Category: News

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Tim Lohman.

Cloud service providers Google, Telstra, and Microsoft have warned that making a proposed new Cloud Computing Consumer Protocol mandatory will stifle the emerging cloud market and leave businesses, consumers, and startups worse off. The protocol, proposed by the Australian Computer Society (ACS) on behalf of the Australian government, is aimed at encouraging greater take-up of cloud services, particularly by small businesses and not-for-profits by better informing them on issues such as privacy, data security, and data ownership.

Pressing for the protocol to remain voluntary, Telstra in its submission said that there is a "growing and vibrant market" for cloud services in Australia, characterised by an extensive range of competing services and underpinned by well-developed existing consumer protections…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: James McGuire.

As the Head of Technical Strategy for Rackspace International, Toby Owen is responsible for ensuring the organization has the technical capabilities to cover current and future roadmap commitments, and leading the technical go-to-market strategy for new International markets. In this interview, we spoke about the most common issues companies deal with as they migrate to the cloud, including choosing a vendor and understanding the importance of service agreements.

1) When a company looks for a cloud computing vendor, what are some key questions they should ask?

One item to understand is whether your cloud vendor has a complete set of features. Everyone has virtualized servers (aka compute), but what about database services? Load balancers? Deployment automation capabilities? Do ALL the services have API access. In other words, will they work well in a fully automated deployment and management capability, where the application itself can participate in configuring the services to be used?…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Mike Elgan.

Revelations over the NSA’s aggressive data collection have ignited fears that customers will abandon U.S. cloud companies—or even cloud computing itself. The fears are unfounded and will dissolve. Here’s why…

What We Know So Far

The U.S. National Security Agency harvests communication metadata—who talked for how long on what device, etc.—in a program the NSA calls MAINWAY. It’s collected and stored; it’s also processed to discover suspicious activity. For example, if a terror suspect is apprehended, the metadata for people he contacted in the past may be analyzed…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

VMware is reshuffling its cloud computing cards with a plan to split intellectual property currently in vCloud Director into new integrations with vCenter and vCloud Automation Center, the company said this week. Exact details on which features of vCloud Director (vCD) will go into which part of VMware Inc.’s vCloud Suite are not available yet, but it’s a safe bet capabilities like multi-tenancy management would be pushed into vCloud Automation Center (vCAC), while constructs like the Virtual Data Center would fall into vCenter, said Mike Adams, a VMware spokesperson.

Customers with existing vCD deployments will have options for licensing as well as technical upgrades. How the licensing convergence will work depends on how they acquired vCD in the first place — as a standalone product or as part of the vCloud Suite, Adams said…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Engine Yard, the platform as a service (PaaS) cloud company, has recruited Salesforce.com and Cloud9 veteran Jim Burleigh as COO. Burleigh will now oversee Engine Yard’s sales, marketing, alliances, product management and support functions.

In the announcement, much in the way of congratulations and excitement were conveyed, but what wasn’t said is how this might affect Engine Yard’s channel program and its overall go-to-market strategy. Engine Yard’s channel program focuses on working with IaaS, SaaS and developer partners. Last year, the PaaS provider expanded its partner program with additional tracks, benefits and tools, so it seems (at least from the outside) that the company is committed to developing its partner program…

Grazed from PropertyCasualty360. Author: Phillip Torres.

Software as a Service (SaaS) is a model that can deliver business functionality while circumventing traditional issues related to the development, deployment, and support of large enterprise applications. SaaS is closely associated with centralized, remote architectures, cloud computing, and applications delivered via the Web and accessed via Web browsers.

Typically, SaaS vendors offer the enticement of lower deployment costs, with access to software on a subscription basis, and ongoing costs based on usage rather than outright ownership. A deployment model as attractive as this surely merits investigation by the insurance industry…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Centrify is taking its unified identity services offering to the Apple (AAPL) Mac world. The company launched Centrify User Suite, Mac Edition this week to provide Active Directory-based authentication, policy management, single sign-on (SSO) and user self-service for connected and remote Mac OS X systems.

Part of the announcement centers around the cloud capabilities being added for remote management and wipe of Mac computers. David McNeely, senior director of product management at Centrify, told Talkin’ Cloud this update of its Mac support essentially solves some of the SSO issues Mac users have had, but from a security standpoint, it also gives IT administrators and trusted advisors the ability to do remote wipes and remote locks via the cloud…

Grazed from Cloud Computing World Expo.  Author: Event Announcement.

For four years, the exhibition  World Expo Cloud Computing / Data Center Management Solutions  is becoming increasingly popular for a simple reason: it unveils the latest technologies and best practices of a professional computer finally mastered.  What is a perfectly controlled information system?  What is the Cloud?  What the best practices related to Cloud Security?

These points and more are the theme at the 2014 Cloud Computing World Expo, to be held in Paris La Defense, on April 9 -10, 2014 ...

For more information and registration, visit:  http://www.cloudcomputing-world.com

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Jonathan Birch.

Increasingly business complexity, broader technology adoption and changing expectations have forced a shift in the role of the IT department and how it delivers services. Part of this change has been driven by the advent of cloud computing, which has allowed CIOs to decrease operational budgets and focus more on designing and building applications as well as innovation.

The benefits of cloud computing are well established, but although it helps ‘do more with less’ it has drawbacks of its own. As such, what many companies are starting to realise is that a lack of integration between disparate applications and services is a major factor in the failure of organisations to achieve their larger strategic goals…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Joe Hewitson.

Cloud computing, in all its ambiguous glory, offers midsize IT professionals an unparalleled combination of flexibility and power. It is this aspect of the popular technology that has led many to believe traditional IT operations will slowly become obsolete. After all, the cloud has an inherent streamlining effect on computing resource management and, with the advent of virtualized environments, many IT tasks can be completed with the click of a button. However, a new study discussed in a recent Forbes article paints an entirely different picture of the effects of the cloud on modern midsize IT.

Cloud Dynamics

Cloud adoption is growing. It’s growing in both midsize and enterprise IT firms, where the technology has expanded to account for 23 percent of IT spending. With cloud computing permeating many aspects of midsize IT, certain changes are inevitable…