Category: News

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Pedro Hernandez.

Software innovation, mobile devices and a host of advancements in IT are contributing to an era of profound technological change, according to Microsoft ex-CEO Bill Gates. New advances in software and increasingly more powerful hardware are paving the way for a computing renaissance, of sorts, according to Microsoft’s influential cofounder and current chairman, Bill Gates. In a June 15 address at Microsoft Research’s Faculty Summit in Redmond, Wash., Gates said "I think it’s fair to say that we’re in a golden age of computer science."

Hinting that innovations like cloud computing are finally putting within reach some his early ambitions for his software company, Gates harkened to "the original vision of Microsoft, that we ought to dream about what software could do if we had infinite computing and infinite storage." "That almost is our reality today," he added…

Grazed from SiliconAngle. Author: Mike Wheately.

Wikibon Senior Analyst Stu Miniman recently stated that while cloud computing has been much talked about over the past five years, we’re still in the early stages. Which means there’s still lots that can be improved upon with cloud storage and cloud storage security just some of the chief concerns.

Google is said to be experimenting with new methods of encrypting files stored in its Google Drive product, but with Ed Snowden’s revelations that the government is in cahoots with leading US internet firms to snoop on people’s lives, the looming question is what can people do to keep their files secure? With cloud storage replacing the use of USB sticks to keep files at the ready, some are questioning whether it is wise to use these services knowing that the government can easily take a peek at your files…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bernard Golden.

A couple weeks ago, I discussed how cloud computing enables affordable agility. Automated provisioning and easy scalability make it possible, for the first time, for companies to experience infrastructure agility.
However, it’s a mistake to assume that agile infrastructure equals application agility (by which I mean both delivering applications into production more quickly and having those applications easily grow and shrink in terms of scale).

In fact, one commonly encounters IT personnel who assume that the mere fact of hosting an application in a cloud environment will magically transform it into an all-singing, all-dancing agile application. That’s far from the truth. Cloud infrastructure is necessary but insufficient to achieve overall application agility…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Tableau Software, the poster boy for next-generation analytics software and, now, Wall Street darling, is taking to the cloud with a new Software-as-a-Service offering called Tableau Online. However, while the delivery model is new, the new product itself is really just the same Tableau Server option users have come to know and love (or not).

According to Ellie Fields, a product marketing manager at Tableau, the differences between the new offering and Tableau Server are “very minor” save for the way they’re bought and delivered. The cloud version is less expensive (only $500 per user per year) and is faster and easier to get started with, as SaaS versions of traditional software products tend to be…

[slideshow: 5, layout=top, order=middle, rotate=15, blend=0, height=100%, width=575, fit=0, nowrap=0, dir=|slideshows/5cloudstartups/|yes||Generic Photos|Aren’t they great?||]

Grazed from HNZ Media.  Author: Events Announcement.

To further promote the rapid and sound development of the cloud computing industry and provide insiders and most customers with a platform discussing cloud computing technology and application, 2013 World Cloud Computing Conference jointly organized by the HNZ Media and the ictchina.net intends to be held from 27 to 28 November 2013 in Beijing Exhibition Center.

Showcases will be specially set up to display the latest cloud computing products, services, applications, and research results and share the experience of the cloud computing development so as to promote global innovation and co-operation.

For more information and registration details, please visit  http://www.cloudcomputingworld.cn/2013yunjisuan_English

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Google App Engine gained ground as a developer platform Wednesday when Google added a dedicated, as opposed to shared, caching service that can significantly speed up many applications. The move puts App Engine on a more equal footing with Microsoft’s Windows Azure and Amazon Web Services, which launched its ElastiCache service in August 2011. Platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offerings Heroku and Engine Yard also offer caching services.

The App Engine service is based on open source Memcached (pronounced "mem-cache d"), a caching system that automatically saves frequently used data to cache and, when necessary, pushes out aging data as it falls into disuse. It was created by Brad Fitzpatrick in 2003 to support the operation of the interactive consumer site LiveJournal. It was later rewritten in C and became a popular open source code module…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

RiverMeadow Software, a software developer with the most peaceful name in the automated server migration space, has launched the 2.0 version of its Cloud Migration SaaS. Developed to accommodate both Linux and Microsoft (MSFT) Windows server-to-cloud migrations, the cloud migration software is intended to automate the cloud migration process to make the switch quicker and remove the need to install agents or take servers out of production.

According to RiverMeadow, as long as the customer’s chosen IaaS supporters Windows or Linux, the cloud migration offering can migrate source servers as-is to the cloud. That’s good for customers, but for solution providers, this could be an incredible time-saver. Of course, RiverMeadow isn’t the only vendor with a cloud migration tool or service on the market, and there are plenty of options to choose. But automation is key in making that initial switch as painless as possible…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider, Databarracks, has today launched its white paper ‘The Real Challenges and Benefits of Cloud Computing to Law Firms’. The paper investigates the current state of the cloud according to a variety of senior IT professionals from within the legal sector including Berwin Leighton Paisner, Sidley Austin LLP and Stephens Scown Solicitors.

Written by Frank Jennings, Commercial and Cloud lawyer at DMH Stallard LLP and Chair of the Cloud Industry Forum’s Code Governance Board, the paper examines experiences and attitudes of those who have adopted cloud services. It highlights their common concerns and perceived barriers to entry, most prominently security of data…

Grazed from IT-Director. Author: Neil Ward-Dutton.

While I was at IBM’s IMPACT conference in the spring, I participated in a panel with Sandy Kemsley and Bruce Silver, and also Pierre Haren and Eric Herness of IBM. The theme was about the future of BPM and, among other things, we were asked to talk about the impact of the ‘big 4′ technology trends that everyone talks about—Social, Mobile, Cloud Computing and Big Data Analytics—on BPM discipline, business cases and results over the coming years.

Like all keen panellists, I did a bit of prep on these topics before we actually got onto the stage—making sure I’d thought through various angles and thought of ways to explain them plainly to what looked like it would be quite a mixed audience. As we got towards the end of the panel session I was glad I’d done that prep. We were all asked to provide some closing thoughts to the audience, and something struck me in the moment. We’d all been talking about the impact of social, mobile, cloud computing and big data as isolated concerns in the context of business processes; but really, they’re all very much connected together…