Category: News

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Louis Columbus.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Jennifer Bewley and Rachel Ceccarelli of Dice.com regarding the trends they are seeing in cloud computing recruiters’ searched-for terms on their sites. They’re seeing exponential growth in cloud computing-related job listings today and provided an analysis of the top ten cloud computing skills recruiters are searching for. From just 13 cloud computing-related jobs listed in May, 2008, their site has over 5,000 today. The following graphic shows the growth in cloud computing job listings on their site over time. The following are the top ten cloud computing skills searched for on Dice.com as of today:

• Linux operating system
• Chef – The open-source systems management and cloud infrastructure automation framework
• Puppet – IT automation software that helps system administrators manage infrastructure throughout its lifecycle, from provisioning and configuration to orchestration and reporting
• Cloud, Legacy System and IT Consulting…

Grazed from TMCNet.  Author: Event Announcement.

Cloud4SMB Expo, to be held on January 28-31, 2014, is the first event of its kind focused on the unique needs and challenges of small and medium businesses (SMBs) seeking to leverage the benefits of cloud computing solutions. 



This conference is dedicated to real-world business strategies and implications for growing businesses utilizing the cloud. Until now, the Cloud Phenomenon has focused almost exclusively on opportunities for the large enterprise. Sessions at Cloud4SMB Expo are designed specifically to provide attendees with the knowledge and information SMBs need to compete and succeed...

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Sean Leach.

Given that Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks are becoming more frequent, it is a good time to review the basics and how you can fight back. A DDoS is an attack method used to deny access for legitimate users of an online service. This service could be a bank or e-commerce website, a SaaS application, or any other type of network service. Some attacks even target VoIP infrastructure.

An attacker uses a non-trivial amount of computing resources, which they either built themselves or, more commonly, by compromising vulnerable PC’s around the world, to send bogus traffic to a site. If the attacker sends enough traffic, legitimate users of a site can’t be serviced…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Elizabeth Dwoskin.

Cloud storage provider Nirvanix announced it was shutting down on Monday, giving customers just two weeks to move their data elsewhere, two customers said. The exit of Nirvanix, a San Diego-based company that has said it stores data for Fox Networks and National Geographic, among others, means more market share for giants like Amazon and Microsoft.

It also offers a warning about the downsides of shifting computing to the cloud. Two weeks is not a lot of time to move valuable business data. Steven Ampleford, chief executive of Aorta Cloud and Aorta Capital, a Nirvanix partner, said he received a phone call from Nirvanix officials with the news on Monday. “Armageddon is about to happen,” he said. Nirvanix officials didn’t tell him what would happen if customers don’t get their data out by the end of the month, he said…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is touting the benefits of leading with public cloud infrastructure when adopting a cloud computing strategy, claiming that "old guard" private cloud providers cannot offer key benefits such as pay-per-use and scale on demand. The firm was also keen to highlight its security credentials in light of recent revelations of NSA snooping and the like.

At Amazon’s AWS Enterprise Summit in London, senior vice president Andy Jassy told an audience of corporate technical leaders that cloud computing was the future of IT delivery, and that it made more sense to outsource this to a public cloud provider such as AWS than to build it themselves. "The reason customers typically get started with the cloud is cost…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

Cloud computing networking is in greater demand among IT professionals. According to a new survey, the majority of IT professionals are familiar with cloud networking and its benefits.

Cloudification and the Network

The survey, titled "The Cloudification of the Network," by Pertino and Spiceworks, was recently featured in CloudTech. It found that cloud networking tools were being considered for implementation within the next year by 45 percent of IT professionals. The rest of the respondents plan to consider cloud networking software within the next two years. The survey also found that more than 70 percent of the IT professionals interviewed said they are familiar with cloud networking. They pointed to easier management, mobile access and the option of disaster recovery as the top reasons for planning a solid networking strategy…

Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Michael Vizard.

When it comes to cloud computing, one of the biggest challenges faced by IT organizations is that the cloud creates another isolated stack of computing to manage. In fact, the total cost of managing that additional stack of computing can wind up negating any of the savings derived from leveraging infrastructure as a service (IaaS) in the cloud.

What most enterprise IT organizations need in the cloud is an environment that looks and functions in much the same way their own internal data center does. Looking to help IT organizations achieve that goal, NetApp today previewed a federated instance of its Clustered Data OnTap storage management platform that can be deployed across private and public cloud computing environments…

Grazed from ABA. Author: John Ginovsky.

With 90% of companies claiming some form of cloud usage, many organizations have moved to the next step, leveraging multiple cloud models in different combinations to optimize benefits and efficiencies, according to new research from CompTIA, the nonprofit association for the information technology industry.

As cloud computing becomes a default part of the IT landscape, more companies are relying on cloud computing for business processes such as storage (59%), business continuity and disaster recovery (48%), and security (44%), CompTIA’s Fourth Annual Trends in Cloud Computing study reveals…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudius Systems today announced a breakthrough open source approach to application deployment. The new open source project, OSV, is designed to run efficiently on top of hypervisors, allowing operating systems to better optimize CPU consumption and overhead memory. By running on a single application, resulting in unparalleled throughput and latency, OSV minimizes operating costs by reducing the need for administration, template management, patching and tuning of applications. OSV has been developed by a team of OS veterans including Avi Kivity, Dor Laor, Benny Schnaider—creators of the KVM hypervisor.

The Need for a New OS

Unlike new infrastructure such as hypervisors, NoSQL, PaaS, etc., the operating system has been virtually unchanged since the introduction of cloud computing. Typical cloud workloads run application servers using Java, Ruby, Python and JavaScript (node.js). This historical evolution is not ideal – the run time (JVM), the OS and the hypervisor implement parallel/duplicated mechanisms for protection and abstraction. Together, these mechanisms are redundant and impose a large overhead in terms of CPU and memory…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Kevin L. Jackson.

In December 2012, Cary Landis and I made 10 predictions about how cloud computing was likely to evolve this year and how those changes were likely to impact enterprise computing. But things are moving fast in the world of cloud computing, reaffirming some of those predictions and altering others. Here’s a recap of what I predicted then and an update of how I see those trends unfolding now.

1. Cloud technologies will converge.

The cloud will continue to forge a massive convergence of technologies — similar to the evolution of the cellphone to the smartphone. The lines between platform-as-a-service (PaaS) and cloud services brokerages will blur into a conceptual operating system for the "Web as a platform" — providing tools to allow users to take advantage of multiple cloud solutions at once, and bringing the cloud closer to the end user in more meaningful ways…