Category: News

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Deborah Gage.

Secure storage and sharing of data have become sensitive topics since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year leaked details of U.S. government snooping. But ownCloud Inc. co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Frank Karlitschek saw the danger before that.

Convinced in 2010 that new cloud computing services were a threat to security and privacy, he wrote what ultimately became ownCloud’s code, putting it into open source and gathering a community of developers around it. In 2011, ownCloud the company was formed, and it has now raised $6.3 million in Series A funding co-led by Devonshire Investors and current investor General Catalyst Partners, taking total funding to $10.1 million. Valuation is not disclosed…

Grazed from LightReading. Author: Editorial Staff.

Following his announcement of the “Five Fundamentals” to be prioritized for the Cloud, James Walker, President, CloudEthernet Forum (CEF), has named the first three working group Co-Chair appointments. Jay Wampold, VP Marketing, CHEF, has been selected for the Automation committee; Dr. Mehmet Toy, Distinguished Engineer at Comcast involved in Computer Networking Architectures and Standards, for the Programmability committee; and Dr Hongwen Zhang, Wedge Networks, for the Security committee.

“We are now selecting industry leaders with specific expertise, connections and experience relevant to each of our Fundamentals,” Walker explained. He was referring to the key issues that had been identified by the CEF under the acronym VASPA – Virtualization, Automation, Security, Programmability, and Analytics – with two Co-Chairs being appointed under each heading…

Grazed from Tech Page One. Author: Ann Braley Smith.

Over the past five years, legacy modernization has been a hot topic in federal government IT discussions. Modernization makes application environments more efficient and responsive, and puts them in a stronger position to address new requirements and technology. And federal agencies are especially poised to reap benefits and cost savings, which is why it was included in the 2010 25-point plan for IT reform (PDF).

Truth in numbers

The need for agencies to transform old, cumbersome systems, eliminate data silos, reduce redundancy and usher in new technology is an urgent one. The numbers are compelling. In June 2013, MeriTalk and VMware surveyed 152 federal IT leaders to determine what steps agencies are taking in that direction and what kind of benefits they have seen. Agencies are spending 79 percent of their IT budget, or an average of $62 billion annually, just to maintain legacy IT systems…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Doug Henschen.

When this winter’s ice storms, artic deep freezes, and nasty nor’easters hit, it provided a good time to hunker down and get some inside projects done. Weather Company CIO Bryson Koehler has been working on a big one: consolidating 13 datacenters down to four, relying extensively on public cloud providers, and moving to a NoSQL-powered big-data platform.

When we last spoke to Koehler his company was preparing to move its Weather Underground business onto the new big-data platform, which runs the Riak database on Amazon public cloud computing resources, with backup resources on the Google Compute Cloud. Next up, plans called for the flagship Weather Channel to move to that same platform within a matter of weeks. Koehler’s team has learned some key lessons along the way, particularly about the challenge of predicting costs when using external cloud services…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Core Informatics, a leading provider of scientific informatics is seeing strong demand for the Platform for Science, the market’s only Scientific Platform-as-a-Service (sPaaS). Released in November 2013, the Platform for Science is the premiere cloud-based solution providing a marketplace of applications for customers engaged in all phases of scientific product innovation and development.

Platform for Science provides an ecosystem for scientific collaboration and data management in support of a single laboratory or a virtualized global network of researchers. The foundation of the marketplace is an integrated suite of Core applications (LIMS, ELN, SDMS) already used by thousands of researchers. Designed for rapid creation of scientific applications, Platform for Science is a generation beyond traditional applications hosted in the cloud. The increasing library of apps already includes, Chem ELN, Bio ELN, Compound Registration, Biological Registration, and a collection of Next Generation Sequencing (NGS) workflows that provide out-of-the-box support for Illumina and Ion Torrent platforms…

Grazed from Computing. Author: Danny Palmer.

Once approached with caution, cloud computing is being embraced by more organisations, both in the public and private sectors. Many organisations looking to adopt cloud for the first time are tempted to put all their eggs in one basket with one provider. However, according to recent research by Adapt, many firms feel they can’t get all they want from a single vendor, leading some to adopt solutions from multiple providers, as Kevin Linsell, head of service development at Adapt, explained.

"Those that have only just embraced the cloud and are still in their first iteration are learning lessons. They’re realising they want more diversity rather than just one solution," he told Computing. It’s a view shared by David Goodman, CIO at global humanitarian NGO the International Rescue Committee (IRC). He said the specialist needs of his organisation, which provides relief in some of harshest environments on the planet, meant an all-inclusive cloud solution from a single provider wasn’t suitable…