Category: News

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

The United States is the international leader in cloud computing, dominating every segment of the nearly $130 billion industry. However, recent revelations about the extent to which the National Security Administration obtains data from third-parties through the PRISM program, may lead to significant changes in the global cloud market which will negatively impact U.S. cloud providers. The Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) estimates the U.S. cloud computing industry stands to lose between $22 and $35 billion in total revenue by 2016.

“Many foreign customers are now deciding whether the risks of storing data with a U.S. company are worth the benefits, and foreign cloud service providers will ruthlessly exploit this perceived weakness to gain market share,” says Daniel Castro, author of the new report “How Much Will PRISM Cost the U.S. Cloud Computing Industry?” and a Senior Analyst with ITIF. “In addition, some countries may use PRISM as an excuse to enact a series of protectionist policies to restrict access to their markets and promote their domestic cloud providers.”…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Dimension Data, the $5.8 billion global ICT solutions and services provider, today announced it has launched Cloud Backup, an optional backup and recovery service available as an add-on to its enterprise-class Public, Private and Hosted Private Compute-as-a-Service (CaaS) offerings. With Cloud Backup, organizations are able to back up their files, folders, systems, applications and data to Dimension Data’s cloud data centers to ensure business continuity and protection for enterprise workloads. Dimension Data offers three classes of Cloud Backup that address the need for simple file and folder backup, as well as full application, system, and file backup and restore:

• Cloud Backup Essentials – file and folder backup and restore
• Cloud Backup Advanced – file, folder, and system state backup and restore
• Cloud Backup Enterprise – file, folder, system state, and application backup and restore…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Backupify, the leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solutions for Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, today announced plans to expand their support for multiple data storage providers to give customers more ownership over their data. Universal support for data storage providers helps companies control and manage their data – completely on their terms.

According to research firm IDC, it is estimated that public cloud services will account for almost $100 billion in spending by 2016. Not surprisingly, as more organizations embrace cloud computing solutions, there has been a significant increase in the amount of critical organizational data stored in the cloud. With vast amounts of data stored in SaaS apps and in the cloud, enterprise companies are seeking enhanced security, privacy, control, and access…

Grazed from BriefingWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Verticomm Technologies, an experienced technology management service provider now manages Googles cloud computing services. Cloud computing is an expression used for describing the computing concept where instead of keeping resources on users local computer or laptop or tablet, data is moved to a server which is controlled by a company. User just need a username and password to log in and can avail all the information.

Users can access all files and applications completely through the web. These files can be documents, emails, music files and collections of photos, etc. In addition to individual files, one can also access complex pieces of software over the internet through the Linux cloud computing and open source community, referred as SaaS-software as a service…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Jolie O’Dell.

ClearDATA, a startup working in healthcare and cloud computing, has pulled together a tidy $7 million in its second round of institutional funding. The funding came from Excel Venture Management and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) and will be used mostly for marketing and sales.

ClearDATA focuses on making secure, HIPPA-, HITECH Act-, and ePHI-compliant cloud software for healthcare professionals and organizations. Its platform is designed to cut costs while improving productivity and regulatory compliance. Products include a HIPAA-compliant cloud, medical imaging storage, automation, disaster recovery, offsite backup, virtual desktop infrastructure, and security services…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to Cnet security reporter Declan McCullogh, the FBI is pressuring telecom carriers (such as AT&T and Verizon) to install "port reader" software that would allow the agency to intercept and analyze entire communication streams in real time. Carriers seem to be resisting, but the FBI claims it has the right to do this under the Patriot Act. Although the recent NSA scandal has not been put to bed yet, most of us who deploy cloud computing technology have dialed that situation into our thinking.

However, this latest attempt to monitor electronic communications goes a bit further and creates more concern that moving data into the cloud means the government can leaf through your data willy-nilly. As I pointed out last week, U.S. cloud providers are already suffering from fears due to the NSA scandal. Many European companies are hesitant to use U.S.-based cloud services when they consider the risk that the U.S. government’s spying may come along from the ride…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM will furlough U.S. hardware employees to cut costs in late August and early September 2013. Employees will take a week off with one-third pay, Bloomberg reported. Ouch. The key takeaway: Cloud computing is squeezing IBM’s hardware business, and the value of IBM’s x86 server business could be falling — even more — each quarter.

First, the official news. Bloomberg reported:

"U.S. hardware employees, including those involved in development and procurement, will take a furlough week with one-third pay starting either Aug. 24 or 31, said Jay Cadmus, a spokesman for the Systems and Technology Group. Executives in the division will take no pay during the week…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Many small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) may not understand the differences between a backup and archive tool — so how should you explain it to them? Backup and recovery software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications solutions provider Backupify covered this discussion in a blog post, explaining why an SMB would need a backup solution, an archive solution, or both.

Backupify’s Sheila Lahar summed up the differences in a simple sentence: "Archiving is for discovery while backups are for recovery." Since Lahar’s memory trick may need a little more explaining, so she divided the article up into two sections: when to use an archiving tool and when to use an backup tool…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Rhonda Sherwood.

Is cloud computing the single greatest threat to your IT career? If the thought has crossed your mind, you’re not alone. Some in IT fear the cloud; others worry that it could be a threat to data security. But more and more organizations are realizing that it’s the smart way to go. And that means there’s a good chance you’ll soon be faced with the next step in your IT strategy: Taking your service-as-a-software solution to the cloud. Does that mean it’s time to rethink your career?

There are many misconceptions surrounding the cloud. But often they have more to do with concerns over job security than anything else. Hosting providers often get the same questions from IT managers: What will my department do once my company decides to take its email architecture and services to the cloud? If my organization hosts its SharePoint site with you, will my team become obsolete?..

Grazed from The Virtualization Practice. Author: Edward Haletky.

In many cases, when we mention Data Protection for the Hybrid Cloud, we are usually talking about backing up to the cloud. The cloud becomes a repository of our backup images and in some cases those backup images can be launched within clouds that use the same technology. Being able to send data to the cloud is becoming table stakes for infrastructure as a service (IaaS) data protection. However, once we move outside the realm of IaaS to Platform or Software as a Service (PaaS or SaaS), data protection is hit or miss.

Data Protection is a piece of the larger hybrid cloud security story as we discussed in Securing the Hybrid Cloud and as seen in Figure 1. In many cases Data Protection is used to transition virtual machines and data to the cloud, and in some cases back again. For this to work, the data protection tool must use an identity to contact the cloud, authenticate and authorize itself, then speak the appropriate API to move the data to the cloud. In most cases, the API used, is the one provided by the data protection tool. Yet the identity is the identity of the user with rights to access the data center as well as the cloud and is most likely an administrative user in both. That identity is controlled by just the use of user name, password, and perhaps a secondary password (or authentication key)…