Category: News

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Patrick Lee.

Choosing the right cloud service provider for your company requires more than just visiting the prospective cloud vendor’s website and reading the reviews on other websites. If you’re looking to find the right scalable cloud hosting service to improve business success, then opt for a suitable cloud service provider that can offer an easily scalable shared and virtualised infrastructure. Whether you are in the process of migrating to the cloud or a current cloud adopter, we provided the acronym: “PERFECTION” to remember these 10 technological and business considerations when choosing a cloud service provider.

Pricing – Make sure you look at the pricing plans before purchasing a package. Whilst some cloud vendors claim to have the cheapest rates, this won’t spare you on upfront payments and any long-term contracts. Sign up for a cloud account that offers flexible pricing and allows you to scale up and down according to your IT needs…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Open Invention Network (OIN) announced today that it has extended its Linux-protective network to include OpenStack and other cloud computing technologies. Specifically, it significantly expanded the technologies covered by OIN’s network of royalty-free cross-licenses and by its defensive patent portfolio. "Cloud computing’s flexibility and scalability are enabling previously unimagined innovation and value creation," said Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network.

"Our objective with this important extension is to support that innovation." Alan Clark, chairman of the board of OpenStack Foundation, remarked: "We applaud OIN’s efforts to promote patent non-aggression in the cloud by adding the OpenStack packages to its Linux System definition. The OpenStack Foundation Board of Directors appreciates that the rapidly-growing OIN community has been, and is now explicitly, supporting freedom of action in the cloud of the future that OpenStack has been formed to enable."…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Why wouldn’t you want a dynamically scalable infrastructure and self-service provisioning? That’s the cloud model in a nutshell — and it has proven itself to the degree where you have to ask why you wouldn’t adopt it, rather than why you would. There remain reasons not to, of course. Why switch to SaaS versions of enterprise applications, for example, when your old client-server deployment is working just fine?

Not to mention all sorts of compliance and security reasons to be conservative about core applications that differentiate a business. But in 2013, it became clearer than ever that both the private and public cloud — particularly the latter — provide the platforms of choice if you want to stay competitive…

Grazed from WashingtonPost. Author: Alex Rossino.

This past year will long be remembered by government contractors as the year that federal cloud adoption began in earnest. Between October 2012 and September 2013, federal agencies awarded over $17 billion in cloud computing-related contracts. After a couple of years evaluating and piloting cloud technology, federal customers dove in headfirst, awarding large contracts, such as the Interior Department’s $10 billion Foundation Cloud Hosting Services program and the CIA’s hotly contested $600 million cloud infrastructure award.

Practically every federal agency awarded cloud-related contracts in fiscal 2013, but this growth was not evenly distributed across the government. Awards by civilian agencies totaled $16.5 billion, far outstripping the $65 million in total awards made by defense agencies and the military services…

Grazed from DailyFinance.  Author: Anders Bylund.

Shares of cloud computing specialist Rackspace Hosting took a 48% dive in 2013. Given that the S&P 500 index surged 29% higher at the same time, we Rackspace investors are feeling a bit sore at this point.  What happened in 2013?

Well, when Rackspace reported fourth-quarter results for 2012 in February, the stock was looking back at a tremendous 55% gain over the previous 12 months. Rackspace largely met sky-high expectations that time but followed up with weak and muddy guidance for the new year…

Grazed from ChinaTimes.  Author: Editorial Staff.

December 2013 will mark an important page in the history of China’s cloud computing industry, first with IBM announcing a partnership with 21Vianet Group to introduce its top cloud computing basic structure into the nation, followed by Amazon introducing its public cloud computing service to the mainland, Sina’s tech.sina.com.cn reports.

China’s cloud computing service providers also launched major promotion activities in December, led by Tianyi Cloud, followed by Ali Cloud in its Dec. 18 promotion announcing overall price cuts of much as 50%. Tencent Cloud then announced a one-week year-end promotion to give super discounts on its cloud computing services. The competition suggests a Warring States era of cloud computing has arrived, the report said…

Grazed from JournalGazzette.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft’s cloud-computing chief Satya Nadella, who has worked 21 years at the world’s largest software maker, took time in Paris this month to huddle with local startups.It’s important to speak with startups because “the tech cycle is such that the small guys make it big and the big guys die,” Nadella said in an interview in Paris, where he was attending a technology conference. 

As a senior manager at Microsoft – and a candidate to be its next CEO – Nadella needs to bone up all he can on how to keep a decades-old technology behemoth from getting lapped by upstarts. Since CEO Steve Ballmer’s August announcement that he plans to retire within a year, Nadella has emerged as one of the leading contenders, people familiar with the matter have said…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Nathan Toups.

Take a moment and look up. What you see is a sky we’ve been striving to understand for most of human civilization. Whether it’s the sun, moon, stars or clouds, we’ve been wondering: How does it all work? It was only recently that humans had a solid grasp of the observable universe. Cloud computing is a similarly tricky subject. Whether you feel that stormy weather affects it, roll your eyes at the much-abused marketing jargon, or you develop distributed web apps, rarely is a concept that is so important so misunderstood.

Understanding the cloud is important because of the potential power that comes with the knowledge. When you’re typing in your credit card number to a webpage do you ever stop and think about who exactly possesses the information afterwards? Most of us do not because of how commonplace the practice is within our culture. Black Friday online shopping this year reached a pinnacle milestone – $1.2 billion was spent, marking the first billion-dollar day in ecommerce history. If you were one of the people madly clicking “Add to Cart” that day, your orders were most likely processed through software that embraced modern cloud computing infrastructure…

Grazed from ReadWrite. Author: Michael Singer.

In looking back over the past 12 months, it’s apparent businesses pushed the envelope of the programmable web. Instead of being influenced by consumer apps and trends like BYOD, employers this year looked inward to solve their internal business problems.

Companies have expanded the use of potent business partners, providers, and platforms at the expense of more consumer-driven technologies that defined 2011 and 2012. Here now are the biggest influences on business, with a heavy reliance on cloud computing and avoidance of government intervention…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Rachel Craig.

What is cloud computing? Cloud computing is an Internet-based facility that allows users to access shared computer applications, storage and other resources through a network of remote servers, rather than each individual user installing hardware and software onto their on-site server and personal computer. It allows the user to store, manage and process data in exactly the same way as traditional computer systems and programmes, without the need to buy, install, manage and update a variety of expensive applications on one computer.

In cloud computing, you are renting a service rather than buying a product. You simply pay for what you use – much like a utility service – and the technical side is all taken care of by the host vendors that supply the applications. The data and files you create are stored in ‘The Cloud’ (on the web) and accessed through an internet browser from any device in any location; not just your personal computer. This offers so many benefits to the small business owner in terms of accessibility, flexibility, security, cost, time, energy consumption, competitiveness and disaster recovery…