Microsoft partners with Telefonica to provide BlueVia SDK for .NET developers
Microsoft will use its Windows Azure platform alongside Telefonica’s application programming interface (API) project, BlueVia, to provide a free software development kit (SDK) for .NET application developers.
Government puts open source at the heart of its new IT strategy
The government has launched its much-anticipated new IT strategy, with open source highlighted as a key part of its plans, and a promise that the coalition is "determined to do things better."
"We want government ICT to be open. Open to the people and organisations that use our services. And open to any provider, regardless of size," said Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude.
The ICT strategy report put open source as a purchasing priority,
Korea’s Largest Landline and Mobile Service Provider Using Open Source Cloud Computing Platform for Public Cloud
Cloud.com, a provider of open source cloud computing software, today announced that KT, Korea’s largest landline operator and mobile service provider, has selected its flagship technology, CloudStack™, as the foundation for its new public cloud offering, KT ucloud. Currently in beta, KT ucloud will offer its users a stable, secure and cost-effective cloud environment that ensures enterprises are making the most efficient IT investment. As enterprise IT managers are looking for cost-effective cloud computing platforms, KT ucloud guarantees the most competitive pricing and benefits among its competitors. Additionally, KT ucloud reduces electricity consumption by two or three times, ultimately aiming to reduce more than 60 percent of electricity used within their datacenter operations and passing those efficiencies through to their customers…
Cisco Buys NewScale for Self-Service Clouds
New Amazon Service Stores Music, Files in the ‘Cloud’
Cloud Computing – The IT force that can’t be stopped
Cloud computing is like a force of nature that cannot be stopped, even if there is a change in the White House in two years, according to panelists at a cloud computing briefing today at the National Press Building in Washington, D.C.
Like open-source software, cloud computing will grow whether people want it to or not, said Bob Gourley founder of CTO Vision and former chief technology officer of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Amazon leads the way on multi-media storage in the cloud
Amazon has stolen a march on Apple and Google with two services that enable users to store multi-media files in the cloud and stream them to computers and smartphones.
Google and Apple are working on similar services, according to AP reports.
Amazon Cloud Drive is for storing music, images, video and documents, while Amazon Cloud Player enables users to access stored media on any PC, Mac or Android smartphone.
The Cloud Drive service allows users to upload content from PC, Mac and iTunes, but not from mobile phones. Songs with Digital Rights Management (DRM) restrictions are also not allowed, and Cloud drive supports only MP3 or AAC file formats.
Maintaining App Performance in the Cloud
To read the headlines of late, it would seem that virtualization and cloud alone are the keys to IT nirvana.
But now that the enterprise industry is gaining some practical experience with these new technologies, it’s obvious that things aren’t quite so simple.
For one thing, things like application performance and general data flexibility are still subject to the same old traffic jams that plague traditional infrastructure. The most scalable set of resources in the world won’t be of much use if data can’t get from one place to another.
Cloud Cost Analyses and ‘Inherent Conflict of Interest’
IT Business Edge blogger Art Cole recently wrote that "the simple economics behind cloud computing is enough to foretell its imminent rise to data center dominance," citing data from Quest Software’s Dmitry Sotnikov that shows many popular cloud services are bargains based solely on the energy needed to run a typical in-house server — never mind cooling, maintenance, security and backup costs.
Security zone: Extending compliance to the cloud
Most security and compliance mandates were simply not designed with cloud environments in mind – an unfortunate state of affairs as a huge amount of our data is about to go "cloudwards".
Even recent updates to common compliance mandates such as PCI DSS 2.0 do not adequately address compliance issues when using cloud services. The key benefits of cost saving, agility, collaboration and availability often overshadow the implications of expanding your audit scope to include your chosen cloud provider. How do you guarantee your compliance when moving to the different forms of cloud services?