Author: David

Grazed from Federal Computer Week.  Author:  John Moore.

Everything old is new again, as the saying goes. Take wide-area network (WAN) optimization. Products designed to boost data traffic over long distances date back about 10 years. Agencies have used the technology to speed the delivery of applications from a centralized data center to branch offices or help back up data to an off-site facility.

Today, cloud computing can create bandwidth and latency issues reminiscent of the situations that prompted WAN optimization in the past. Now agencies are tapping public cloud providers or recasting their own data centers as private clouds that offer IT resources to remote shared-services customers. Both scenarios potentially involve long network trips.

So should cloud adopters incorporate WAN optimization into their plans?…

Grazed from MSPWorld.  Author: Anuradha Shukla.

Infrastructure and cloud computing solutions provider Enteracloud has teamed with Scale Matrix to deliver PCI (News – Alert) Compliant colocation and private cloud computing solutions.

San Diego Colocation and Datacenter provider Scale Matrix takes an infrastructure-based approach to provide best-in-class hosting solutions to clients at every stage of their IT Lifecycle development. Providing real-time, biometric reporting capabilities at the cabinet level, Scale Matrix helps businesses address some of the ambiguous portions of compliance with a definitive solution.

Enteracloud noted that the executive team and key investors recently toured the Scale Matrix datacenter for an in-depth demonstration of key security components. This demonstration was expected to facilitate customers who require PCI and related security compliance…

Grazed from Defense Systems.  Author: John Edwards.

Virtually all defense organizations and intelligence agencies are turning toward cloud computing for everything from satellite imagery to telecom traffic to Web content. For these applications and many others, the focus is on building private cloud systems that can cost effectively store and efficiently distribute multiple petabytes of data to endpoints worldwide.

John Thielens, chief architect of cloud services at Axway, a provider of data security services to the Defense Department, said it’s hard to build a financially wasteful cloud environment. “It’s the main benefit of adopting cloud [technology],” he said, “[Adopters are] saving money through massive economies of scale and increasing the use of commercial, off-the-shelf products, as opposed to undertaking expensive, specialty, old-fashioned, government-style development.”.

Dan DelGrosso, director of Naval Networks and Enterprise Services, said no matter how cloud computing is approached, it promises to save money. “For the Navy, there would be at least two general cost models: utility and fixed price,” DelGrosso said. Utility cloud computing is billed by the contractor on a usage basis while a fixed price agreement supplies a packaged set of cloud services for a specific period. “If both cost models support so-called ‘cloud elasticity,’ then either cost model will save the Navy money,” he said. “This is true, since the cost of expanding capacity, upgrading and patching applications, and continually updating security, will be absorbed by the cloud provider.”…

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

AppDynamics, the newfangled application performance management house started in 2008 to cater to mission-critical web apps, has picked up a handsome $20 million C round led by Kleiner Perkins.

Its existing VCs Greylock Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners also kicked in. With the new infusion it’s raised a total of $36.5 million.

The start-up will use the new money to enhance its product and expand sales to extend the 400% growth in bookings it says it saw last year.

It puts the surge down to a shift in application architectures and growth in mission-critical cloud applications. It says "modern applications are no longer monolithic in nature but are highly distributed and dynamic, fueled by architectural trends such as cloud, SOA, Big Data and Agile development. As a result, traditional application performance management solutions have become obsolete."…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Call it one of the most expensive insurance policies in the world. Companies have spent billions of dollars over the years building and maintaining  backup disk arrays and secondary data centers to keep things running in the event that something goes wrong.

Cloud turns backup and recovery on its head, making it possible to provision back-up sites as needed, for pennies. Ironically, however, this goes against the gut instincts of many IT executives, who spend a lot of time worrying about data security and availability.

That’s the view of David Nichols, principal and Americas CIO services leader for Ernst & Young IT Advisory Services, who has been working closely with companies across the globe to identify cloud opportunities. I recently had the opportunity to chat with Nichols to get his take on the pluses and minuses of cloud computing, who observed the approach is still in its early stages. While “there is a lot of demand for cloud,” he confirms, most companies do not yet have a formal strategy or end-goal. That’s because most companies have not reached the point where at least 30% of their workloads are carried in the cloud, he says.  Once an organization passes that 30% threshold, cloud starts to become a serious part of the business…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud Technology Partners(TM) Inc. (cloudTP(TM)), the leader in transformational cloud computing solutions, today announced that it has closed out 2011 having achieved a number of significant milestones, including the signing of a number of new client engagements, delivering beyond expectations, and building an amazing team of results oriented professionals."The official launch of cloudTP in January 2011 heralded a new era in cloud computing.

Finally, IT and business organizations had someplace to turn for highly experienced, vendor neutral, end-to-end cloud computing solutions," said Chris Greendale, Founder and CEO, Cloud Technology Partners (cloudTP). "During the past year, we have been fortunate to work with large early adopter clients across multiple industries, and have developed intellectual property which helps our clients accelerate cloud benefits. Also, an area in which we have particularly excelled is in attracting and retaining world-class employees – truly any company’s greatest asset." Greendale continued, "We look forward to continuing on this exciting trajectory as more and more companies turn to cloudTP for its industry unique ability to look across the entire company – the complete application portfolio, assess potential, identify and eliminate road-blocks, prioritize and finally drive the construction of private, public, hybrid and/or community clouds in order to reshape not only the IT department, but how the entire business will operate and benefit as it moves forward."…

Grazed from GigaOm.  Author:  Barb Darrow.

Add France to the list of European countries pushing a nationalistic cloud computing agenda, one that could have huge repercussions for U.S.-based cloud powers and the nature of cloud computing in general.

France Telecom is partnering with Thales SA, a maker of aerospace systems and industrial electronics, to build a homegrown cloud to offer built-in-France software, according to a Bloomberg news report.

And the verbiage is getting heated…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: CloudVentures.

Despite all the hype of Cloud Computing the reality is that most large enterprises are still only at an early stage of adoption, mainly focused on applying virtualization internally to their existing application estate, what’s called Private Cloud.

This does achieve many business benefits but isn’t Cloud in the sense of outsourcing to a remote provider.

However although organizations aren’t yet ready to put their crown jewels entirely into the Cloud, it doesn’t mean that externally hosted Clouds don’t offer some kind of value to this scenario; indeed doing so is the first and primary goal of our ‘Cloud BCP‘ best practices…

Grazed from Business Cloud 9.  Author: Katy Ring.

Following the publication of the Strategic Implementation Plan for the Government ICT Strategy back in October, we were told that Cloud delivery will be increasingly important – g.g. by December 2015, the goal is for 50% of central government new ICT spending will be transitioned to public Cloud computing services.

This is an aggressive target, requiring a big culture shift within Government. To assist, the Government is establishing a G-Cloud Authority to act as a government-wide entity for commodity commissioning and direction of procurement as a “Cloud First” initiative is launched. And, as in the US, which pioneered this approach, the low hanging fruit with which to start populating the App Store is tactical and will probably be email…

Grazed from BusinessWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

The OASIS international consortium has launched a new open standards initiative to enhance the portability of cloud applications and services. The OASIS Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications (TOSCA) Technical Committee will advance an interoperability standard that will make it easier to deploy cloud applications without vendor lock-in, while maintaining application requirements for security, governance, and compliance.

“Freedom of choice is part of ASG DNA. Being able to participate in the elaboration of the TOSCA standard is for us a fantastic opportunity to ensure our current and future customers take advantage of seamless interoperability of Cloud environments.”