Category: News

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Raj Sabhlok.

IT departments are being marginalized by SaaS, IaaS, PaaS and the rest of the cloud-driven “aaS”es. At least that’s what some are suggesting, like Scott Bils at InformationWeek. And I’m inclined to agree, at least in spirit, if not in the specifics.

Highly automated IT services give end users do-it-yourself options — or perhaps more accurately, do-IT-yourself options — that undermine the value IT departments have traditionally delivered. And that means chief information officers and the rest of the IT team must adapt to meet changing demands and expectations — or risk becoming marginalized into irrelevance…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: John Riberio.

Microsoft has announced the general availability of multifactor authentication on its Windows Azure cloud platform. Besides using a user name and password, users can authenticate through an application on their mobile device, automated voice call, or a text message with a passcode, Microsoft said Thursday.

Windows Azure multifactor authentication can be used for applications that require additional security, including on-premises VPNs and Web applications. Users have to run the multifactor authentication server on existing hardware or in a Windows Azure Virtual Machine. Users can synchronize with their Windows Server Active Directory for automated user set up…

Grazed from Utilizer. Author: Yeshim Deniz.

CloudPassage, the leading cloud infrastructure security provider, Thursday announced the availability of Halo Enterprise, a security-as-a-service solution built specifically for large-scale, heterogeneous cloud infrastructure environments.

Halo Enterprise extends CloudPassage’s patented Halo cloud security platform to large enterprises with complex security and compliance requirements. Halo currently protects more than 400 production cloud deployments and automates security for more than 10,000 new cloud instances monthly…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Let’s not start using the word "predictable," but organizations are starting to settle into five different categories of cloud personas, according to new data from WideAngle, a division of NTT Com Security (formerly known as Integralis). And the new "The Five Cloud Personas – are you an Embracer or a Controller?" report has some interesting data to share on how companies are embracing not only cloud, but new technologies in general.

WideAngle based its study on a survey of more than 700 IT decision-makers in organizations with more than 500 employees in seven geographies—the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Nordic region, Japan and Hong Kong. It examined the habits of organizations across the public and private sector, and came up with five distinct cloud personas, each with well-defined characteristics, said Tom Salkeild, director of professional services at WideAngle, in an interview with Talkin’ Cloud…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Alan Conley.

Bring Your Own Cloud (BYOC) is often associated with personal services like Dropbox, but internal business units have also been known to sign up for cloud services without IT’s knowledge, raising questions about everything from security to business service expectations.

But if you have a plan in place when it comes to business units accessing external cloud services for projects, IT and the business can get what they want without jeopardizing services or security. Here are the key things to consider:..

Grazed from Infosecurity Magazine. Author: Editorial Staff.

Gaps between the perception of cyber-risk (or cyber-safety) and the reality of a given situation seem to persist despite high-profile discussions of emerging threats. The latest concern revolves around storing data in the cloud or virtualized environment: Research reveals that 80% of companies believe that storing data in that way decreases or simply does not impact their organization’s chance of data loss. Yet, two in five companies leveraging virtual storage experienced data loss from these types of infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) environments in the last year.

This disconnect is of particular concern considering that the survey, from Kroll Ontrack, indicated that virtual storage has certainly crossed the chasm into the mainstream: 84% of corporations are using it, and nearly one-third of respondents have 75% to 100% of their current environment stored virtually. IT departments like the IaaS model because it reduces capital expenditures on in-house servers and maintenance, and allows them to move to an opex-based model that is usually more cost-efficient and offers less administrative overhead…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Patience Wait.

In-Q-Tel, the investment arm of the U.S. intelligence community, has entered into strategic partnerships with two cloud-oriented software developers, one specializing in data harvesting and presentation and the other offering remote mobile application testing.

Seattle-based Socrata offers a software platform that allows analysts to turn raw data from many different kinds of sources into useful information and output the results in the form of dashboards, application programming interfaces, apps and visualizations. The company focuses exclusively on ways to improve access to government data for citizens, employees and developers through its GovStat, API Foundry and open-data portal products. Socrata counts a number of governmental entities among its clients, including the World Bank, Medicare, Data.gov, the states of Oregon and Maryland, and Chicago, San Francisco and New York City…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Whether you’re building an enterprise private cloud or buying a public cloud service, the underlying architecture of what you end up with will have an impact on what you can do. "People have a tendency not to think about architecture," noted David Linthicum, senior VP at Cloud Technology Partners in Cambridge, Mass. and a speaker in the Cloud and Virtualization track at Interop New York 2013. And cloud vendors, including Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine, tend not to disclose much about their underlying architectures.

Clouds may have some elements in common, but the specific goals behind the selection of their parts and their method of assembly actually differ greatly. "The architectural differences can show up in a big way," Linthicum warned. When little information is available from the vendor, he added, potential cloud users may have to "play private detective to discover what is going on behind the scenes."…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Ideaca, a Canadian IT consulting firm, announced today that they received Gold for Best Cloud Computing Solution at the 2013 CDN Channel Elite Awards. Ideaca has consistently been a finalist in previous CDN Channel Elite Awards, and was a finalist for the Best Mid-Market Solution category in 2013.

CDN’s Channel Elite Awards recognizes IT Solution Providers for their innovation, leadership and commitment to creating value for their customers. Solution Providers owned and operated in Canada were invited to submit solutions to 10 different award categories. Channel Elite Award medalists and all finalists were recognized at CDN’s Channel Elite Awards Gala on Sept. 11, 2013 at the Paramount Conference & Event Venue in Toronto. All winners and finalists have been posted on www.computerdealernews.com and winning solutions were profiled in CDN, Computing Canada and Direction Informatique. Winning solutions also receive the CEA Seal of Excellence and position themselves as a leader in the growing Canadian IT industry…

Grazed from MarketWired. Author: PR NewsWire.

ActiveState®, whose software enables developers and enterprises to innovate from code to cloud, today announced the launch of the Stackato® Connector for Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager 2.1. With the Stackato Connector for CloudPortal Business Manager, IT can now more efficiently access their Stackato private PaaS through a self-service catalog.

Organizations see the cloud as an important component to increasing productivity and delivering applications to market faster than before. As one of the cloud service catalog offerings available for the Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager, the Stackato Connector is part of the Citrix-Ready Partner ecosystem designed to unify and simplify the commerce, user management, service provisioning and operational aspects of a cloud…