Category: News

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Believe it or not, it was eight years ago that Amazon Web Services’ S3 (Simple Storage Service) went into production. At the time, the promise was revolutionary: Amazon S3 is storage for the Internet. It’s designed to make Web-scale computing easier for developers. Amazon S3 provides a simple Web services interface that can be used to store and retrieve any amount of data, at any time, from anywhere on the Web. It gives any developer access to the same highly scalable, reliable, fast, inexpensive data storage infrastructure that Amazon uses to run its own global network of websites. The service aims to maximize benefits of scale and to pass those benefits on to developers.

Where were you when AWS started production eight years ago? I was the CEO of a cloud computing company and had just left another cloud computing company where I was CTO. The cloud existed well before AWS, but somehow AWS was able to ignite the market, then dominate it…

Grazed from SFGate. Author: Editorial Staff.

Googling a person is about to take on a completely new meaning. The Mountain View search giant recently invited geneticists to upload information to the company’s cloud infrastructure. Google also provided scientists with instructions on how to import, process, store and, of course, search DNA data that could unlock clues to curing diseases.

Google’s foray into genomics could open big markets for a company that has already made substantial investments in health care. "This whole area, by the way of genome analysis, is really in general a hot area," said George Geis, an adjunct professor who specializes in technology mergers and acquisitions at UCLA’s Anderson School of Management…

Grazed from Business.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Telstra and Cisco have cooked up a grandstand cloud computing deal with the telco becoming the first to jump in and develop cloud infrastructure in conjunction with the global giant.  The partnership will see Cisco bring a local node of its global cloud platform into Telstra’s data centres and oversee management and operations

It substantially increases the scale of Telstra’s cloud offering as it leverages Cisco’s platform, rather than starting from scratch, to keep the likes of Amazon Web Services and Dimension Data at bay.  According to Telstra, the co-build infrastructure will provide cloud and network services in real-time, providing greater speed, security and performance…

Grazed from HPCWire. Author: Nicole Hemsoth.

At the height of the first wave of the commercial cloud computing boom, around 2008, two HPC industry figures, Brian Schott and Robert Graybill, put their heads together to see how clouds might support high performance computing workloads. Their efforts led them to develop a “clearinghouse” for cloud-based HPC platforms and applications, which in turn prompted them to bundle, price, and support variations on these packages for companies and HPC centers to use along software as a service (SaaS) or platform as a service (PaaS) lines.

Offering a service like this was novel at the time, especially for complex environments in government and manufacturing where licensing, regulation, data access and collaboration, and multiple other challenges exist. Further, while the Amazons of the world were busy building their own marketplaces, these were heavy on Web 2.0-driven applications but not robust or specific enough for many HPC workloads. Even with the eventual addition of HPC-oriented instance types and GPU accelerated nodes for rent on Amazon’s boxes, the ecosystem for high performance computing, particularly for government lab and agency users (and smaller to medium-sized manufacturers), remained underdeveloped…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Bare metal clouds are addressing performance and security issues with which IT professionals are often challenged. What exactly are these "metal" clouds? A recent article from ZDNet explains that bare metal cloud computing services are physical servers that follow the standard cloud model; they are built on demand and billed by the hour. This model can be an attractive option for growing firms looking for a flexible cloud solution that features a dedicated cloud server to address specific business needs.

Metal-Minded

Standard virtual machine (VM) cloud computing can eat up too much abstract memory and CPU space, which can affect performance. Another option is bare metal, which is an infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) technology combining a mix of custom-designed hardware that can potentially provide better performance and security than VM clouds…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Bill Kleyman.

IT consumerization is one of the biggest trends in recent years. Many users are now asking to have two or even three devices connected to the corporate network. Why? Flexibility, productivity, and because it’s easier. With more users bringing in their own devices, administrators have scrambled to support them. BYOD initiatives require solid planning, good policies, and educated users, but there’s no need to overcomplicate an environment, especially when there are such powerful tools around to help.

IT consumerization has led to a change in focus at the datacenter level, too. Cloud computing, BYOD, and a growing "data-on-demand" paradigm have created a user-centric model. The idea isn’t just to deliver an application or a desktop to users. Rather, it’s to allow users to carry around their personalized settings regardless of the device or platform. This is where virtualization technologies can really make the process easier:..

Grazed from CloudPhysics. Author: PR Announcement.

CloudPhysics, who provides intelligent operations management for virtualized workloads, today announced that it was named one of 12 cloud companies to watch by Network World along with CloudLock, CloudMunch, CloudVolumes, Digital Ocean, Docker, ElasticBox, Jelastic, Koality, nCrypted Cloud, PernixData and Salsify: http://www.networkworld.com/news/2014/031314-cloud-computing-279650.html.

Network World Senior Writer Brandon Butler said: "Startups are forming up and down the cloud stack, from optimizing infrastructure services to offering development platforms. There are applications served from the cloud and new classes of apps that could not have been made without the cloud. Network World has scanned the universe of cloud computing startups founded within the past few years and built this non-exhaustive list of companies that give a glimpse of what’s to come in this fast-growing market."…

Grazed from SiliconAngle. Author: Maria Deutscher.

Major changes are afoot in the enterprise as decision makers come to recognize the inevitability of cloud computing, but it’s still a long and bumpy road to modernization, with existing technology investments to sustain and new projects to embark on. It’s a multi-billion dollar challenge and an equally large opportunity, so big in fact that it has spurred legacy vendors like ASG to abandon traditional business models and try to make the journey smoother.

The Naples, Florida-based mainframe software firm last week introduced CloudFactory, a hosted service that allows customers to operate big iron without learning the ins and out of their systems. At its core, the offering is a collection of scripts that automates routine management tasks and provides increased status transparency, making it possible for non-technical users to perform tasks that would otherwise require specialized skills and take much longer to fulfill. It also packs a workflow execution engine called CloudRobot and an easy to use natural language frontend that provides self-service access to apps and data…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM announced that it is a Premier-level sponsor for OpenStack Summit, which will be held May 12-16, at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta. The OpenStack Summit is the premier open cloud event, bringing together thousands of OpenStack contributors, users and ecosystem members.

IBM’s ongoing relationship with open standards organizations such as OpenStack reflects the company’s long history of supporting open standards and open source initiatives. IBM’s support of OpenStack and the OpenStack Summit is driven by its goal of helping companies develop and adopt open cloud computing platforms. In fact, IBM recently announced that it is investing more than $1 billion in an open standards based Platform-as-a-Service based on Openstack and Cloud Foundry…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jeffrey Burt.

ShoreTel officials are promoting a tightly integrated unified communications solution that includes everything from the cloud platform to the business applications and IP phones. On the first day of the Enterprise Connect 2014 show March 17 in Orlando, Fla., ShoreTel announced it is shipping its ShoreTel 400 series IP desk phones for Sky, its cloud-based unified communications (UC) solution.

Company officials are arguing that using an all-ShoreTel offering brings significant benefits over solutions with third-party products, particularly in ease of use, investment protection and future enhancements. "We’ve listened to our customers and created an end-to-end solution that will benefit their businesses," Pej Roshan, vice president of product management at ShoreTel, said in a statement. "By offering an integrated and high-quality cloud service with ShoreTel 400 phones, we are providing customers with a seamless communications solution designed to meet their unique needs…