Category: News

Grazed from ARN.  Author: Nermin Bajric.

Unified identity services provider, Centrify, has boosted its product suite by signing its first specialist Cloud computing partner, Paradyne.  The partnership, which will be formally launched at Microsoft’s TechEd conference later this week, will see Paradyne’s Cloud expertise applied to Centrify’s portfolio.

Earlier this year, Centrify extend its product set from the datacentre to the Cloud through Centrify for Mobile 2013 and Centrify for SaaS 2013.  The integrated capabilities are designed to deliver secure, enterprise-class mobility with integrated application single sign-on (SSO) for security and productivity…

Grazed from PRWeb.   Author: PR Announcement.

Awesome Cloud Services, the company that delivers hosted IT infrastructure solutions enabling channel partners to offer cloud services to their clients, created an infographic illustrating the future growth of cloud computing. The infographic also showcases the opportunity for technology providers to generate new revenue by providing cloud services to their clients as part of the Awesome Cloud Services partnership program.

The infographic is interesting in that it not only outlines the growth rate of cloud services by segment but also predicts growth. For example, by 2014, 60% of server workload will be virtualized meaning more businesses will be utilizing cloud services. Of all the cloud computing revenues, about 50% comes from the US and currently, 40% of the customer relationship management (CRM) systems sold globally are cloud-based…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

No offense to the others — they’ve been great — but this week’s Structure Show podcast might be favorite one yet. Barb Darrow and I spoke with computer wunderkind Chris Kemp, who’s currently co-founder and CEO of cloud computing startup Nebula, about his time as CIO and CTO at NASA, and the crazy things he saw and did there. Oh, and he has some thoughts on OpenStack — which his team at NASA helped create — as well.  Here are some highlights. But if you’re into cloud computing or even space exploration, you really should listen to the whole thing. Seriously.

On the complexity of walking into NASA, as a twenty-something, having worked primarily with normal IT systems: “Literally every technology that has ever been sold has been bought by NASA, and NASA has invented a lot of technology that has never been sold. So it’s really difficult to communicate just how diverse and federated and interesting the infrastructure is at NASA.”…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: John Savageau.

Normally, when we think of technical-related training, images of rooms loaded with switches, routers, and servers might come to mind.    Cloud computing is different.  In reality, cloud computing is not a technology, but rather a framework employing a variety of technologies – most notably virtualization, to solve business problems or enable opportunities.  From our own practice, the majority of cloud training students represent non-technical careers and positions. Our training does follow the CompTIA Cloud Essentials course criterion, and is not a technical course, so the non-technical student trend should not come as any big surprise. 

What does come as a surprise is how enthusiastically our students dig into the topic.  Whether business unit managers, accounting and finance, sales staff, or executives, all students come into class convinced they need to know about cloud computing as an essential part of their future career progression, or even at times to ensure their career survival…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author:  Chris Preimesberger.

The significance of secure data sharing could not be more important within the overall IT industry. Security remains the single most important question mark that still causes doubt about cloud computing, especially in regulated verticals such as financials, government and science.   For an increasing number of enterprises, private clouds and new-generation security are the best ways to handle data- and file-sharing.

A recent survey Palmer Research and eWEEK publisher QuinStreet’s reported that 65 percent of respondents currently use or plan to use a private cloud deployment model for internal purposes or for application inside value chains. Thirty-six percent of respondents say they are now running a private cloud, with 29 percent planning to use a private cloud. Those are big numbers at this early stage, and there are good reasons for them…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Cloud computing means more than cheaper and better-run IT resources. It means new ways of doing business, many of which have yet to be discovered. But some solid examples of cloud-enabled transformation are now surfacing.  Recently, research firm Saugatuck Technology reached out to 53 very senior IT and business leaders using social media tools to gauge how important and impactful cloud (and related technologies such as mobile, social, big data, advanced analytics and sensors) are in driving business innovation.

In a part quantitative, part qualitative study, executives provided views on technologies paving the way for business innovation. About 75% of the respondents are CIOs or CTOs, and more than two-thirds in companies with greater than $1 billion in revenue…

Grazed from Mashable.  Author: Christina Warren.

In the past, one of the primary concerns about the cloud was reliability — could you count on it to be available when you need it? Today, most major cloud offerings are at least as reliable as any other solution. Instead, we’ve seen concerns shift to the "security" of data stored on the cloud. (Thanks a lot, NSA.)  Whether or not you can "trust" the cloud often depends completely on what you are doing and what type of service you are using.

When we talk about the cloud, we’re usually talking about a few different things. First and most commonly, we have consumer or business facing cloud-based applications and services. The most popular example here is something like Dropbox or Google Docs. Rather than running an application off of your computer, you run an instance — usually in a web app (but you can do it using mobile too) directly from the Internet…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Louis Columbus.

Gaining insights into cloud computing hiring trends is invaluable to understanding the competitive landscape and direction of new application and platform development.  It’s also invaluable for any company looking to recruit cloud computing professionals.  For qualified job seekers, staying on top of these trends can and does lead to well-timed career moves, higher salaries and greater chances for professional growth.

Real-time business intelligence of the talent marketplace is a fascinating area to track.  Wanted Analytics is a leader in this field, and their analytics applications and advanced data sets are used for competitive analysis, sourcing new hires, analyzing employment and economic trends, and lead generation.  I’ve never worked for Wanted Analytics and they’re not a client…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

KVH Co. Ltd., Asia’s leading information delivery platform, and Zadara™ Storage, Inc., an award-winning provider of enterprise-class private cloud storage by the hour, today announced the two companies are working together to deliver Zadara’s Enterprise Storage-as-a-Service to KVH and Amazon Web Services (AWS) customers in Japan, building on the strength of the AWS cloud platform and demonstrating KVH’s commitment to continuously enhancing its growing ecosystem of solution providers within its infrastructure services. This service will be available from 17th September, 2013.

As today’s enterprises are facing the challenges of rapidly increasing data volumes, enterprise-grade storage solutions are still proving to involve high hardware costs in cases of storage expansion, as well as high human resource costs for maintenance and operation. The Zadara Storage Enterprise Storage-as-a-Service offering, Virtual Private Storage Array™ (VPSA™), is designed to address enterprise needs, such as volume-sharing, NAS and dedicated spindles, by providing a highly scalable and cost-efficient cloud storage solution that can be delivered by the hour, allowing for scaling of capacity and performance up or down on-demand, and permitting unprecedented user self-service provisioning and administrative control under completely private environments…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Mary Shacklett.

The beauty of infrastructure as a service (IaaS) is its ability to provide IT resources to companies as they need them. This gives data center managers the option of not having to spend hard dollars for resources that might stand idle 80 percent of the time at the same time that it turns processing and storage into commodities that can be ordered whenever they’re needed.

But there are inherent risks in this thinking—beginning with the fact that IaaS “commodity shopping” is not as clearcut as picking up whatever happens to be on special in a given week. Who you select for your IaaS services matters—and the decision you make should consider more than price. Here are six items that should be on your IaaS “checklist” when you go looking for an IaaS provider:…