Category: News

Grazed from USAToday. Author: Kathleen Day.

Could we be on the verge of witnessing a shakeup in the cloud? That’s the question looming over the $47 billion cloud-computing industry: whether the booming industry is having what Silicon Valley refers to as "a BlackBerry moment," when doubts about a technology’s adequacy threaten sales to the point that a company is doomed.

The answer? Maybe. Because big changes are forecast for the American side of the cloud-computing industry. Most people picture cloud computing in terms of email — using Gmail (cloud-based), say, rather than Outlook (desktop software). But that’s just the retail — and arguably less important — side of the business…

Grazed from Spanning. Author: PR Announcement.

Spanning Cloud Apps, the most trusted provider of data backup and recovery for cloud applications, today announced that it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

Spanning was founded to help companies protect and manage their data so they can be fearless in the cloud. By providing enterprise-class, cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solutions, Spanning helps organizations of all sizes avoid significant business interruption that can result from lost data in SaaS applications, including Google Apps and Salesforce. The company collaborates with a broad range of customers including major enterprise brands, non-profits and universities…

Grazed from Utilizer. Author: Editorial Staff.

Recent reports on NSA spying have eroded trust in US-based cloud providers. This is especially true for non-USA-based customers that use cloud services offered by US companies. They see using an American cloud provider as a risk because they assume their data could be accessed by the NSA and other government organizations. This perception has caused companies such as Google, AT&T and Cisco to lose non-US business.

The Snowden leaks spotlighted the risk. The information that was leaked revealed that some of the biggest cloud providers had their users’ data accessed by the NSA, including Google and Yahoo. In some cases, this happened with the companies’ knowledge and in others, without…

Grazed fro TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

High-performance fiber optic network solutions provider FiberLight is getting into the infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) business through a partnership with Cirracore, a provider of VMware (VMW)-based cloud IaaS solutions for disaster recovery and business continuity.

The public cloud and hybrid cloud IaaS offering is intended to provide customers with a viable business continuity and disaster recovery solution for data transport, processing, storage and distribution. According to the companies, the new IaaS product enables customers to easily scale out infrastructure while reducing their technology spending by taking advantage of the scale of cloud computing…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Xform Computing Inc., pioneer of the AlwaysOnPC Cloud-streaming mobile Apps and services, today announced that the company has received an investment from Parallels, Inc., a global leader in hosting and cloud services enablement and cross platform solutions. Xform and Parallels are collaborating across their technical, marketing and product teams to accelerate Xform’s AlwaysOnPC platform to address new applications and expand into more global markets and channels.

This collaboration also includes an investment by Parallels that will boost the next phase of Xform’s growth. "With its expertise in virtualization technology and cloud computing, Parallels is an ideal investor for Xform," said Kroum Antov, CEO of Xform. "Xform is building the next generation of Cloud App Streaming services and has a unique opportunity with Parallels for collaboration, especially in the areas of highly scalable infrastructure, and creating industry-leading user experience."…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Paige Leidig.

Cloud computing security can be a conundrum. The point of using the public cloud is to outsource certain infrastructure and application needs to third party providers, after all. How can you secure your data once it leaves your perimeter and your control? As puzzling as it may seem, there is hope.

Luckily for organizations looking to adopt the cloud, securing sensitive information outside the corporate perimeter isn’t as daunting (or as impossible) as it may appear. Technologies exist to enable cloud computing security strong enough for companies to remain in compliance while taking full advantage of the flexibility, agility, and economies of scale of the cloud. Avoid these common pitfalls for a secure cloud experience…

Grazed from RealWire. Author: PR Announcement.

As the adoption of cloud computing continues to grow across the world, security, privacy and regulation of data in the cloud are becoming more prominent and relevant than ever before. This year’s Cloud World Forum conference and exhibition will provide a platform for leading solution providers and delegates across multiple industries to examine the risks, and explore the solutions to these growing concerns.

In a recent report by cloud security specialists Sky High Networks[1], nine out of ten cloud services put European businesses at risk. The report analysed one million users across 40 companies and found that enterprises use an average of 588 cloud services of which only 9% of those services in use provide enterprise-grade security. This brings to the fore concerns surrounding the regulation of privacy in the cloud…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Tim Worstall.

This is pretty quick for a product that is so new. Cloud Services have only been around for a few years as the technology to make them possible began to exist (specifically, cheap enough servers and broadband) but they’re already just about to become, quite literally, commodities. For the commodity markets are about to start trading a contract in cloud services:

If you thought cloud computing was complicated now, just wait until next year, when pin-striped traders will buy and sell contracts in the stuff. At least, that’s the plan of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, which announced on Monday that it had signed a “definitive agreement” to build a commodity exchange dedicated to the buying and selling of infrastructure-as-a-service contracts whose value will be determined via a technology from cloud measurement firm 6fusion…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

According to Wikipedia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is "a collection of remote computing services that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the internet" which in the simplest of terms is exactly what it is. However, another way to describe AWS is as one of the fastest growing parts of one of the fastest growing businesses around. Formed just eight years ago in 2006, AWS began as 24 separate entities – divisions or product-specific working groups.

Since 2004 the number and size of these separate entities has grown considerably and in 2013 Amazon added 280 separate units, making a grand total of 654. In the first two months of this year it has added another 57. Look at any org chart for AWS and it is complex – one from January this year shows 39 distinct divisions…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Zach Taiji.

Over the past few years, cloud computing has become an increasingly popular technology for businesses around the world because of its ease of access from remote locations – removing the need for locally installed software. Cloud computing and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) tools can be great solutions for local and state-level governments with limited resources, since most solutions are affordable, scale to specific needs and allow employees to access secure data from anywhere.

As governments get larger in size (federal), there are even custom-built and propietary solutions. Below are 5 SaaS tools for local and state governments that cover everything from managing citizen relationships to tracking government funds and finances…

To view infographic and read more from the source, visit http://smartdatacollective.com/zach-taiji/196361/5-top-tools-government-tech