Category: News

Grazed from Atelier.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Has Cloud computing become a practical reality among French companies yet? The simple answer is yes, even though this does not hold true for every firm and few companies are showing signs of having a real strategic approach to the Cloud. These are the findings of Pierre Audoin Consultants (PAC) in the first edition of their CloudIndex*, whose purpose is to assess on a half-yearly basis the state of play among French companies in terms of Cloud computing. In June 2013, the maturity rating was 443 out of 1000 on the basis of a survey of over 220 firms. The results of the first CloudIndex show that migrating to the Cloud is first and foremost motivated by firms’ desire to increase flexibility rather than reduce their costs.

Flexibility, number one benefit of Cloud computing

This is especially the case for the adoption of software as a service (SaaS), the spearhead of Cloud computing in France, as it simplifies the deployment of applications in the fields of Human Resources, Customer Relationship Management and office automation, dispensing with initial financial investment by shifting the necessary expenditure from capital investment to operating costs…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Cynthia Harvey.

At its Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft launched a "smart city" initiative it calls CityNext. The goal is to make cities more efficient and responsive through big data and cloud computing technology provided by Microsoft.

InformationWeek’s Michael Endler reported, "Microsoft on Wednesday announced CityNext, a global initiative intended to develop ‘smart cities’ around the world. Unveiled at the company’s Worldwide Partner Conference in Houston, the plan leverages Microsoft’s Partner Network to help cities become more efficient even as they struggle with austere budgets and decaying urban infrastructure. If CityNext succeeds, cities will improve efficiency by installing Microsoft products that harness the cloud and big data."…

Grazed from CBR. Author: Editorial Staff.

Oracle has launched a new version of its Cloud Application Foundation together with updated 12c Java technologies including Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF), Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse.

Integrating application server and in-memory data grid capabilities into a base for cloud computing, the new Cloud Application Foundation offers a platform that enables launching latest applications, shorten operations, ramp up time-to-market and reduce overall ownership cost, while obtaining more value from their existing application infrastructure…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

DigitalOcean is a different kind of cloud supplier. It’s added nearly two terabytes of solid state disks (actually 1,920 GBs) to each of its cloud hosts, letting customers spin up a server in 55 seconds. And that seems to score with Ruby developers, a core customer group who like to see their Rails applications running with the click of mouse. Digital Ocean has also made it easy to deploy a server through its Web-based management console.

When Ronald van Woensel, a veteran user of Amazon Web Services, did a benchmark workload with DigitalOcean, he found that it ran slower than another startup he was testing, but faster than Amazon. "DigitalOcean is about half the speed of Linode, in spite of their fast SSD disks. But they are still six times faster than Amazon," he concluded in a July 2 blog on his benchmark, which was picked up and published on Hacker News…

Grazed from BroadBandBreakfast. Author: Josh Evans.

A panel of experts discussed the potential for the use of cloud computing by federal agencies at an event held by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation on Wednesday morning. The security of cloud computing was a primary concern for many of the panelists. Matt Wood, General Manager of Data Science for Amazon Web Services, described the cooperative approach that Amazon takes to security on its cloud services. He said Amazon secures the infrastructure itself, but customers are responsible for securing its systems that utilize cloud computing.

Terry Halvorsen, Chief Information Officer of the Department of the Navy, also suggested careful consideration of what data to put in cloud storage as another solution to security concerns. Data that is accessible to the public under the Freedom of Information Act can be placed on public storage without fear, he noted…

Grazed from MBTMag. Author: Patrick Carey.

A few weeks ago I was trying to update some files I have stored on a cloud storage service (that will remain nameless). I had moved my files there a while back as a way to make it easier to access them from my various devices and to avoid losing them during the next inevitable hard drive failure. For the most part I’ve been happy with the service, but on this day, I was unable to access the site. Not good, as I was rushing to make some changes and send the files to a colleague.

Frustrated by my situation, I asked a co-worker to see if he was also having problems. He was, so we did the next logical thing you would expect. We went to the service provider’s status page to see what they had to say. According to it, the service was healthy and there were no current service or maintenance notices…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Cliff Saran.

Steve Ballmer has unveiled plans to reinvent Microsoft with a big push to develop hardware from phones to set top boxes, as it attempts to remain relevant in the era of IT consumerisation. In a memo to staff, the bullish CEO stated: “The bedrock of our new strategy is innovation in deep, rich, high-value experiences and activities. "It’s the starting point for differentiated devices integrated with services. Our family will include phones, tablets, PCs, 2-in-1s, TV-attached devices and other devices to be imagined and developed.”

Addressing the success of Apple in creating a homogenous hardware and cloud environment with desirable devices, Ballmer said: “No technology company has as yet delivered a definitive family of devices useful all day for work and for play, connected with every bit of a person’s information available through one cloud.”…

Grazed from RackSpace. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud service provider and hosting company Rackspace (RAX) has tapped former VMware (VMW) CMO Rick Jackson as the company’s new CMO, looking to leverage his industry knowledge and Rackspace’s leadership position around hybrid cloud computing.

Jackson, who joined the company at the beginning of July, will direct Rackspace’s global marketing strategy and execution toward the company’s hybrid cloud goals and initiatives. Before Rackspace, Jackson was responsible for leading VMware’s global marketing strategy, a CMO role he held since early 2009. He also held chief marketing roles at Borland Software and BEA Systems…

Grazed from Caspio. Author: PR Announcement.

Caspio, Inc. (http://www.caspio.com), the leading platform-as-a-service for custom business applications, today announced that it has introduced an entirely new pricing plan that breaks the traditional PaaS pricing model by removing all caps on applications, users, storage, and email messages. Caspio’s new Standard plan now includes all available platform features and resources to create unlimited web applications, making it the most cost-effective way for companies to utilize do-it-yourself PaaS technology for custom business apps.

A cloud pioneer since 2000, Caspio has led the PaaS industry offering "unlimited user" pricing since its founding. Unlike other platforms, Caspio allows any number of employees, customers, members, partners or web visitors to access applications at no additional cost. The latest pricing change is a reflection of the company’s continued commitment to usage-based pricing that reduces adoption barriers and maximizes the economies of scale available from cloud technology…

Grazed from Fujitsu. Author: PR Announcement.

Fujitsu today delivers the choice and integration support services that organisations need to keep pace with change, innovate their businesses and navigate cloud complexity. Leveraging its ICT heritage and international presence, Fujitsu declares a global strategy and strengthens every aspect of its end-to-end portfolio of services and solutions for cloud. The company also introduces the concept of Cloud Integration, new offerings and harmonised naming conventions.

Most business leaders agree that the cloud can help them address many challenges. It is also seen as a catalyst for business transformation, particularly in the era of social, mobile and big data explosion. However, according to independent international research commissioned by Fujitsu, 59% of decision-makers believe decisions about cloud adoption are more complex and difficult in their companies, based on their unique mix of corporate culture, organisational structures, geographic presence, infrastructure, processes and other factors…