CEO…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Florence G. de Borja.

With the recent worldwide popularity of cloud computing, it is expected to gain more momentum with more and more industries making use of such technology. The accounting profession can experience the most benefits because the accounting field processes a lot of data which can be housed online through cloud computing. However, not every accountant knows cloud computing and it is but expected that they have doubts as to the integrity of the technology. As such, this article hopes to explain the advantages and disadvantages of cloud computing with regards to the accounting profession.

Accountants can benefit from cloud computing because it eliminates purchasing software and servers, and maintaining and running them. The old technology infrastructure which requires all software and servers to be housed in the accountant’s office is now being replaced with a more robust and inexpensive technology known as cloud computing. Cloud applications are run through the web. An accountant just needs a computer or a laptop and an internet connection to be able to run accounting applications.  The software and server are managed not by the accountant but by the cloud application vendor. Typical applications available for accountants include full ERP (enterprise resource planning), payroll, and tax software. The accountant need not purchase a license to use the software. He/she just needs to pay subscription fees…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Aerohive Networks, the pioneer in cloud-enabled enterprise networking infrastructure, announced today that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named Aerohive’s BR100 Router as a 2011 Cloud Computing Excellence Award winner presented by Cloud Computing Magazine in January, 2012.

News Facts

— Cloud Computing Magazine is the industry’s definitive source for all things cloud — from public, community, hybrid and private cloud to security and business continuity, and everything in between. The term cloud computing goes beyond VoIP, software-as-a-service (SaaS) or Unified Communications — it’s an entirely new way to build, deploy and scale enterprise communications systems…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Hexagrid, a leading developer of Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud computing solutions, announced today that Compare the Cloud, a leading independent cloud comparison provider, named Suresh Mandava and Dave Rokita as premier thought leaders in the worldwide IaaS field. Compare the Cloud made this announcement with the launch of a new cloud computing comparison website which brings together information and evaluation resources about trusted cloud vendors to ensure that customers find the right cloud solutions for the right price.

"Compare the Cloud is delighted to welcome aboard David Rokita and Suresh Mandava of Hexagrid as esteemed thought leaders in the field of Infrastructure-as-a-Service," says Luke Wheeler, Chairman of Compare the Cloud. "Hexagrid is at the leading edge of cloud computing, firmly establishing itself as one of the most innovative and exciting operators in this sector. As part of Hexagrid’s close involvement with Compare the Cloud.net, we look forward to expert commentary and advice for all our readers and business technology customers in the cloud computing sector."…

Grazed from Information Age.  Author: Hal Hodson.

Most IT leaders with an interest in cloud computing will have tried the technology out in some capacity by now, and many are beginning to use the cloud in production environments.

The debate is therefore moving from defining and describing the cloud to discussing how to get the most out of the service delivery model. 

Information Age’s most recent roundtable debate, which took place in January in Birmingham, invited IT practitioners to share their experiences of cloud computing in terms of how it has affected their IT operations.

One IT manager in attendance reported that adopting an infrastructure-as-a-service offering has liberated his staff from the more menial IT management tasks. "To think of all the jobs we had to do when we owned all our own kit," he said. "Now, with 90% of it in the cloud, you never even need to pick up a screwdriver."…

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

Red Hat is putting its bought-in Gluster scale-out NAS storage technology, acquired in October, on the Amazon cloud.

It’s styled Red Hat Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services and other clouds are supposed to follow in short order.

It’ll let companies burst their unstructured data center storage to the cloud and aggregate both Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) and Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instances for a highly available petabyte-size virtualized storage pool…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

We’ve all seen the PowerPoint presentations that show the business advantages of cloud computing: the ability to avoid hardware and software purchases (opex vs. capex), speed to deployment, elasticity, and so on. However, unless you’re prepared to provide real numbers that define real value, that’s so much fluff to those in the executive suite.

As I develop these business cases for enterprises, I’ve found some commonality or emerging patterns to consider. Here are my top three secrets to developing your cloud computing business case and getting it accepted…