Category: News

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Salman Ul Haq.

Virtualization brings numerous security issues apart from the enormous benefits and productivity. Most of the organizations are reluctant to migrate to the cloud just because of the massive security vulnerabilities of cloud computing. Hypervisor, which is used in any virtualization environment to elevate the virtual machine collaboration, can be easily breached if not secured optimally. Hypervisor based cloud servers are always exposed to the Distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks and the “single point of failure” weakness of the hypervisor based cloud servers can easy be exploited to take down the whole cloud along with its resources. We will give you some state of the art yet simple ways to secure a cloud based virtualization environment which is using a hypervisor for virtual communication. You can use any one of the tips keeping in view the organizational needs and suitability.

Depleting the emulation frequency of the hypervisor and minimizing its remote calls to the resources across the cloud is one of the most useful and easy ways to secure a cloud. “NoHype” architecture makes sure that hypervisor does not have to interact with the virtual machines constantly. Allocation of the resources, I/O calls and assigning of processor cores is done before the start of the collaboration thus minimizing the active interaction time of the hypervisor…

Grazed from All Things Digital. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Oracle CEO Larry Ellison previewed a series of announcements next week concerning the company’s aims in the cloud computing and software-as-a-service business. During a conference call with analysts to discuss Oracle’s Q4 earnings results, Ellison said Oracle will next week make a series of “startling” announcements with several companies, including Microsoft and Salesforce.com.

“Next week we will be announcing partnerships with the largest and most important SAAS companies in the cloud, and they will be committing to our 12C technology for years to come,” Ellison said. He went on to name Salesforce and Microsoft among those companies…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: David Strom.

Cloud computing and data storage have quickly become tools of the trade for businesses of all sizes, and now a growing number of service providers have stepped up their game to deliver the next level of data security solutions to their customers via the cloud.

Traditionally data security was about having robust on-premises systems and software maintained by an in-house team. That’s changing. The non-profit industry group Cloud Security Alliance promotes advances in security using traditional models alongside web-based solutions…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Jack

Cloud computing has been changing the way businesses achieve greater innovation and agility, but it has also been impacting the way that actual employees interact with business tools and are able to do their work. 20 years ago, employees would typically have very powerful work stations, in the sense that the local, personal computer was where all the heavy processing and apps resided.

Today, moderately powerful workstations are the launching point for a broader mix of workloads, some local, some web enabled. Upwards of 75% of workloads employees are handling are now web-based, whether we are talking about email, CRM, analytics, etc. Some apps (I’m looking at you Quickbooks and Excel) are still local, but that’s changing, too…

Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Nancy Gohring.

During yesterday’s Reuters cloud panel discussion, executives talked about confusion and information overload in the cloud market that might be causing a bit of a growth stall, as businesses try to figure out their next moves. I agree, if only based on a couple emails I’ve gotten lately from IT admins struggling to suss out which vendor to go with given the rapid pace of change in the market.

It was John Engates, Rackspace’s CTO, who dubbed it “analysis paralysis.” Businesses are struggling to build their cloud strategies, including which vendor to choose and how to get started. “Things are in such a state of change right now I don’t think they can feel confident they’ve made the right decision at any point,” he said. “Every day there’s so much change coming at them. It’s happening at a lot of large enterprises, they don’t know who to partner with.”…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: John Ribiero.

Microsoft and Oracle are set to reveal details of a new partnership on Monday, one of a "startling series" of announcements Oracle CEO Larry Ellison promised next week around the Oracle Database 12c. Oracle will be announcing next week technology partnerships with the largest and most important SaaS (software as a service) companies and infrastructure companies in the cloud, who will be committing to Oracle technology "for years to come," Ellison told analysts during an earnings call on Thursday. He added that Oracle will announce partnerships with companies like Salesforce.com, NetSuite and Microsoft, but did not provide further details.

Many of the SaaS vendors, including NetSuite and Salesforce.com, have long used Oracle’s database to build their services, and will likely upgrade to 12c. Microsoft offers its competing SQL Server database in many markets. A preview of SQL Server 2014 will be availableby the end of the month and the full production version will be available for purchase in early 2014…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Coverage of the PRISM surveillance program highlights only the most recent example of personal data ending up in the hands of unintended parties. While most attention has been placed on consumer public cloud services such as Gmail and Facebook, many corporate CISOs and CIOs are now re-evaluating the risks of third party access and surveillance to corporate cloud services. Regardless of whether these third parties are governments, cyber-activists, or cyber-criminals, the message is becoming clear – when enterprises put their information into shared cloud services, such as SaaS applications, they need to carefully think through the implications of giving away control of their sensitive corporate data assets.

Enterprise cloud adoption has been rapidly growing despite a historic reluctance to place sensitive data into cloud applications. Today, corporate IT security teams face extraordinary pressure from business units such as Sales, Customer Support, Marketing, HR and IT Service Management, to allow information into cloud applications…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Margaret Jones.

Because cloud technology changes and evolves so quickly — and has so many acronyms — it can be tough for IT administrators to keep up with new cloud file-sharing definitions. More and more employees are using cloud-file sharing services for work, so IT, vendors and marketers are responding in kind with new tools, such as IDaaS, SaaS and EUC platforms. If you’ve never heard of those terms or you don’t know the difference between SoMoClo and SoLoMo, you’re not alone. Check out these cloud file-sharing definitions to start sorting things out.

IDaaS
Identity as a Service is a kind of single sign-on for the cloud. It’s an authentication infrastructure that a third-party service provider builds, hosts and manages. Usually, companies buy IDaaS as a subscription service. For an additional fee, cloud file-sharing service providers sometimes also host apps and give subscribers role-based access to certain apps or virtual desktops through a secure portal…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Mark Fontecchio.

Oracle announced that it added more than 500 new Software as a Service (SaaS) customers in the last quarter, though an analyst thinks most of them are existing Oracle customers and those gained in acquisitions. The Redwood Shores, Calif.-based IT company reported quarterly earnings on Thursday, announcing that total revenue was up 2% since the same quarter last year, and software revenues were up 5% year-over-year.

However, most of Oracle’s growth is its "existing client base and acquisitions (more) than net new standalone sales," according to Chad Eschinger, research vice president at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner Inc. That said, Eschinger added that Oracle continues "to be a strong provider with a growing presence in SaaS."…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Jane McCallion.

Three quarters of companies are using a cloud platform of some type, according to the third annual Future of Cloud Computing Survey. This represents an increase of eight per cent compared to 2012. The survey of 855 respondents, most of whom were c-level executives, showed Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) products remain the most popular. Sixty three per cent of organisations said they used this type of cloud service, compared to 55 per cent last year.

However, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), while not yet as popular, is growing faster. Usage of this type of solution has risen from 35 per cent in 2012 to 45 per cent in 2013. The Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) market, while not yet on the same scale as SaaS or IaaS, is expected to grow sharply over the next five years. Seventy two per cent of respondents said they expect to be using a PaaS offering in their business by the end of 2018…