Category: News

Grazed from MidSize Insider. Author: Robert Lawson.

Cloud computing trends for 2014 appear to show positive signs, according to reports. How are these trends playing out so far? The business and financial news website DailyFinance reported predictions for the cloud in 2014, and things are looking good. The article provided an analysis of the ways in which migration to the cloud will become more of a mainstream process this year.

A Growing Cloud Market

This news is not particularly surprising because reports have been indicating an obvious and ongoing shift to cloud computing, even from the consumer side. It has been referred to as the "consumerization of IT," and 2014 will likely bring forth the "capitalization of IT." Businesses and customers will be tied together through systems that exist in virtual machines and in servers managed by providers…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Andrei Maguleanu.

We’ve talked about how cloud computing is changing our everyday lives. How you use your phone, your game console, even your computer or email has changed for the better, and all thanks to cloud computing. If you don’t yet have a cloud storage account, here’s an overview comparing the three major solutions from the three major players in the IT world: Microsoft, Google and the mighty, Dropbox.

Google Drive

Google’s product is seamlessly integrated with everything with your other Google Services, making it a favorite among Android users. You get 15 GB for free to start you off, and if you should need more than that you can buy packages starting from 100GB for $4.99 a month. Photos stored in Google+ will not count towards your basic 15GB storage, and you can store as many as you want at 2048px. A versatile, easy to use service with a lot of integration options, and free for the most part. Definitely one of the top contenders…

Grazed from TechPageOnce. Author: Dennis Smith.

Cloud computing and cloud servers rely on browser technology, which itself relies on Domain Name Systems (DNS) and secure DNS management to send users to the right site. But what happens when users are sent to the wrong site — a malicious site? DNS servers can be vulnerable to hijacking — obtaining administrator credentials and redirecting traffic to another server — which can also interject malicious code or send traffic to questionable sites, including phishing sites. You may have read about recent attacks on internet sites, including LinkedIn and NYTimes.com. The work of “hacktivists”, DNS hijacking has serious implications for cloud computing. Here are five ways to better secure your DNS servers and avoid or mitigate potential damage from an attack:

Separate DNS servers from applications and data

Whether you manage DNS in-house or outsource, separating your DNS servers from applications and data is a business continuity best practice. It enables you to perform a DNS redirect to a site that informs users of an outage. Without the separation, the DNS will fall should an enterprise or ISP server go down. Separating the DNS minimizes potential data loss in the event of an attack…

Grazed from FierceFinanceIT. Author: Renee Caruthers.

An added wrinkle to the challenge of time synchronization for financial firms is cloud computing. As firms consider how extensively they can rely on the cloud for critical business processes, they are beginning to explore whether the cloud environment adversely affects time synchronization. Unfortunately, the answer appears to be yes, it does.

"Timing in the cloud is just awful," says FSMLabs CEO Victor Yodaiken. "Traditional tools for time synchronization don’t work well at all. You will see the legacy technology lose 10 minutes over a day. If your eventual goal is to have thousands of machines running in the cloud, you will have the times between these instances radically diverge. That’s just unacceptable even for the lowest frequency kinds of operations that people want to push into the cloud."…

Grazed from CloudSigma. Author: PR Announcement.

CloudSigma, a public cloud IaaS provider with advanced hybrid hosting solutions, today announced that it is partnering with CompatibleOne, an open source, cloud-aware software platform that enables organizations to operate as a Cloud Services Brokerage. Through the partnership, CloudSigma customers will now be able to securely manage their cloud environments at different locations, and across different cloud providers, via a single user interface, giving them better insight into how they provision their resources globally.

