Category: News

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Chris Preimesberger.

The words "innovation" and "stack" are now starting to be used together to form a new IT industry term. This IT stack—not particularly new for more progressive IT shops but certainly new for many midrange and smaller enterprises—is defined as such: a heterogeneous infrastructure that combines IT from best-of-breed vendors and/or open-source communities at each layer to deliver a sophisticated architectural model that addresses the full needs of the data center.

Parts of this have been called "converged infrastructure." As virtualized/distributed computing becomes more common, this virtualized stack is making new and existing IT hardware much more efficient and cloud-ready. At the same time, new business requirements, operational challenges and data complexities are rising to new levels, forcing new thought about refreshing older data centers…

Grazeed from Hosting.com.  Author: Editorial Staff.

When a company considers moving to the cloud, one of the most discussed topics is how the investment will hit their balance sheet. While calculating cloud computing costs, the terms “CapEx” and “OpEx” are often raised, but both the definitions and the advantages of the two are often. . . shall we say, cloudy? Let’s clear up some confusion.

CapEx vs. OpEx – A Quick Overview

For those of us who shied away from accounting classes in college, here’s a quick overview:…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Kurt Marko.

The term “cloud” is by now so overused that most people lump it in with the rest of the marketing buzzword pantheon with terms like “solution”, “leverage” or “ROI.” You’re probably thinking that the cloud is what Google and Amazon do and how could it possibly be relevant to your business? Well it is (what Google does) and it will be (important to every business) and VMware wants to be the company that delivers it.

It’s called the software defined data center (SDDC) and for CEO Pat Gelsinger it’s increasingly a part of discussions with his C-level customers.  As I wrote in an earlier column outlining the four pillars of the SDDC, “It’s an expansive vision that could put VMware in the middle of enterprise IT application and service design, construction and delivery. Indeed, if fully adopted by VMware’s customers, …

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Jeffrey Burt.

Greater worker mobility is one of the key trends—right up there with cloud computing, big data, the Internet of things and bring-your-own-device (BYOD)—that are changing the way corporate IT works. With more employees working outside of the office, IT administrators are under increasing demand to make sure that those workers have consistent and reliable access to the corporate networks.

According to a recent survey conducted by cloud networking vendor Pertino, making sure that network access is always available is not only important to the workers—who say they are more productive and happier with a more remote, flexible schedule—but also to their companies, which benefit from that higher productivity. Pertino surveyed 991 U.S. employees who have at least a four-year college degree to get a better read on how they’re working and what they need…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

The IBM mainframe, the drab-looking refrigerator-size machine that was once the symbol of computer technology, turned 50 this week. It’s been portrayed as a technology dinosaur, out of place in an era where computing is about being small, fast and mobile. But in half a century, the mainframe has remained one of IBM’s IBM -0.25% most successful flagship products.

In fact, a decade ago when the mainframe celebrated its 40th year, Big Blue even embraced the ‘dinosaur’ label, unveiling the latest version with a catchy, defiant code name: ‘T-Rex.’ But that was when IBM was viewed as the tech giant on a comeback trail, bouncing back from setbacks in its competition with newer, more nimble rivals, as it recast itself as an IT services and software powerhouse…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM inventors have patented a cloud computing invention that can improve quality of service for clients by enabling data to be dynamically modified, prioritized and shared across a cloud environment. As more and more companies take advantage of applications, processes and services delivered via the cloud, vendors are struggling with increased complexity and challenges associated with ensuring uninterrupted data availability.

IBM’s patented technique creates a cloud environment in which Quality of Service priorities can be modified according to real-time or expected conditions, to reduce data bottlenecks in the cloud, thereby ensuring that clients receive the level and quality of service they expect…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Ben Kepes.

The world is undergoing unprecedented change with political instability, economic turmoil, technological shifts, globalization, and the demands of a new generation of workers. Every organization, regardless of industry, must continually reassess what it does in order to survive and prosper. This revolution will have profound implications, and all organizations need to consider how the cloud and big data impact their industry.

Rather than be drowned by the feeling of impending doom, however, organizations should look to cloud computing, the promise of big data, and new approaches for research and development such as crowdfunding to remain competitive, increase efficiency, and generate new business…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Editorial Staff.

With the recent news of Heartbleed affecting millions of websites security, malware is on the minds of tech consumers more than ever. Being informed about this bug is vitally important for anyone with online accounts. In this infographic by toptenreviews, many important statistics are shown such as the infection rate in the top 10 most infected countries and the infection rate of the top 10 least infected countries. In the United States, 30 percent of households are infected by some form of malware, with viruses and Trojans being the most common types…

To view infographic and read more from the source, visit http://cloudtweaks.com/2014/04/cloud-infographic-computer-virus-facts-stats/

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Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Amazon Web Services, one of the most popular cloud computing platforms, which hosts a large number of websites on the Internet, said this week that it has been able to mitigate the impact of the Heartbleed OpenSSL bug revealed this week. But, it because of a "shared security" model that AWS operates under, some customers can take action if they want to take extra precautions to ensure the vulnerability does not impact their operations.

In a blog post, AWS recommends that customers using the popular Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service – which provides virtual machine images – who implement OpenSSL on their own Linux images should update VMs to ensure the OpenSSL patch is in place. "As an added precaution, we recommend that you rotate any secrets or keys (e.g. your SSL certificates) that were used by the affected OpenSSL process," AWS recommends. AWS provides instructions on its blog of how to update Amazon Linux, Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Ubuntu VMs…

Grazed from CloudTimes.org. Author: Saroj Kar.

How companies are adopting cloud computing and how they are addressing the changes that it entails in the management of IT resources? RightScale tries to find the answers in its RightScale 2014 State of the Cloud Survey. The survey results found that cloud adoption is picking up steam as enterprises increase both public and private cloud adoption. More interestingly, enterprises have increased the adoption of public cloud services.

Much of that credit goes to how public cloud services like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, RackSpace and others are aggressively marketing their offerings. Nearly 1,100 enterprises and small-and-mid-sized businesses (SMBs) surveyed, 89 percent are using public cloud for something and the rest are planning to use in future…