Category: News

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

The US Federal government continues to ramp up cloud spending, with both public and private clouds on the radar for increased adoption over the next five years. Although security and reliability have in large measure driven the adoption of private solutions, public alternatives should see federal investment of up to $7.7 billion by 2017. Just like private sector enterprises, the government is aiming for a best-of-both-worlds model. So what does this mean for midsize IT?

Slow, Then Fast

According to a July 2013 report by IDC, the 2014 fiscal year will be "flat" for federal cloud computing investments; even so, the federal government will still spend $118.3 million on public clouds and $1.7 billion on private clouds. Shawn McCarthy of IDC says that beyond 2014, "[G]rowth potential looks bright. Investments should reach a critical mass around 2015 and beyond." The research firm predicts a renewed focus on cloud computing within the next 18 months…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Warwick Ashford.

The time has come for service providers and consumers to move to a security model better suited to the cloud computing era, says cloud-based content management and collaboration firm Box.com. The firm has pursued transparency or openness as a key policy to establish trust with customers concerned about security in the cloud environment.

Customers are able to access all activity and transactions related to their content and even download that data to their security information and event management (Siem) systems. They also have access to SOC1, SSAE16, SOC2, ISO27001 and internal audit reports and quarterly penetration test reports. Box.com even allows customers to perform their own penetration tests…

Grazed from Yahoo. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer has announced that he is to retire from his position with the company within the next year – but not before a successor has been identified and hired. The unexpected news follows on the heels of former Xbox supremo Don Mattrick’s defection to Zynga earlier this year, and points at the possibility of futher managerial changes happening as the company restructures for the future.

Speaking about the announcement, Ballmer said "There is never a perfect time for this type of transition, but now is the right time. We have embarked on a new strategy with a new organization and we have an amazing senior leadership team. My original thoughts on timing would have had my retirement happen in the middle of our company’s transformation to a devices and services company. We need a CEO who will be here longer term for this new direction." There have been no rumours as to who may succeed Balmer, but Microsoft confirms it will be casting a wide net, looking both internally and externally for his replacement.

Grazed from Datamation. Author: James McGuire.

Looking for advice and guidance about private cloud computing? Visit the Private Cloud Project Center for case studies, a product comparison matrix, an RFP template and more. Clearly, the number of private cloud computing deployments is growing by leaps and bounds. Recent QuinStreet Enterprise Research indicates that private cloud is the most popular type of cloud deployment, and will likely far outpace the public cloud over the next year. The survey shows that 36 percent of respondents currently have a private cloud and an additional 29 percent expect to deploy a private cloud.

The popularity of this emerging technology is no surprise. A private cloud enables enterprises to use software to pool resources into a unified virtualized computing environment. This software defined computing resource – whether large or small – is far more dynamic and scalable than a traditional hardware-centric data center. In some cases it offers greater ability to leverage third party resources on an on-demand basis. While many enterprises host a private cloud in-house, some firms hire an external provider to host their private deployment…

Grazed from DataCenter Knowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

It’s been far too long since we’ve had another hot tech buzz term. But new conversations are beginning to emerge around Fog Computing. Closely resembling the concepts of cloud computing, the Fog aims to take services, workloads, applications and large amounts of data and deliver it all to the edge of the network. The goal is to provide core data, compute, storage, and application services on a truly distributed level.

Fog takes the data and workload technology to a new level. We’re now talking about edge computing – the home of the Fog. Data is now being delivered in large quantities to many more users. To optimize the concept of the cloud, organizations need a way to deliver content to end users through a more geographically distributed platform. The idea of fog computing is to distribute data to move it closer to the end-user to eliminate latency and numerous hops, and support mobile computing and data streaming…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Joe Donovan.

Tax laws are always a few beats behind technology. Interstate telephone calls were taxed based on the billing address of the phone customer and the location at the end of some copper wire of sending and receiving equipment. Now one end of a call may be on a subway line, the other in an airplane traveling from Boston to Paris. Who gets to tax it?

The latest conundrum: Both business-to-business and business-to-consumer transactions are moving to the cloud, and some startups are putting all of their IT infrastructure in provider sites. How, in an integrated 50-state economy, are tax concepts supposed to deal with this in a way that’s practical and doesn’t become an unfair burden for any entity? Of course, all computing takes place on servers that are physically located somewhere. Maybe you hire a cloud provider to store company records. You may not know where those records are at any given moment…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Poor HP (HPQ). The technology giant is experiencing trouble, as indicated by CEO Meg Whitman only a couple of days ago during a Q3 2013 earnings call. As Talkin’ Cloud noted in its coverage, HP failed to provide any evidence of cloud computing momentum during the quarter, and the company even scaled back its revenue expectations for the 2014 fiscal year.

However, the company is placing big bets on cloud computing and is hoping to drive that future success through its channel partners. Cassandra Mooshian, an industry analyst with Technology Business Research (TBR), noted that HP Enterprises Services is continuing to struggle and will likely weaken even more through the rest of 2013 and into 2014. But cloud—and partner success in cloud—may be the bright spot that could turn the struggling business unit around…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Sourya Biswas.

The private cloud has become a popular option for enterprises who desire the numerous advantages of cloud computing but do not want to relinquish the control that public cloud adoption will force. However, private cloud implementations come with their own set of challenges.

Private cloud, as an approach to IT operations, calls for organizations to transform their data centers, including the network. Using strategic points of control to aggregate and dynamically provision IT resources can help organizations meet network-related challenges and move past the hype to successfully build, deploy, and secure private clouds…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The International Association of Cloud & Managed Service Providers (MSPAlliance®), today announced it would be addressing the issues of data privacy and security related to public cloud computing at its MSPWorld Fall Conference, to be held October 6-8 in San Jose, California.

In response to recent government surveillance programs implicating public cloud computing vendors, and including reports that the cloud, hosting, and outsourcing providers could lose up to $180 billion in lost business as a result of these surveillance programs, MSPAlliance believes there are practical and effective strategies IT service providers can implement in order to safeguard against these unnecessary losses…

Grazed from InfoSecurity. Author: Editorial Staff.

The United States’ National Science Foundation (NSF) has pumped nearly $20 million into three cybersecurity initiatives, to support collaborative, multi-university research and education activities that will help protect the nation’s critical infrastructure.

"Cybersecurity is one of the most significant economic and national security challenges facing our nation today," said Farnam Jahanian, the NSF’s assistant director for computer and information science and engineering (CISE), in a statement. "NSF’s investments in foundational research will transform our capacity to secure personal privacy, financial assets, and national interests. These new Frontier awards will enable innovative approaches to cybersecurity, with potential benefits to all sectors of our economy."…