CloudSigma has always been dedicated to creating flexible, open computing environments that are driven by customers’ needs, and this partnership with CompatibleOne reinforces that commitment even more. CloudSigma customers can provision processing, storage, networks and other fundamental computing resources however they want, as well as deploy any operating system or application with full control. What’s more, they can completely remove their data from the cloud at any given time at little or no cost, without worrying about vendor lock-in. Similarly, CompatibleOne, based on open source and open standards, protects companies from vendor lock-in and ensures they will always have the freedom to provision their workloads as best supports their business…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Toshiba Corporation (Tokyo: 6502), a world leader and innovator in pioneering high technology, and NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com), a data, cloud and international communications leader within the NTT NTT +0.64% Group, announced on February 27 a multifaceted alliance under which Toshiba’s data-center and cloud-computing services will be provided to global customers by NTT Com’s Enterprise Cloud, a self-manageable, full-layer virtual private cloud, and data centers.

Services will be provided in North America and Asia from April, and then expanded to Europe thereafter.Toshiba, which has provided data-center and cloud-computing services primarily to domestic companies in Japan, will now use Enterprise Cloud to provide global-scale data-center and cloud-computing services that enable enterprise customers to expand and manage their operations within a common cloud network environment accessible from anywhere in the world…

Grazed from VaultNetworks. Author: Editorial Staff.

Slowly but surely Cloud Computing is growing in popularity. In fact, the Cloud is used internationally by multiple countries. Some countries are better than others for Cloud Computing, according to BSA. Countries that are the best for Cloud Computing provide above average data privacy, security protection, and development standards. On the other hand, the worst countries for Cloud Computing provide terrible data privacy, weak support for industry standards, and bad free-trade policies.

In addition to these countries, here are a few more that are great for cloud computing: France, United Kingdom, South Korea, Canada, and Italy. This infographic outlines the best and worst countries in order by excellent to good, and terrible to worst:

To view infographic, visit http://www.vaultnetworks.com/blog/2014/02/best-worst-cloud-computing/

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Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Mark Eisenberg.

Enterprise IT mentality demonstrates that a new technology is given only a brief period in which to prove a return on investment. Failure to do so incurs damage to its brand in various degrees. Typically, return on investment (ROI) is shown to be much more modest than originally hoped, and the brand simply fades. In some cases — such as computer-aided software engineering in the 1980s — the failure is so extreme that it is almost considered career-limiting to even mention the brand. So, how is the cloud brand doing?

The cloud brand has been a little different; the battle to prove its ROI more resembles a three-round boxing match than a single-leg race, with the cloud technology facing off against the market itself. The bell rang on the first round of cloud and it moved to the second in 2008, when Gartner included the then-nascent technology in the "Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies." There was activity in the market prior to that, but in 2008, the spotlight was lit…

Grazed from ITBusinessNet. Author: PR Announcement.

Technology Business Research Inc.s (TBR) Cloud Professional Services Customer Report shows demand for cloud professional services continues to escalate, with more than 74% of enterprise clients, compared to 59% in 2011, purchasing or considering purchasing cloud computing services engaged with a cloud professional services vendor for assistance. Recently, clients professional services demands shifted, with a need for assistance in system integration and implementation taking the lead. TBR surveyed 900 end users of cloud professional services across North America, Europe and Asia to map vendor opportunity and customer and competitor landscapes for the report, which is one of three customer-facing research initiatives in TBRs cloud customer portfolio.

As the only study in the cloud computing market looking specifically at professional services, the Cloud Professional Services Customer Report provides an array of insights for professional services firms in addressing the changing needs of current and prospective customers, said Senior Analyst Ramunas Svarcas…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Intronis, Inc., provider of world-class cloud backup solutions for the IT channel, today announced it has been recognized as one of this years Top 100 Cloud Computing Vendors and Top 20 Coolest Cloud Storage Vendors by CRN. The honor marks the second year in a row that Intronis has been featured as a leading cloud innovator and channel-friendly storage vendor for todays IT channel partners.

The Top 20 Coolest Cloud Storage Vendors slideshow is featured on CRN.com and commends Intronis for its on-demand recovery services and early market support of virtualized machines (VMs). In 2013, Intronis introduced its QuickSpin VM replication and restore technology. Offered as an integrated module within the Intronis software platform, QuickSpin provides turnkey backup and recovery support for VMware. It also enables channel partners to quickly create and update recovery VMs in a cluster, saving businesses time, money and downtime…