Category: News

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

John Engates is the chief technology officer at Rackspace, and even he had trouble wrapping his mind around the way his company runs its most important of technologies. Rackspace, you see, runs its cloud software on its cloud software. At first blush, this seems like some sort of cruel joke. Cloud software isn’t the easiest concept to grasp — even when you’re running the stuff all by itself. And it doesn’t help that the world’s PR departments have co-opted the cloud moniker and applied it to, well, just about everything.

But in the end, Rackspace’s cloud-on-cloud arrangement makes good sense. This sort of multilayered setup is rather common in the world of computer science, and if you take the time to think through what Rackspace is doing, it may even help you grasp the very real but often elusive ideas that underpin cloud computing — ideas that are remaking the way the world runs software and stores data…

Grazed from AllThingsHD. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Here’s a name I haven’t heard in a while: Anso Labs. Remember this was the cloud computing startup that originated at NASA, where the original ideas for OpenStack, the open source cloud computing platform was born? Anso Labs was acquired by Rackspace a little more than two years ago. It was a small team. But now a lot of the people who ran Anso Labs are back with a new outfit, still devoted to cloud computing, and still devoted to Openstack. It’s called Nebula. And it builds a turnkey computer, that will turn an ordinary rack of servers into a cloud-ready system, running — you guessed it — Openstack.

Based in Mountain View, Nebula claims to have an answer for any company that’s ever wanted to build its own private cloud system and not rely on outside vendors like Amazon or Hewlett-Packard, or Rackspace to run it for them. It’s called the Nebula One. And Nebula CEO and founder Chris Kemp said the setup is pretty simple: Plug the servers into the Nebula One, then you “turn it on and it boots up cloud.” All of the provisioning, and management that a service provider would normally charge you for, has been created on a hardware device…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Navatar Group (@navatargroup), a premier cloud provider for financial services, today announced that Evolution Capital Partners (@evolution_cp), a Cleveland based small business private equity firm, has successfully adopted Navatar Private Equity CRM to manage their opportunity pipeline and deploy their funds most effectively.

Evolution Capital Partners invests growth capital nationwide in Second Stage Companies, providing the necessary resources to successfully navigate the critical transition through No Man’s Land. "Our approach to investing involves a deliberate and defined process," said Jeffrey Kadlic, Co-founder & Managing Partner, Evolution Capital Partners. "The Navatar platform allows us to efficiently manage this process which supports our core values and ultimately allows us to better serve our investors and growth companies."…

Grazed from Orlando Sentinel.  Author: Richard Burnett.

High-technology giant Intel Corp. is bringing its Silicon Valley heft to a partnership with the Army’s Orlando simulation-research lab to create computerized war games capable of handling hundreds of participants at once, company and military officials said this week.  The goal of the project — the first deal of its kind for Intel in Central Florida — is to create a computing network powerful enough to deliver interactive training simulations to large groups of players around the world, from infantry troops and senior commanders to combat ships and fighter-jet squadrons.

Using Web-based software applications, commonly known as "cloud computing," the new system would eclipse not only the military’s current remote-training systems but also commercial "massive multi-player" websites such as Second Life, an online "virtual world."…

Grazed from Deseret News.  Author: Josh Linton.

Technology plays a vital role in the ongoing success of any organization. Because technology can be difficult to understand and implement, it sometimes becomes a low priority and is often overlooked.  There is currently a lot of noise and discussion about "the cloud," or cloud computing. Questions arise like, “Are you in the cloud?”

One of the reasons the cloud is difficult to understand is that it means different things to different people, all dependent on who you are and what you are trying to accomplish. There is no real structure to it and each use of the cloud holds its own definition and value.   There are three basic groups that utilize and need the cloud. By understanding these three groups, you can decide how to make the cloud work for you…

Grazed from Ubergizmo.  Author: Hubert Nguyen.

“The Cloud: is a term that most people have heard of, and many of us use cloud services daily. However, it’s fair to say many others are still using computing the old-fashion way. At times, it may sound like a marketing gimmick, but “cloud computing” is real and it can bring real value to just about everyone who has an internet connection whether it is on a computer, mobile devices and preferably all at the same time! In this article, we are looking at four critical aspect of your digital life that can be improved using cloud services: data access and organization, creative collaboration, data protection and gaming.

What is Cloud Computing?

First of all, let’s define what we mean by “cloud computing”: it is the use of resources that are delivered as a service over a network (the Internet, most of the time). Cloud infrastructure abstracts the hardware to the point that its use can be invoiced based on actual usage (pay for the computer cycles, storage, bandwidth you use). This has allowed a large number of Internet services to be created since the cost of using a cloud infrastructure is much lower than the previous alternative: building and owning the infrastructure. A huge number of startups have been created because of the improved economics…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Joe Weinman.

Netflix recently announced the $100,000 Netflix Cloud Prize, dedicated to advancing cloud computing in 10 categories. (Disclosure: I am one of the prize judges.) Another InformationWeek article argued that Netflix is "ruining cloud computing" by focusing its innovation in a way the author, Joe Masters Emison, is concerned could "derail real IaaS competition." In my view, Netflix is free to select whichever partners they choose, and as far as the Netflix Cloud Prize is concerned, more companies should be looking to mimic its approach: leveraging the economics of contests, enhancing their own services and sharing core technology advances with everyone.

The fundamental philosophy underlying contests such as these is what U.C. Berkeley professor Henry Chesbrough terms open innovation. It’s open, not restricted to a company’s internal R&D staff, and it’s innovation, not merely the repetitive execution of standard processes…

Grazed from Wall Stree Journal.  Author: Tom Loftus.

Since the 2006 debut of Amazon.com Inc. ’s Amazon Web Services, more and more IT departments have caught on to the idea of renting online computing horsepower to test or develop business applications, host corporate human resources data and run Big Data-type analysis, among other tasks.  The market for public cloud services, which are open to anyone who wants to use them, is now a $40 billion business, according to IDC.

Recent price battles between Amazon Microsoft Corp. and Google Inc. could lead customers to believe that competing cloud vendors, who make many similar promises, differentiate themselves in few ways beyond price. But Amazon and, to a lesser extent, Microsoft provide customers with certain amenities that Google’s new offering, at the moment,  does not…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Thomas J. Trappler.

The fact that regulations evolve at a much slower pace than cloud computing technologies can lead to confusion regarding how to meet regulatory requirements in the cloud. If a client moves a regulated function to the cloud and later falls out of compliance due to a shortcoming on the cloud vendor’s part, the client remains accountable. So it’s essential to have as much clarity on these issues as possible. Recognizing this challenge with regards to the handling of credit card data, the Payment Card Industry (PCI) Security Standards Council has recently issued guidance on how to apply PCI Data Security Standards (PCI DSS) in the cloud.

PCI DSS applies to all organizations that hold, process or exchange credit card information. It was created to help ensure that consumers are not exposed to potential financial or identity fraud and theft. To accomplish this, PCI DSS provides a payment card data security framework that organizations deploy to prevent, detect and respond to security incidents. PCI DSS is not a law, and the PCI Security Standards Council doesn’t directly impose any consequences for non-compliance, but the negative repercussions of non-compliance can include lawsuits, insurance claims, canceled accounts, payment card issuer fines and government fines. To ensure none of this happens to you when processing credit cards in the cloud, it’s important to understand this new PCI DSS guidance…