Cloud News, Resources and Information
There were a couple of announcements made at last month’s Catalyst conference that I meant to draw to your attention but other things got in the way. Both are relevant to enterprise cloud-based computing so I’ll talk about both today…
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is looking to develop resilient cloud services that would continue to operate and support military objectives despite being hit by a cyberattack, according to a report by InformationWeek.
The project, called the Mission-oriented Resilient Clouds (MRC) initiative, aims to ensure the military cloud infrastructure is secure and able to withstand an attack capable of taking pieces of the network out of commission.
The Department of Veterans Affairs is seeking advice from cloud computing vendors on the feasibility of using commercial software-as-a-service collaborative tools that eventually could meet the needs of all of its 134,000 medical personnel.
In a recently issued request for information, the VA asks vendors for suggestions for using web-based collaborative software that will integrate with the VA’s existing systems. The project would start with a pilot including up to 5,000 participants. That could lead to the use of collaborative tools by all of the VA’s 17,000 staff physicians, 36,000 residents and 81,000 other medical staff members…
Computer-maker Hewlett-Packard Co. (NYSE: HPQ) is reportedly in negotiations to purchase Autonomy Corp. for about $10 billion and concurrently plans to spin off its personal-computer business.
HPQ, which is slated to release its quarterly earnings reports after the market closes on Thursday, may announce the deal before then, according to Bloomberg…
CA Technologies (NASDAQ: CA) today announced it has completed the acquisitions of privately-held Interactive TKO, Inc. (ITKO) and Watchmouse B.V. (WatchMouse). The acquisitions expand the breadth of solutions CA Technologies offers enterprises and service providers for using and providing cloud computing to rapidly deliver business services.
The addition of ITKO, a leading provider of service simulation solutions for developing applications in composite and cloud environments, allows CA Technologies to add a new and critical dimension to modern IT management and extend it to encompass the entire service delivery lifecycle. In particular, the acquisition will help customers overcome the limitations of current organizational approaches and break down the silos across development, testing and operations…
GoodData, which claims to be the "first company to truly leverage cloud computing in delivering comprehensive BI capabilities" – as opposed to traditional BI providers who rely on expensive hardware to provide data analytics – has gotten $15 million in Series B funding led by Andreessen Horowitz.
The VC’s general partner John O’Farrell along with Google enterprise president Dave Girouard is joining its board…
Watcharasit Santisuknirun, Thailand country manager of Hitachi Data Systems, said the first in a portfolio of converged data-centre solutions built on Microsoft Hyper-V Cloud Fast Track and integrated with Microsoft Exchange 2010 would enable organisations to have virtualised, automated and optimised environments.
The system is designed to help organisations adopt cloud-computing at their own pace. The new solutions also combine innovation and expertise to optimise storage and networking as well as provide ready-to-deploy information technology for running multiple applications that simplify management and reduce cost and floor space…
Cloud computing enables users to to share resources and carry out tasks remotely. Rather than using your own local PCs or servers to do the work, you connect to a remote data centre, often provided by an IT services or software company. It means more computing is migrating to purpose-built data centres.
From a low carbon perspective it’s no bad thing. Data centres tend to be more energy efficient than individual servers distributed around an organisation and, while there is still vast room for improvement, many companies are working to make their computing facilities more energy efficient. Software and IT services suppliers, for example, have been vying to be seen as the greenest provider – apart from the PR value there is a great deal of money to be saved in greater energy efficiency…
Frankly speaking, the title of this article is somewhat optimistic, considering what I am about to write about is merely a study on the subject. However, considering the big names behind this research project, it is not too much of a leap of faith to expect some concrete directions towards the use of sustainable energy sources to power cloud computing.
Exploration of the relationship between energy consumption and cloud computing is not new on this website. Earlier, I had written on opposing studies that have feted and vilified cloud computing as regards its environment-friendliness (See: How Green Is Cloud Computing? and Environmental Challenges to Cloud Computing ). I had also discussed not only saving money on energy through cloud computing (See: Saving Money on Energy by Going on the Cloud but actually earning money through the process (See: Harnessing Data Center Heat to Warm Houses). Today’s article explores the possibility of marrying renewable energy sources and cloud computing…
The use of virtualization and cloud computing is growing quickly among companies of all sizes. Currently, 30 percent of servers are virtualized, and surveys show that by 2012, that number will grow to 50 percent.
Virtualization and cloud computing go hand-in-hand, and virtualizing servers is just the tip of the iceberg. The trend to virtualize everything from servers to processing power to software offerings actually started years ago in the personal sector. In the recent past, it was common for individuals within major organizations to use virtualized services or cloud computing when at home, but at work they weren’t using those services at all. Why? Because corporate IT didn’t trust the lack of security of the cloud and they weren’t sure it was a hard trend – something that was definitely here to stay. Today, we know better…