Category: News

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud computing drives efficiencies in a number of ways. One of those is what Proxios likes to call the “one to many” feature.   Proxios sees this scenario often: In traditional client/server computing, software is designed with a portion that resides on the client device (desktop or laptop) and the remainder on the server. One of the biggest challenges for all IT departments is maintaining and deploying software to all client devices.

Anytime a change is needed, IT must deliver this update or addition to each client on an individual basis. Not only is this time consuming, but in many cases the IT staff has to deal with employees whose computers are inaccessible. It could be because they are traveling, or the computer is in use and the change is not something that can be accomplished as a background task…

Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Marissa Tejada.

Computing best practices for the cloud are at the core of what IT professionals behind the nonprofit organization Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) promote and develop. Most recently, the CSA announced an initiative called the Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) Initiative, which enforces better security architectures for firms that utilize the cloud.

An Initiative against Hackers

The CloudTimes recently covered the details of the SDP Initiative aimed to develop cloud architecture that can be created with trusted entities using end-to-end network IP addresses. In the end, it should open the door to architecting systems that can withstand attacks against applications and network endpoints accessible from the Internet. The SDP uses security such as federation, Secure Assertion Markup Language and Transport Layer Security. According to the initiative, there should be annular connectivity between devices and between users until they are authenticated and authorized…

Grazed from GreatResponder.  Author: Maria Dehn.

IBM (NYSE:IBM) succeeded in getting the contract for managing the IT infrastructure of many financial institutes in Europe including Dexia (EBR:DEXB). IBM will manage the IT infrastructure of these companies and will migrate the services in the cloud to pave the way for cloud based services of these financial organizations across Europe.

Greatresponder.com – This announcement was made public by IBM through a statement. The statement says that IBM will take charge of the IT infrastructure of many financial institutes operating in the European region to manage and transform it into the cloud based services. In this statement, General Manager Strategic Outsourcing at IBM Europe region Bart Van Den Daele elaborated the deal that “Our integrated transformational approach, the introduction of new and innovative technologies and solutions, like the cloud and analytics and our expertise in the financial sector will enable these customers to differentiate themselves in an accelerated way versus their  competitors in their respective markets”…

Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Jason Hannula.

As cloud computing has been making its way up the IT food chain from infrastructure-as-a-service through platform to software services, it has been disrupting standard practices in IT shops. Just as infrastructure decisions are no longer focused entirely on the internal physical server life cycle, provisioning of enterprise software options is competing with external software service vendors. Patrick Thibodeau reported on ComputerWorld that 25 to 30 percent of server shipments in 2014 are destined for cloud services providers, with projections that that figure will rise to 45 percent by 2017. Meanwhile, IT managers report that they are actively reducing the number of in-house servers they manage or, at a minimum, are reducing their rate of acquisition.

Two trends are responsible for these changes: The continual consolidation of server infrastructure and the virtualization of software services. These trends are expected to negatively affect revenue for physical server vendors by 3.5 percent next year. With advancing big data initiatives and increasing macroeconomic activity, it is unlikely that reductions in server vendor revenue is the result of a drop in total computing requirements. Instead, the increased efficiencies in utilization of existing server infrastructure is slowing the need to acquire new servers…

Grazed from DarkReading. Author: Brian Prince.

Building security into the application development process has always been a challenge. The reality of cloud computing however introduces new hurdles that need to be identified and climbed.   In a new paper, the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode) joined forces to release guidance to help developers navigate the sometimes troubled waters of application security. The report is focuses on security considerations for platform-as-a-service (PaaS), though the authors say the advice in the paper is relevant to software-as-a-service (SaaS) and infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) as well.

"Among all of the cloud security challenges, this report is focused on the challenges faced by software developers who are developing applications for the cloud," says Eric Baize, senior director of the product security office with EMC. "Most of the activities required to develop secure software for the cloud are identical to the fundamental security practices required for any software. However, cloud has some unique characteristics that demand some customization of these practices."…

Grazed from CruxialCIO.  Author: Brian T. Horowitz.

Hewlett-Packard’s Financial Services division has announced new financing options to help companies migrate to a cloud-computing platform.  HP introduced Accelerated Migration to Cloud, which helps companies establish a way to retire and upgrade IT infrastructure. It allows companies to form a timeline on migrating to the cloud.

HP purchases customers’ assets and leases them back to customers to fund the transition. Customers’ assets are upgraded when customers make the move to the cloud.  With cloud computing becoming an important part of IT infrastructure, companies will need ways to finance the migration…

Grazed from Cloud Computing Intelligence.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Google announced on their official Google cloud platform blog that they will be taking the Google Compute Engine (GCE) out of beta and releasing a full-supported version with support for a wider range of Linux operating systems, including SUSE and Red Hat, as well as the ability to get upgrades and do maintenance while online, and lower prices

The Google Cloud Platform was released into beta June 2012 and has been popular with developers but it was limited in its use, by being hampered by a lack of OS support and the need to keep taking the solution down to do basic maintenance and upgrades. However those limitations didn’t put off names like Snapchat, Cooladata, Mendelics, Evite and Wix from building systems on the Compute Engine or businesses like SaltStack, Wowza, Rightscale, Qubole, Red Hat, SUSE, and Scalr producing new integrations with the Compute Engine…

Grazed from CIO.  Author: Editorial Staff.

“One out of five organisations have discovered a secret source of competitive differentiation. It allows them to serve customers in new ways and re-imagine their business models. It can help surface valuable insights from their data and transform how they make decisions. It enables them to tap expertise from across their entire ecosystem.”

Sounds wonderful doesn’t it? And it is wonderful. Trouble is, it’s no secret any more. It’s a well-established way of delivering IT services and its called cloud computing.  However that didn’t stop IBM – in a just-released white paper ‘Under cloud cover: How leaders are accelerating competitive differentiation’ – talking up cloud computing as if it had discovered some hitherto unknown panacea for all the woes of the IT world…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ben Kepes.

Globally more and more Governments are leveraging the benefits that cloud services can bring – the level of adoption and understanding however varies greatly across different countries and even states – one would have thought that countries late to adopt would avoid making the mistakes that some of the early-adopters made – experience shows that this is sadly not the case. With the US and the UK adopting high-profile cloud initiatives, there’s lots of experience to take advantage of.

I took the opportunity recently to sit down for a coffee with Ian Apperley, a New Zealand cloud consultant who does a lot of work in the public sector. It’s always interesting to talk with practitioners, all the more so when they’re helping organizations move to the cloud in my home country – my focus tends to be international and often I’m out of touch with what goes on at home – apart from an involvement helping get the Cloud Computing Code of Practice up and running (more information here), my domestic awareness is limited…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and the Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code (SAFECode) released new guidance for the secure development of cloud applications. The paper, "Practices for Secure Development of Cloud Applications" aims to provide practical secure development recommendations in the context of critical threats specific to cloud computing.

SAFECode and CSA partnered to determine whether additional software security guidance was needed to address unique threats to cloud computing, and if so, to identify specific security practices in the context of identified threats. The joint technical working group analyzed existing secure software development practices and secure design considerations as outlined in the SAFECode publication "Fundamental Practices for Secure Software Development 2nd Edition" in the context of CSA guidance, including "The Notorious Nine: Cloud Computing Top Threats in 2013."…