Category: News

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Bulking up on tools for managing hybrid clouds, Red Hat plans to fold the software it acquired last month in the ManageIQ purchase into its own CloudForms software. The combined package will offer a more comprehensive set of management software needed to run virtual applications across public and internal clouds, according to Red Hat.

"We’re integrating the operational management capabilities of ManageIQ to the existing capabilities of CloudForms," said Bryan Che, general manager of Red Hat’s cloud business unit, in a webcast. Red Hat hopes the combination will provide a "compelling offering to our customers as they [make] the transition to open hybrid clouds." Red Hat acquired ManageIQ for $104 million in December, adding ManageIQ’s software to a growing stable of products for running cloud deployments on premise, including Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and a distribution of OpenStack to be released later this year…

Grazed from UTDallas.edu. Author: Editorial Staff.

When his head isn’t in the clouds, what does one of Microsoft’s top inventors do to blow off steam? Christian Belady MA’90 slides into a bright yellow tricked-out Porsche and hits the racetrack. Belady says it’s not about speed. It’s about how you take the turns, especially the first one. It’s like life, where every decision you make today impacts every decision you make in the future. “It may be perceived as a dangerous thing, but that’s what I do, and it’s what clears my mind and energizes me,” he explained.

Belady is the general manager of Data Center Services for Microsoft’s Global Foundation Services. Translation? He helps build, manage and breathe life into the entire world of cloud computing at Microsoft. With the prevalence of commercial products like Microsoft’s Office 365, and a plethora of cloud services like competitors’ Dropbox and iCloud, Belady has his two-minute elevator speech down…

Grazed from PCAdvisor. Author: Matt Egan.

Cloud computing could form an important part of your technological life, but you have to know what you’re looking for. Here are some tips on what to look for in a cloud storage service. In conversation with an older relative the other day I was astounded when they casually dropped in the following question: "I see you weren’t at CES this year. Was that because it is on the way down, with no Apple and no Microsoft?" Reader, my flabber was gasted. Firstly, that my relative had any idea of what I do and why I have on occasion spent time in Nevada, but also that he was sufficiently aware of CES to have formed an opinion on a technology trade event.

For the record, Apple hasn’t been to CES in decades, and Microsoft’s absence may be best for both parties. There was no killer product or product type at CES 2013, but the fact that non-tech fans are even aware of its existence shows both the enduring power of that show, and just how mainstream technology now is. Check out our Best new products of CES 2013 story…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

More companies are storing their data in the cloud as part of a hybrid onsite and offsite storage solution, but many admit they are not able to back-up large chunks of their data at all. Research company Vanson Bourne surveyed 650 IT decision makers across the US, the UK, France, Germany and the Netherlands, which highlighted the way Cloud backup and storage is now seen as a key component of hybrid storage environments. Some 66 percent of those surveyed said they would increase the amount of data they store in the cloud by 2015.

Among those already using hybrid storage systems, improved data security was cited as the reason why 66 percent moved from their old backup and recovery tools to onsite and offsite data protection. Some 57 percent said they preferred such a solution because their rapidly growing business critical data required protection against natural disaster and theft…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Jack McCarthy.

Addressing the growing demand for more cloud computing power, memory and bandwidth, Amazon (NSDQ:AMZN) Web Services (AWS) on Tuesday unveiled High Memory Cluster instances. The Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) instances will serve memory-intensive applications such as databases, in-memory analytics, caching and scientific computing.

High Memory Cluster instances are aimed at applications that require a large amount of memory on a single instance or need to use distributed memory architectures, AWS said. "This is a real workhorse instance, with a total of 88 ECU (EC2 Compute Units)," Jeff Barr, chief evangelist with Amazon Web Services, wrote in an AWS blog…

Grazed from Gravitant. Author: PR Annoucement.

Gravitant, a leader in cloud services brokerage and management for enterprises, systems integrators and cloud providers, today announced that the company won two prestigious UP-START awards at the recent UP 2012 Global Cloud Computing Conference, the world’s first and largest hybrid format cloud computing event. Gravitant won UP-START awards for Best Cloud Broker Service 2012 and Best Cloud Automation Solution 2012, one of the few companies named as a winner in multiple categories.

The UP-START Cloud Awards are recognized by the cloud community as the industry’s most prestigious awards for furthering the understanding, appreciation and advancement of contribution of cloud computing in the business and technology community. Winners in the highly competitive awards are determined in multiple rounds of voting…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Jake Gardner.

Why seven? Why not?! While none of these problem areas align with the so-called deadly sins, the reality is that each represents a real challenge that can arise in many organizations, whether enterprises or SMBs, when it comes to implementing and maintaining a cloud architecture. These are universal challenges. While each is not an ultimate, insurmountable hurdle to adoption, thinking about how each of these is wrong, or at least misguided, is a smart way to navigate toward successful cloud strategy and implementation.

1. Organizational ignorance: Cloud is a hot concept for many businesses. In the last year, the emphasis on cloud computing as the go-to solution for infrastructure needs has propelled it to the forefront of the IT discussion, with many believing it will eventually become the way IT operates at a baseline…

Grazed from ReadWrite. Author: Antone Gonsalves.

Ruthless competitiveness is what Oracle Chief Executive Larry Ellison uses to win in business. So no one should be surprised that how he defines the cloud depends on what’s needed at the time. Inevitably, this sometimes shows the emperor has no clothes, or at least is down to his Armani skivvies.

While something in Oracle’s massive portfolio may fit the industry definition of a cloud service, it is not the company’s new integrated hardware and software bundle that’s meant to provide the infrastructure for private clouds, according to David Linthicum, chief technology officer and co-founder of cloud consultancy Blue Mountain Labs. What Oracle is really selling, or in this case renting, is preconfigured application servers for the data center. "Now we know how Oracle is addressing this shift in the market: by renting its stuff and calling it a cloud," Linthicum says…

Grazed from Out-Law.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

A "fragmented" legal framework, the "attitude" of regulators and a naturally cautious approach to security issues are among the reasons why UK businesses have made less use of cloud computing than US counterparts, according to experts.

IT law and cloud computing specialists Charles Park and Christopher Mann of Pinsent Masons said that EU financial services rules also present a sizeable regulatory barrier to businesses in that sector that are looking to utilise the cloud. A survey by Redwood Software, of 100 UK and 200 US senior IT decision makers at a range of companies with more than 1,000 employees, has revealed that 58% of US businesses use cloud computing for "private data storage" purposes compared to just 35% of UK firms…

Grazed from Out-Law.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

The European Economic and Social Committee (EESC) said that businesses and individuals would be more likely to utilise cloud computing (CC) if their "trust" in the technology grew. It said that there is inherently less trust in using non-EU providers of cloud services and encouraged the Commission to take measures, such as enabling the use of "subsidies", to encourage EU-based cloud suppliers to emerge and improve trust levels.

The EESC said that there is currently a "dependency" on non-European companies providing cloud services to EU citizens because some existing EU-based providers lack the "same level of global visibility and influence" as Amazon, Microsoft and Google and are therefore "unable to compete" with those US firms…