Category: News

Grazed from PhysBizTech. Author: Doug Pollack.

Cloud computing manages data, secures it and makes it available when and wherever needed. No wonder the cloud is attractive to organizations burdened with time and budget constraints. But the cloud is not without its risks. The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) recently released its “Notorious nine,” a list of the top threats associated with cloud computing. At the top of the charts for 2013: data breaches. With this threat at the forefront, healthcare organizations should determine when, if ever, is an optimal time for placing protected health information (PHI) and personally identifiable information (PII) in the cloud.

Caught in the crosshairs?
The cloud offers a “target-rich environment” for those looking to mount cyber attacks, with the intent of either disrupting commerce or more typically monetizing the data through criminal means. It’s logical to assume that cloud providers are better qualified to secure data, given that their job is to provide computing services in a safe and secure manner…

Grazed from The New York Times. Author: Claire Miller and Quentin Hardy.

In a battle for dominance in cloud computing, Google is taking on Microsoft and Amazon in their own back yard. Google said Tuesday that it was doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, and stepping up the hiring of engineers and others who work on cloud technology.

It is part of Google’s dive into a business known as cloud services — renting to other businesses access to its enormous data storage and computing power, accessible by the Internet. In cloud computing, dozens or even thousands of computer servers are joined to create a giant machine capable of handling many tasks at once, from storing data to running Web sites and mobile apps to tackling complicated analytical problems…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Rick Whiting.

Just what is the role of distributors — and the solution providers they serve — in an IT industry that’s increasingly focused on cloud computing? That was the question posed to representatives of the leading distributors during a Q&A session at UBM Tech Channel’s XChange Solution Provider conference this week. The answers: Distributors see themselves as fulfilling a number of solution providers needs in a cloud-focused world, from managing cloud service logistics to helping the channel evaluate the true value of vendor offerings.

As cloud computing becomes more prevalent, there’s been increased talk of "disintermediation" between vendors, distributors and solution providers, raising the question of the role distributors will play in this new world. A prime example is Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT)’s Office 365 cloud application set. While Microsoft initially sold the service direct to customers, with channel partners serving in a consultative and supporting role under the "Advisor" program, the vendor recently launched the Office 365 Open program under which partners can buy the service through distributors and sell it to their customers…

Grazed from The Globe and Mail. Author: Editorial Staff.

Most Canadians know something about cloud computing – our Gmail, Yahoo! or Hotmail accounts are all sitting on a virtual server somewhere – but businesses have been slow to adopt this technology. A 2012 Bank of Montreal report found that half of all business owners weren’t familiar with cloud computing, while only 10 per cent of companies planned to use it.

Wayne Ingram, managing director of technology for Accenture Canada, says it’s only a matter of time until those numbers tick upward. Storing information on a virtual server, rather than on servers stored in the office basement, is cheaper and more efficient. And with people working on multiple devices and from disparate locations, logging on to a network with a VPN key, or encryption key, isn’t practical any more. Mr. Ingram told us how companies can adopt cloud-based software, what’s holding people back and where this technology will go in the future…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Louis Columbus.

Seeing skeptical CIOs agree to cloud-based pilots of Customer Relationship Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and other applications is evidence of how cloud computing is slowly winning the trust war. Further evidence can be seen from how skeptical many of these CIOs initially were, and how successful pilots led to their gradual trust.

This trust hasn’t come cheap however. Every one of these CIOs spoken with, across a range of manufacturing companies, learned that Service Level Agreements (SLAs) aren’t sufficient to manage the areas of security, privacy and confidentiality on their own. Cloud computing vendors have used SLAs as a means to imply security standards are met; one CIO told me he had an audit done to see if the SLA targets promised were realistic. They weren’t and he moved on to another vendor…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: C J Arlotta.

Cloud management platform OpDemand recently announced support for maintaining, deploying and monitoring Heroku cloud platform-as-a-service (PaaS) inside the OpDemand console. Heroku now can be implemented into a larger cloud management strategy that provides centralized configuration management, monitoring, and auditing of all changes to Heroku applications. The solution spans infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) and PaaS.

Heroku applications can consume a wide range of Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) Web Services EC2-powered databases, caches and other backing services, providing users with the ability swap out expensive or inflexible add-ons for new custom add-ons built to exact specifications. Both EC2 add-ons and Heroku applications are managed from a unified console. Any changes made to a Heroku application is automatically logged into OnDemand’s event feed, allowing administrators to follow any modifications…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

The next generation of master data management is in the cloud, it seems. Dell (NASDAQ: DELL) has launched Dell Boomi Master Data Management (MDM), a cloud-managed product that provides a set of features for simplifying data management, data integration and data quality assurance.

Aimed at midsize businesses, Dell Boomi MDM is being positioned as having a set of features comparable with on-premise systems but at a fraction of the cost. Not exactly an out-of-the-ordinary way for promoting and marketing cloud services, of course. Through the new product, Dell is offering customers multi-domain support, near real-time synchronization, bi-directional data flow and web service calls that support "enriching and validating data."…

Grazed from IDG. Author: Brandon Butler.

It’s one of the fundamental questions of cloud computing: Is it less expensive to run workloads in a public cloud than in an on-premises IT environment? The answer, says Charlie Burns, a researcher at boutique advisory firm Saugatuck Technology, is "a definitive maybe." The answer varies depending on individual customers and use cases. But, Burns found some general rules of thumb. "It comes down to the basic question of, ‘How good are you at running your in-house environment?’" he says.

Large enterprises with highly optimized IT shops tailored to their business’ needs may find cloud computing to be more expensive. But, if a company has workloads that ebb and flow in their use of compute power, then the cloud can yield substantial savings, Burns found…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Gary Flood.

When Direct Line Group, a U.K. headquartered insurance firm, was spun off from its parent company, Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), last year it had a mere five months to completely overhaul a key internal IT system. Mark Martin, Direct Line Group’s HR director, said that the viability of its HR system was a big factor in how seriously the market would see its October 2012 IPO on the London Stock Exchange. "We needed to build a separate system, and very quickly," Martin told Information Week. "We had all our HR based on a group system that we would no longer be able to use."

Compounding his task: the new company was going to be a highly complex beast, with 16,000 staff working in different companies with a range of different tasks — from people repairing motor vehicles to actuaries to call center operatives — with a complex set of contracts, pension arrangements and operating terms and conditions that would also need to be rationalized as part of Direct Line’s separation from RBS…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Newvem, the Israeli and San Francisco cloud-monitoring startup, has brought a graphic way of viewing workloads in the Amazon cloud into quick focus. Its recently released Utilization Heat Map service can show utilization levels of an individual server, a group of servers or aggregated workloads in a color-coded map.

Amazon Web Services’ CloudWatch service also shows utilization levels, particularly if a customer plugs certain data from Amazon’s own monitoring system into the CloudWatch dashboard or chooses to chart parts of it. But Newvem has organized the flow of data on a server’s operation into a Cloud Capacity Utilization Heat Map that analyzes it and comes up with a projection of what servers, or group of servers, are being heavily, moderately or lightly utilized…