Category: News

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Deepa Seetharaman.

Amazon.com Inc will drop prices on most of its cloud computing services starting April 1, the largest U.S. online retailer said on Wednesday, a day after rival Google Inc outlined a major price cut of its own. The price cuts range from 10 percent to 65 percent, Andrew Jassy, senior vice president of Amazon Web Services, told a conference for Amazon web developers in San Francisco.

This marks the 42nd price reduction for AWS since its introduction eight years ago. AWS provides the underlying infrastructure for popular Web companies such as online movie streaming service Netflix Inc and social network Pinterest. Cloud services have become increasingly popular among both cash-strapped tech startups and larger companies, which rely on computers owned and operated by the likes of Amazon and Google, the world’s No. 1 Internet search engine, instead of buying the equipment themselves…

Grazed from Enterprise Irregulars. Author: Tom Raftery.

Cloud computing is often incorrectly touted as being a green, more environmentally-friendly, computing option. This confusion occurs because people forget that while cloud computing may be more energy efficient (may be), the environmental friendliness is determined by how much carbon is produced in the generation of that energy. If a data centre is primarily powered by coal, it doesn’t matter how energy efficient it it, it will never be green.

We have mentioned that very often here on GreenMonk, as well as regularly bringing it up with cloud providers when talking to them. One such cloud provider is SAP. Like most other cloud vendors, they’re constantly increasing their portfolio of cloud products. This has presented them with some challenges when they have to consider their carbon footprint. In its recently released 2013 Annual Report SAP admits:..

Grazed from HPAC. Author: Lawrence Clark.

If you are like me, at some point, you have had a “Microsoft moment” and lost some important document or file on your computer because—in spite of all the warnings—your computer was not backed up properly. Regardless, many of us now have external hard drives and/or some sort of cloud backup.

Until only a few years ago, a lot of us had never heard of cloud computing, and now it is part of our everyday vernacular. While we talk a lot about the carbon footprint associated with HVAC systems and equipment, have you ever thought about the carbon emissions associated with cloud computing? According to IEEE, in 2012, Facebook’s data centers had greenhouse-gas emissions (GHG) of nearly 300,000 mtCO2e—equivalent to almost one-third of the cars on I-595 (greater Fort Lauderdale, Fla.) at rush hour! There are, of course, ways to reduce cloud computing’s GHG emissions, but those generally involve increased cost and reduced speed…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Devindra Hardawar.

Verizon Terremark is making its biggest commitment yet to open-source cloud computing. Today, the company announced it’s joining the Linux Foundation, an organization focused on promoting the growth of Linux, as a Gold member. The news comes several months after the launch of Verizon Cloud, its revamped cloud computing platform.

As a member of the Linux Foundation, Verizon says it will ramp up its development of open cloud and virtualization solutions. It’s a smart move for Verizon, which only recently started focusing on cloud computing with its $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark back in 2012. Other Linux Foundation Gold members include Google, Cisco, Citrix, and China Mobile…

Grazed from FederalNewsRadio. Author: Lauren Larson.

"Forget about bring-your-own-device, it’s bring your own cloud," said Pamela Wise- Martinez, senior strategic enterprise architect for the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. That was the message Wise-Martinez offered to a group of federal and industry officials Tuesday as she kicked off the three-day event focused on cloud and mobility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md.

"People want to bring everything with them," Wise-Martinez said. The biggest challenge across the federal government is making legacy applications interoperable. She said mobility is driving that change. Dawn Leaf, deputy chief information officer at the Labor Department, said the cloud model is very much driven by the end user…

Grazed from ProjectDisco.org. Author: Matthias Langenegger.

It’s worth reminding ourselves that innovation is an inherently uncertain business. Its disruptive potential depends to a large degree on the social and economic context into which it is born. Groundbreaking inventions remain unsuccessful because no market has developed yet or because people simply don’t see the value. “Television won’t be able to hold on to any market it captures after the first six months.

People will soon get tired of staring at a plywood box every night”, film mogul Darryl Zanuck of 20th Century Fox famously said in 1946. At the time, 8000 U.S. households had a TV set. By 1960, that number had climbed to 45.7 million. Also, whereas the potential of disruptive innovations may not be apparent at first, its negative effects, e.g. copyright infringement, are immediately visible and can go against powerful, established interests. Economists call this the ‘innovation asymmetry.’…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP AG agreed to acquire Fieldglass, a U.S. software supplier that specializes in managing contract workforces, furthering the German company’s push into Internet-based applications. Fieldglass, whose programs help businesses oversee contract employees and projects, would complement earlier acquisitions of personnel software supplier SuccessFactors Inc. and online marketplace Ariba Inc., Walldorf, Germany-based SAP said today.

Closely-held Fieldglass in 2010 received an investment from private-equity firm Madison Dearborn Partners LLC valuing the Chicago-based company at more than $220 million. The deal is the latest in a string of takeovers by Co-Chief Executive Officers Bill McDermott and Jim Hagemann Snabe over the past four years in an attempt to vault SAP into the expanding market for cloud-computing tools delivered to customers online…

Grazed from Cloud Computing Intelligence. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft has given a date for the launch of the hybrid cloud friendly SQL Server 2014, April 1st – no it’s not a joke – the database software is now released to manufacturing (RTM) and will be generally available on 1st April. Additionally, Microsoft has also announced the general availability of Windows Azure HDInsight with support for Big Data database Hadoop 2.2 and SQL Server Backup to Windows Azure Tool.

One of the key new features of the latest version of SQL Server 2014 is the ability for businesses to extend on-premises apps to the cloud, to quickly and easily backup to Azure, and to use the cloud as a Disaster Recovery (DR). Windows Azure also now supports version 2.2 of Apache Hadoop in Windows Azure through Windows Azure HDInsight which also includes support for YARN and Stinger Phase 2…

Grazed from Infor. Author: PR Announcement.

Infor, a leading provider of business application software serving more than 70,000 customers, today announced Infor CloudSuite™, the first group of industry-specific application suites available on Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) cloud. Infor CloudSuite provides beautiful software with deep industry functionality and a flexible, subscription-based delivery model that significantly reduces upfront IT expenditure.

Each industry suite within Infor CloudSuite is built by unifying multiple applications that historically were deployed independently to holistically support core business functions by industry. This core, along with fast and simple provisioning and a SaaS pricing model will enable Infor CloudSuite to change the way enterprise software is delivered to and consumed by customers…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

It’s official. Microsoft dives headlong into the cloud era by leaving Windows behind, even if in name only. Windows Azure, Microsoft’s suite of cloud computing services, will soon float on without being bogged down by its sometimes divisive PC-era brand. The software giant officially announced on March 25 that beginning in early April, its cloud computing platform will be renamed to Microsoft Azure.

"This change reflects Microsoft’s strategy and focus on Azure as the public cloud platform for customers as well as for our own services Office 365, Dynamics CRM, Bing, OneDrive, Skype, and Xbox Live," stated Steven Martin, general manager for Windows Azure, in a brief blog post. Microsoft will institute the change on April 3, day two of the company’s upcoming Build conference in San Francisco, noted ZDNet’s Mary Jo Foley in her March 24 report…