Category: News

Grazed from GCN. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is useful because it offers a new approach to IT, leveraging shared resources to maximize productivity and cut overhead. But with new approaches come new threats. How can agencies minimize risk in this environment? The Cloud Security Alliance and the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode) have collaborated to identify a set of best practices for developing applications that meet the unique security requirements of cloud computing.

The resulting paper, Practices for Secure Development of Cloud Applications, applies established methods of producing secure code to the architectural requirements of the cloud. “For cloud computing to reach its true potential, all parties involved – both consumers and providers – will need new ways of thinking about security needs and related standards,” the paper says…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Wyatt Cash.

As IT leaders get more comfortable moving their data operations into the cloud, concerns are growing about conflicting international laws that govern data generated in one country and stored in another. Policymakers around the world are fueling those concerns. Anxious to protect data privacy and security, they are advocating requirements to store certain types of data domestically, says Daniel Castro, a senior analyst with the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.

Those policies, however, are not only creating headaches for technology managers moving data across the globe, they’re also bumping up against delicate free trade agreements that involve senior government officials well beyond the reach of the typical CIO’s office…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Todd Knapp.

Although the "year of VDI" never really came about, the desktop virtualization industry has seen many changes over the past year. Cloud computing, the consumerization of IT and improved graphics delivery have all contributed to a better virtual desktop experience — making virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) viable in more organizations. To help you get a handle on the big picture of VDI, we posed this question to five desktop virtualization experts:

What technologies or trends had the biggest impact on VDI in 2013?

Todd Knapp: The question itself supposes that something has, in fact, had a big impact on VDI in 2013. Sadly, I’m not so sure that’s happened yet. Nothing has had a big enough impact to make VDI see more adoption because there are still many obstacles to overcome…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: PR Announcement.

Five9, the leader in cloud contact center software, has earned a 2013 Cloud Computing Excellence Award from Cloud Computing Magazine. Specifically, Cloud Computing Magazine is honoring the Five9 SoCoCare social and mobile customer care solution. The Cloud Computing Excellence Award recognizes innovative cloud companies that are bringing differentiated solutions to the market to reduce operating costs and increase customer satisfaction among todays socially connected and smartphone savvy consumers.

“We are thrilled to be honored for our achievements in cloud innovation, as well as social and mobile product excellence. With the Five9 strategic acquisition of SoCoCare, two best-in-class cloud-based solutions have come together to deliver the next generation of cloud contact center software.” –Lance Fried, senior vice president of social and mobile, Five9…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Stephan Jukic.

The data storage and computing cloud offers small and large businesses enormous benefits as a medium in which to store and share documentation and data of all kinds remotely in an environment with extremely fast access and ease of use. Now while many business owners and managers already know this, what they often don’t know or are wary of are the security questions around using the cloud. And it’s only natural that this should worry them. After all, using cloud storage means handing your company’s extremely valuable and sensitive private data over to not just a third party service provider but also to one which is fully connected to the greater web by virtue of its nature.

Adding to these questions of security is a certain level of confusion that a lot of business owners have about just what cloud security really entails; the cloud is fairly new as a major business service and like many new things, it can be confusing! Let’s settle some of these issues below…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Editorial Staff.

On Thursday, Microsoft Corp. introduced the Cloud OS Network, a worldwide consortium of more than 25 cloud service providers delivering services built on the Microsoft Cloud Platform: Windows Server with Hyper-V, System Center and the Windows Azure Pack. These organizations support Microsoft’s Cloud OS vision of a consistent platform that spans customer datacenters, Windows Azure and service provider clouds. Service providers in the Cloud OS Network offer Microsoft-validated, cloud-based infrastructure and application solutions designed to meet customer needs.

"This network of leading service providers will help our customers create datacenters without boundaries for apps, data and device management," said Takeshi Numoto, Microsoft corporate vice president of Cloud & Enterprise Marketing. "That translates into greater diversity of solutions, more flexibility and lower operational costs for customers, allowing them to focus on their core business rather than managing datacenters." More comments from Numoto can be found on the Official Microsoft Blog…

Grazed from ProgrammableWeb. Author: Michael Vizard.

One of the most efficient routes to market for any developer is through an application store that is used by a lot of other applications. For that reason there’s naturally a lot of interest in the AppStore from Apple, GooglePlay or app stores associated with specific cloud computing platform such as Salesforce.com. Essentially, all of these function as central points of application distribution.

But beyond certifying that applications work, Apple, Google and providers of cloud computing services don’t do much in terms of promoting the adoption of third-party applications. By way of an alternative, a new class of application distributors has emerged in the form of organizations such as AppDirect, which not only showcases cloud applications to potential customers but also helps market them, provide financing, and manage the billing services needed to actually monetize them…

Grazed from TheServerSide. Author: Editorial Staff.

What are the two most expensive mistakes enterprise architects and IT professionals make when running their IT infrastructure in a cloud based PaaS or IaaS solution like Amazon Web Services (AWS)? According to Pete Adams, chief operating officer at Cloudability, the problem is a purchasing paradox, where those who are in charge of managing operations either buy too much of one thing or not enough of another.

The scourge of overprovisioning

And what are the DevOps teams buying too much of? Quite simply, they’re too often purchasing too much cloud computing power. "People overprovision infrastructure, buying capacity just in case they need it, but the cloud allows you to spin up infrastructure as you go and as you need it," Adams says. It’s an old habit that dies hard, as historically, IT departments have had to build systems that were big enough to handle peak demand. But that’s not how you provision in the cloud. In the cloud, you provision based around average consumption, and then allow the cloud vendor to deal with the occasional spike. "Overprovisioning is a cost you don’t need to incur," he says…

Grazed from Utilizer. Author: Liz McMillan.

GreenButton™ on Thursday announced the GreenButton WarpDrive, a solution providing accelerated and secure transfers of large datasets to the cloud. Previously this capability was only available to GreenButton customers for running Big Compute and Big Data workloads; however, demand from other use cases, such as enterprise backups, has led to a new standalone service.

"WarpDrive provides the best performing UDP data transfer technology for moving large datasets to the cloud." said Dave Fellows, Chief Technology Officer at GreenButton. "UDP is far more efficient than TCP over high latency and congested networks. The ability to deliver this capability for a fraction of the cost of what’s currently on the market should open the door for many exciting cloud-based initiatives."…

Grazed from SysCon Media. Author: MarketWire.

Piriform, the creator of CCleaner, announces it has launched a unique new product that lets users manage and optimize multiple computers via a cloud-based platform, directly from their web browsers. It is currently being offered in beta, available upon request at www.agomo.com. Agomo uses patented technology from Piriform’s hugely popular CCleaner and Defraggler software. This means users can speed up slow computers, fix problems, and more:

• Clean and defrag one or many computers from anywhere
• Add or remove software and control start-up programs
• Monitor system stats, components, memory, disk space, and much more…