Category: News

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

Microsoft has released a number of enhancements to Windows Azure that will make it easier to deploy and manage Hadoop clusters and integrate more mobile apps with the cloud platform. To simplify the roll out of big data applications, Microsoft is offering a public preview of the new HDInsight service for Windows Azure, according to Scott Guthrie, corporate vice president in Microsoft’s Server and Tools Business. HDInsight lets users deploy, manage and use Hadoop clusters running on Windows Azure, he saidin a blog post.

Users with a Windows Azure account can request access to the preview and once that has been granted create a cluster from within the Windows Azure Management Portal. A storage account is also required and in the current version of the preview it must reside in the East U.S. region, according to Guthrie. A new installation will take a few minutes to create and as part of the process users need to configure the necessary virtual machines that will make up their Hadoop cluster, Guthrie said…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Cloud computing is barely old enough to separate out a few pioneers who have made outstanding contributions to it. InformationWeek made its first attempt to do so Nov. 26, 2012, pulling 10 names off a long list of potential cloud leaders and explaining why they made the select group. Now we’re calling out another group of people whose contributions have frequently matched those of the first 10, but who have tended to labor a step back from the limelight or sometimes even in the shadows.

They include an open-source programmer, an industry consultant, entrepreneurs, authors, public speakers and software strategists. For the most part they are individuals, but we wanted to start off by looking at a team of pioneers: the Rackspace OpenStack team. No single individual at Rackspace is responsible for the company deciding to launch the OpenStack open source project — several individuals played important roles…

Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Emily Wight.

Here on the Small Business Network a range of experts have been keen to point out the benefits of cloud computing to small business owners. For a start, our bloggers have written about the numerous benefits of this technology, such as how it allows staff to work remotely and more flexibly. Andrew Brewerton from EVault explained how the cloud allows users to back up and synchronise their data, ensuring whoever accesses it is viewing the most up-to-date information. Elance Europe’s Kjetil Olsen highlighted the range of web tools that help make paperless collaborative working the norm.

Chris Harding from The Open Group also explained how outsourcing IT to the cloud reduces the need for specialist skills and frees managers to concentrate on the core business. An increasing number of companies and individuals are taking note of these benefits. Cloud computing is on the rise, with estimates that the industry is headed for 30% annual growth worldwide. This is why we thought it would be useful to find out more about this trend in a live Q&A session. We have asked a panel of experts to join our discussion to offer their insight and opinions on what cloud computing can offer SME owners…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

InfoWorld’s Eric Knorr made a good call last week, stating, "IBM would take the helm as the corporate steward of OpenStack, surpassing in importance even Rackspace — which along with NASA gave birth to OpenStack three years ago."

Although IBM won’t provide its own OpenStack-based product, it will offer piece-parts based on OpenStack. IBM’s sheer size and influence will make it one of the biggest drivers of OpenStack, passing up Hewlett-Packard, Rackspace, and dozens of other smaller OpenStack upstarts. Remember how IBM was a major force in mainstreaming Linux and open source a decade ago? It has the same potential with OpenStack…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Ryan Turner.

Based on information provided by Amazon, you can see they revolutionized EC2 cloud computing. Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) “is a web service that provides resizable compute capacity in the cloud. It is designed to make web-scale computing easier for developers.” While Amazon may be one of the most well known companies competing in this marketplace, host to major clients like Instagram, there are other small-scale companies that offer bigger benefits. For one, smaller companies can customize their cloud computing and web hosting to each client, tailoring their services to the needs of the client.

Second, Small-scale companies offer service oriented details and telephone support around the clock to help expert web developers overcome issues, as well as assisting novice web developers to achieve completion and finish projects in a timely manner. Third, The cloud computing and web hosting services offered by Amazon are stable, but have had the tendency for down-time. This typically doesn’t happen with locally-based, service-oriented companies like Cervalis, who hasn’t experienced down-time or outages in their 12 years of servicing customers in this capacity…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Gary Flood.

Is cloud just a way to outsource low-risk, low-return business processes to save money, or a potentially revolutionary new way of working? That’s the kind of question one might expect of a hard-core cloud convert or cloud services provider. But according to Mark Tonsetic, practice manager in the IT practice at CEB, a member-based global advisory organization, it’s a question that blue chip CIOs are beginning to ask.

And what they are beginning to decide, he claimed, seems pretty radical. "Cloud often presents itself as not that much of a different way of working than on premises," he said. "If it is a change at all, that’s often presented as just a change in the technology, which is often seen as at a lower altitude than business process."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Peter Knight.

As we study the innovators who have helped make cloud computing a reality, it becomes apparent that significant and lasting success in the Cloud field depends as much on entrepreneurial vision as it does technical savvy. Harnessing the technology to get a group of servers, or even server farms to cooperate in a fashion that is capable of handling truly Big Data is a marvel. In the long run, it is probably not half as important as finding a way for the technology to not only generate a profit, but to generate profit for the end users of the technology.

In many ways, this has bee as much about proselytizing as it has been about coding and computing. Two of the strongest voices singing the praises of Cloud Computing for business have been Padmasree Warrior, Chief Technology and Strategy Officer at Cisco, and Lauren States, Vice President and CTO of Cloud Computing at IBM…

Grazed from Appko. Author: PR Announcement.

Appko (www.appko.com), a Silicon Valley company, is announcing the release of myCloudPod today. myCloudPod is the first end user focused self-service cloud for converged infrastructure from venders like Cisco, HP, IBM, and Dell. Appko’s response to the missing self service in the existing solutions is being showcased at the Avnet + Cisco Symposium in Scottsdale AZ this week.

Appko has been developing cloud solutions for converged infrastructure since 2007. Appko’s experience developing custom solutions for companies the last few years was levered into the design of the new product. myCloudPod is the result of years of innovation in user experience and cloud computing. "User experience is key," says Appko CEO Sean DuLac . "When your users are empowered, everyone wins."…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Robert Grazioli.

The hype and excitement surrounding cloud computing is reaching a fever pitch, yet many businesses are still expressing concerns over cloud security and IT integration issues. How can distrust of the cloud be resolved, and is the cloud worthy of the current hype? There’s a paradox at play here: The cloud is generally agreed to offer significant potential. Yet, some businesses are failing to tap into the huge opportunities offered by cloud computing due to a lack of trust.

In a recent global survey of 360 businesses by Knowledge@Wharton and SAP, 67 percent cite "security breaches and data losses" as their main cloud computing concern. This concern with the cloud is similar to when the personal computer was introduced. Large companies resisted its deployment for a long time due to questions about security, costs and more. Deployment spread only after PCs started being purchased by CEOs, and IT organizations had to figure out a way to integrate them successfully…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Eric Zeman.

Google admitted Monday morning that its cloud-based Google Drive service is experiencing a service disruption. According to a statement made on Google’s service dashboard, "We’re investigating reports of an issue with Google Drive. We will provide more information shortly." Reports of trouble accessing Google Drive spread across social networks such as Twitter Monday. Users from around the globe reported trouble connecting to the service, as well as service crashes.

Google Drive is Google’s cloud-based storage and productivity service. It encompasses Google Docs, Sheets and Presentations, in addition to providing document and file storage. Google Drive is accessible from various avenues, including Web browsers, desktop apps and apps for Android and iOS devices. The standalone mobile apps appear to be working more consistently at the moment when compared to the browser-based versions of the service…