Category: News

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

When CenturyLink bought cloud startup Tier3 for $200 million earlier this month, it acquired a technology platform and a group of people that should let the telecommunications giant take full advantage of its dozens of data centers and expansive fiber network. The man heading up that effort is Jared Wray, the founder and CTO of Tier3 who’s now the CTO for cloud computing at CenturyLink, and he came on the Structure Show podcast this week to share his thoughts on evolving from being a small cloud provider into, potentially, a very large one.

Here are some highlights of our interview with Wray, centered around his thoughts on what it will take for other cloud providers to finally emerge from the shadows of Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Google. If you want to hear about CenturyLink’s plan for building a single cloud platform out of its Tier3, AppFog and Savvis acquisitions, or about the intricacies of selling cloud computing to enterprises, you’ll want to listen to the whole show…

Grazed from CIOL.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The emergence of a new set of business needs, driven by changes in the energy landscape, has led utilities to deploy intelligent energy networks. Implementation of sensing and metering devices will enable access to new data and trigger a data explosion that necessitates the use of data management solutions, in turn boosting the prospects of ICT providers in the energy industry.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Data-driven Utilities, finds that big data analytics and forecasting software will become the cornerstone of business in utilities and will bring significant growth opportunities for ICT vendors…

Grazed from CloudTimes.org.  Author: Irmee Layo.

There is a new disturbance building up in the cloud as a new wave of computing trends rise to popularity. One of them is the rising audience and user market for Docker. Here is a peek of what to expect in the complicated arena of cloud computing in 2014.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) will continue to dominate and retain its title as the Apple of cloud computing. With its vast collection of web services in the forefront of the marketplace, Amazon, with its S3 and EC2 is compared with Apple that gained territory in the mobile apps and gaming industry. There is yet to be an Android of cloud computing that will challenge the position of Amazon in the cloud platform…

Grazed from TheStreet.  Author: Dana Blankenhorn.

There are two primary drivers for our current economic recovery.One is oil, specifically fracked oil and gas. I think we have overestimated its importance, because fracked wells don’t last. Their costs and depletion rates are high. They’re a bridge and not the highway.  Second is cloud, the computing revolution that began in the last decade. I think cloud is the highway, and here’s why.

Back when I started as a tech reporter in the 1980s, one theory held that computers could do just one thing at a time and could run just one operating system. When the Web was first spun, sites could go down if there was a rush of traffic to them…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Michelle Patterson.

Due to the wide variety of advances in communications and information technology, people now have high expectations regarding this different methods of communication that are coming out. A lot of people are also interested in having a look at cloud telephony and seeing how it can help their business. Using cloud telephony often means browsing through the different options and seeing what sort of package will work best in your company. Cloud computing as a whole is becoming more popular and is often seen as a much easier and safer method, though others may fear that it is easier to intercept and steal information from. There are benefits to using your own servers and to using someone else’s, so before you make the decision it is a good idea to take a look at how cloud telephony can help you.

Keeping Down the Costs

There are a lot of cloud telephone systems that actually do not bother with long-term contracts. This means that you can use the system as you need it. A lot of the systems are also scalable so the more information or data that you need from the system, the more you can purchase. This can end up saving you a considerable amount of money…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Companies are often held back by an inflexible and complex IT infrastructure that cannot keep up with the changing needs of business. These restraints result in slow deployment of critical applications and services, limited resources, poor operation management, and unpredictable system integration.

Virtualised servers and desktops hold the key to more efficient IT management. Although virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) has historically been deemed too expensive, the recent surge of cloud computing offers a cost-effective, managed platform for VDI that stands to revolutionise the structure of enterprise IT. Operated in a cloud environment, it facilitates the flow of information between corporate offices and increases the productivity of employees who work remotely or from mobile enterprise devices such as smartphones, laptops, or tablet computers…

Grazed from CloudComputingPath. Author: Pravin Anchan.

Cloud Computing is one of the hottest fields offering plethora of job opportunities. Until recently, employers had no yard stick to measure the knowledge of the qualified professionals in cloud technology. As a result , many times they happen to recruit professionals who needed extra coaching to perform thier designated tasks. This involves extra cost and time to the organization. So they prefer to recruit candidates who are certified in Cloud Technology.

Sensing this need, Amazon has come up with AWS Certifications – Amazon Web Services Certification. Possessing a AWS Certification is proof of possessing adequate skill and technical knowledge for designing, deploying and managing applications on the AWS Platform…

Grazed from CNME. Author: J.D. Sartain.

Cisco Systems’s third annual Global Cloud Index forecasts that global cloud traffic will more than quadruple, from 1.2 zettabytes in 2012 to 5.3 ZB in 2017. That works out to about 443 exabytes a month, or about 476 billion GB. More than three quarters of that data will originate in the data centre, “Largely generated by storage, production and development data in a virtualised environment” and “used in activities that are virtually invisible to individuals,” the report says. An additional 7 percent, “primarily driven by data replication and software-system updates,” will flow between data centres. The remaining 17 percent of this traffic will come from end users’ multimedia and project-oriented cloud services.

Forrester infrastructure and operations analyst James Staten thinks Cisco “under-represented” end-user cloud traffic. “End users will fuel far more than 17 percent of data center traffic,” he says, “Especially if you think about public data centres hosting online and cloud services and not just enterprise data centers.”…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Jamie Hinks.

Over two thirds of companies have deployed business critical apps on an infrastructure-as-a-service [IaaS] platform as cloud usage continues to grow amongst businesses. A survey carried out by Riverbed Technology at the recent AWS re:Invent conference in Las Vegas showed that some 80 per cent of attendees have deployed an app in an IaaS cloud for the first time.

When it comes to concerns about the IaaS cloud, 90 per cent stated that reliability is the top concern with performance [88 per cent], security [86 per cent], and costs [84 per cent] trailing closely behind. “Given that reliability and performance topped the concerns for the trail-blazers at AWS re:invent, these are evidently very serious challenges,” added Dormain Drewitz, senior solutions marketing manager at Riverbed Technology…

Grazed from The Silhouette. Author: Rachel Faber.

The recent popularity of cloud email systems has some Canadian universities concerned about the level of security of their email servers. Discourse suggests that with these U.S. based companies, the U.S. government or NSA may be able to gain access to secure information and intellectual property through American cloud services such as those offered by Google and Microsoft.

Richard Godsmark, the senior manager of Security, Technology and Risk at McMaster University pointed out that this is a security concern, however it is a difficult issue to address due to a lack of information on the subject. To improve customer service, Google is attempting to sue the U.S. government, to ensure that they will have to go through actual court proceedings before accessing information. However, in order to really address Internet security, Godsmark believes that it will require a global policy on the matter. “[Information] crosses borders without any kind of passport, and so traffic is always going to end up in other countries,” said Godsmark…