Category: News

March 5, 2013 Off

Appcore Raises $6M Series B To Expand Cloud Computing Infrastructure Growth In Asia

By David

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Darrell Etherington.

Today Appcore, a company that offers complete cloud computing infrastructure (read: hardware and software) to clients including mobile network providers, data centers, and enterprises, has announced a $6 million Series B round today. The company, which is headquartered in Des Moines but has offices in Hong Kong, Manila and Singapore, says it will use the funding to fuel additional R&D, and to help continue its rapid expansion in fast-growing Asian markets.

The company is sort of like an Apple for the cloud computing sector, according to Appcore CEO Brian Donaghy. In an interview about the news, he said that if you think about Apple’s approach to consumer electronics, which includes a holistic approach that involves creating hardware and software perfectly tailored for each other, that’s what Appcore is doing with local cloud infrastructure…

March 5, 2013 Off

VMware CEO Causes Public Cloud Stir

By David

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Ever since the Amazon cloud and its competitors took shape beginning in 2006, it has been an open question: Would the enterprise’s use of cloud technology grow up from inside the data center, then proceed to a similar environment outside? Or would the public cloud architecture prevail and be imposed on commercial data centers?

These two models originated in different places. Google and Amazon offered the clearest examples of what scale-out architecture could look like. Compared to the typical enterprise, the Amazon model looked simple, uniform, highly automated and highly elastic — more virtual servers could be added on command for a given workload, or physical servers could be added to the cloud’s cluster itself, as needed. The fact that search and online retailing consisted of a few high-powered applications, designed to scale out, helped. They posed a completely different set of requirements than needed by the typical mixed-use enterprise…

March 5, 2013 Off

Embrace the cloud computing revolution – with caution

By David

Grazed from The Guardian. Author: Dan Gillmor.

Google recently launched its high-end Chromebook Pixel, and like previous Chromebooks this notebook computer makes a distinctly 21st Century assumption: that users’ data, work and play belong mostly online, not on their own computers. Google isn’t alone in pushing this notion, but it’s the most powerful evangelist for the shift to what tech people call the "cloud" and away from "local" storage. Call me unconvinced. Deeply unconvinced.

The cloud evangelists have an alluring pitch. First, they say, we can now count on being connected as much of the time as necessary. Second, these computing and data services becoming a utility like electricity – easier and safer to run from remote servers than on our local systems…

March 5, 2013 Off

Oi signs cloud computing deal with Go2neXt

By David

Grazed from Oi. Author: PR Announcement.

Brazilian telecommunications operator Oi has partnered with Go2neXt, a Brazilian integrator of cloud computing environments, to assist the corporate market with the use of cloud computing services. The operator has been exploring this segment since last year, when it launched its Smart Cloud platform. Under the agreement, Go2neXt will be responsible for providing advice to Oi clients who wish to adopt cloud services. The service provider will assist Oi customers with the transition from the traditional IT environment to the Oi cloud platform.

March 5, 2013 Off

RSA Conference: CloudLock Unveils Trust Assessment Service

By David

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

CloudLock has launched the Community Trust Rating service as part of its Cloud Information Security Suite. The cloud IT security company unveiled the new cloud security offering at RSA Conference 2013. The trust assessment system was designed to use collective intelligence of enterprises that use Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) Apps and builds on CloudLock’s Apps Firewall for Google Apps product. The purpose of the system is to help enterprises evaluate third-party applications in determining which apps should be granted access to employee data.

The CloudLock product tries to make things simple by classifying applications as either "trusted" or "banned." The two-way switch is meant to give enterprises more control over which applications to embrace and promote and which are not appropriate for the corporate domain…

March 5, 2013 Off

Telecommuting and cloud computing: For innovators only

By David

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

I hate talking about topics of the week, such as the debate around Yahoo’s new CEO, Marissa Mayer, telling her staffers to stop working from home. First, in my opinion, CEOs are allowed to make such statements to their employees, and you can’t judge unless you work there or own stock. Second, it probably won’t help Yahoo one bit. However, what is relevant about this issue is the use of cloud computing by a remote workforce. What are those synergies? That’s worth discussing.

The work-at-home movement drives a great deal of interest in cloud computing. Public cloud platforms are typically better at providing IT services over the open Internet than enterprise IT is capable of doing. Thus, the public cloud can better serve a workforce that’s as likely to work at the local Starbucks as the corner conference room because they can push processing, storage, and enterprise applications to a middle tier between the company and the user. In other words, connectivity, security, capacity management, and resiliency become somebody else’s problem…

March 4, 2013 Off

IBM To Make Its Cloud Services and Software Based on Open Standards

By David

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that its cloud services and software will be based on an open cloud architecture. This move will ensure innovation in cloud computing is not hampered by locking businesses into proprietary islands of unsecured and difficult-to-manage offerings. Without industry-wide open standards for cloud computing, businesses will not be able to fully take advantage of the opportunities associated with interconnected data, such as mobile computing and big data.

As the first step, the company today unveiled a new cloud offering based on open cloud standards, including OpenStack, that significantly speeds and simplifies managing an enterprise-grade cloud. For the first time, businesses have a core set of open source-based technologies to build enterprise-class cloud services that can be ported across hybrid cloud environments…

March 4, 2013 Off

Cloud Computing Project Wins First-of-its-Kind Google Award

By David

Grazed from UTD. Author: Editorial Staff.

Dr. Lawrence Chung, associate professor of computer science at UT Dallas, could not predict with 100 percent certainty that his cloud computing project would be recipient of a-first-of-its-kind award from Google, but he kept his hopes high. “Our research at UT Dallas is world-class,” he said. “We do cutting-edge research.”

Indeed, his SilverLining team of researchers and students from the Erik Jonsson School of Engineering and Computer Science was one of seven worldwide recipients of the first-ever Google App Engine Research Award for innovative academic and scientific research expected to benefit society. “We are proud of this achievement by Dr. Chung’s team,” said Dr. Gopal Gupta, head of the Department of Computer Science and holder of the Erik Jonsson Chair…

March 4, 2013 Off

Energy industry: Who will win in the cloud?

By David

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Editorial Stafff.

Most oil and gas companies are already evaluating the risks and benefits of the cloud, and some have taken major steps towards virtualising their internal infrastructures. But the majority have yet to implement the full-scale automation or self-service provisioning that can help to harness the full benefits of the cloud.

As this trend gains momentum and scale, Accenture believes that cloud computing will combine with mobile technology and powerful analytics to change the game in the energy industry across five key dimensions…

March 4, 2013 Off

CDW Survey: Mobile Applications and Devices Promote Adoption of Cloud Computing

By David

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.

In the “2013 State of the Cloud Report”, CDW found out that about 75% of its respondents have this notion that the personal use of mobile devices and applications by employees influence how businesses take advantage of cloud computing. 68% of the respondents said that organizations have decided to adopt cloud computing because of requests from their employees. Also, cloud adoption savings have increased by as much as 3% from the 10% savings in 2011. CDW surveyed a total of 1,242 IT practitioners.

In the same survey, some 39% of the respondents said that their organizations are currently implementing cloud solutions, an increase of 11% from the 2011 figures. Some 60% of the IT respondents believe that their use of cloud services in their non-work related endeavors have greatly influenced their recommendations to adopt cloud computing at their workplace…