Author: David

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

HP today announced new services and solutions based on HP Converged Infrastructure that empower service providers and enterprises to rapidly deliver cloud services while leveraging existing investments, minimizing risk and lowering costs…

Grazed from CIO.  Author: Bernard Golden.

People underestimate how much cloud providers present a challenge to IT as it’s practiced today in most organizations. A couple of news stories brought home this point. They illustrate the existential threat that cloud computing and its practices present to corporate IT groups.

The first item that came across my desk was a blog entry about AOL and how it has built a completely unmanned data center. The writer noted that he came to AOL relatively recently and was tasked with streamlining its data centers. He says, "It was during this process that I came to realize that our particular legacy challenge, while at ‘Internet’ scale, was more closely related to the challenges of most corporate or government environments than the biggest Internet players."…

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

Grazed form Cloud Pro.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Richard Stone.

Cloud computing represents a compelling new way of providing business agility, flexibility and time-to-value. But companies are learning the hard way that deploying cloud-based applications without considering the unique characteristics of the cloud is resulting in user frustration, low adoption rates, reduced revenue and ultimately failure to achieve the predicted ROI…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Contegix, a managed cloud hosting and Internet infrastructure company, today announced a strategic expansion to its Contegix Cloud Computing platform. MiraCloud(TM), the company’s new cloud computing platform, will offer customers a tiered cloud hosting model that includes convenience class, business class and enterprise class levels. With the introduction of MiraCloud, Contegix is redefining how the cloud is delivered and can be managed, giving customers the option to customize their cloud platforms to provide ultimate freedom of choice, without sacrificing uptime or quality of service…

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Sourya Biswas.

Netflix may be getting a lot of bad press in recent times due to its management’s ill-advised decision to raise subscription rates by almost 50% resulting in widespread customer dissatisfaction and a groveling apology by CEO Reed Hastings, but it was not long ago that it was considered the epitome of home entertainment.Netflix is another new-age company that owes its success to cloud computing, the same way that Zynga, the creators of Facebook game sensation Farmville, does (See: Zynga, the Latest Cloud Computing Success). And not surprisingly, for both of them, the cloud provider of choice is Amazon, perhaps the earliest player in the game…

Grazed from Education Week.  Author: Katie Ash.

While many schools are struggling to strike a balance between print and digital curricula for students, textbook publishers are taking to the cloud to house new digital resources and curricula.

But cloud computing is something K-12 schools are just beginning to dip their toes into, experts say, largely due to the lack of resources to shore up the technological infrastructure needed to tap into the cloud, described as the information and power available from servers hosted by a separate, off-site entity. For example, Google’s tools, such as email and spreadsheets, are considered in the cloud because users tap into information and platforms that are hosted on Google’s servers versus their own…

Grazed from The Register.  Author: Editorial Staff.

It appeared to fall off the radar for a while, but the plan for the G Cloud has gone back to the top of the government’s IT agenda.

The intention to create a formal framework for the public sector procure cloud computing services was first floated in the Journey to Digital government paper in April 2009, remained prominent for a while but then slipped into the background, with the Cabinet Office saying little about its progress. A few organisations in local government have taken the leap into cloud services, but speculation grew that the central plan was being shelved…

Grazed from MIT Technology Review.  Author:  Simson L, Garfinkel.

The cloud opens a world of possibilities for criminal computing. Unlike the zombie computers and malware that have been the mainstay of computer crime for the past decade, cloud computing makes available a well-managed, reliable, scalable global infrastructure that is, unfortunately, almost as well suited to illicit computing needs as it is to legitimate business.

The mass of information stored in the cloud—including, most likely, your credit card and Social Security numbers—makes it an attractive target for data thieves. Not only is more data centralized, but for the security experts and law enforcement agencies trying to make the cloud safe, the very nature of the cloud makes it difficult to catch wrongdoers. Imagine a virtual Grand Central Station, where it’s easy to mix in with the crowd or catch a ride to a far-away jurisdiction beyond the law’s reach…