Category: News

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Marshall.

OpenStack was originally started in 2010 as an IaaS (infrastructure-as-a-service) cloud computing joint project between Rackspace and NASA. The reins have since been turned over to the new OpenStack Foundation, which is now finally official, complete with a 24-member board chaired by Suse executive and Linux Foundation director Alan Clark. The group has grown to more than 5,600 individual members across 87 countries and 850 different organizations, and is financial backed by more than $10 million in funding.

The question now is, can this open source cloud project really thrive and survive in this competitive market? The community-at-large is watching to see how the foundation handles itself now that there are so many competing interests within its own membership — especially with the recently added and most controversial new member, VMware…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Dan Sullivan.

Software development is software development; the basics don’t change when you introduce cloud computing. But moving to cloud-based development presents a few new opportunities, as well as some challenges. Though each enterprise is different, these tools offer something most companies can use to develop applications in the cloud.

One of the most fundamental tools for developers is an integrated development environment (IDE). Development tools, such as the Amazon Toolkit for Eclipse and features within Microsoft Visual Studio, are useful for developing cloud applications. When developing for the cloud, enterprises might also want to consider using cloud-based IDEs in the engineering process…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Alan S. Cohen.

I recently spent the past year on the front lines of the computing revolution, bringing network virtualization technologies to dozens of telecommunications companies, new cloud computing entrants, and enterprises that are changing their business models through Cloud. Cloud promises to profoundly transform how we produce and consume information and information technology (IT). If you drive up and down Route 101 here in Silicon Valley today, there is a hot billboard war going on; if you drive up and down Main Street someplace else, there is a quieter but no less compelling revolution.

The current computing model was pretty simple: your business bought the hardware and software required to run key applications, the storage devices to maintain your data, and the networks to allowed it all to flow. Today, however, there is a range of new choices, which including renting some or all of the IT supply chain…

Grazed from NPR. Author: Wendy Kaufman.

The cloud’s vast computing power is making it easier and less expensive for companies and clinicians to discover new drugs and medical treatments. Analyzing data that used to take years and tens of millions of dollars can now be done for a fraction of that amount.

Most of us know Amazon as the world’s largest online retailer. But its cloud computing business is booming too. Companies can rent massive computer resources by the hour, and the cost is relatively little. The ability to analyze vast amounts of data in this way is changing lots of industries — including health care…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: Rich Miller.

Corporate data centers are the front line in an escalating battle between electronic attackers and defenders, and must be vigilant about defending their perimeter, cybersecurity guru Winn Schwartau told industry managers in his keynote address this morning at the Data Center World Fall 2012 conference. That’s especially true for leading cloud computing data centers, he said.

“I maintain that cloud computing is critical infrastructure, and we have not taken appropriate steps to protect it,” said Schwartau, who called out a leading cloud provider for its downtime and architecture…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

Cloud computing uptake by businesses has shifted the general model of organizational information complexes. Business enterprises have a lot of data to store and use. Even as they shift to the cloud, there are major dangers around security. In most cases, breaches to cloud-stored files happen because of insider conspiracy, malpractice, and malice. This article looks at four common insider threats to cloud computing and ways for organizations to avoid them. All this is intended at making the cloud shift worthwhile for businesses.

Malicious administrators

Cloud computing as a process is governed, managed, and maintained by site administrators. By default, they hold the key to managing all the data, files, and privileged company resources and files. Sometimes, relationships with employers don’t work. As a revenge, or for other reasons, administrators may end up spreading, or allowing privileged information to leak at the expense of the business enterprise involved…

Grazed from UCS. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cisco Systems Inc. is enhancing its cloud channel program with the aim of helping solution providers capitalize. Cisco is looking at two sides of the cloud computing market: public cloud services that partners offer to end user customers and service provider and on-premises private clouds to which solution providers sell hardware. When these two cloud models are combined, Cisco believes that it will present a $25 billion market opportunity.

Support and resources are offered to qualified solution providers by Cloud Builder Specialization to differentiate themselves to the sales of Cisco. Through hardware sales, it is suggested that these solution providers will excel in building and supporting what is traditionally private cloud infrastructure. By offering more support in developing and certifying systems, sales and marketing support to these partners, Cisco aims to widen the margins and rebates through the VIP program…

Grazed from ExtremeTech. Author: Joel Hruska.

The cloud is everywhere these days. Like its real-life namesakes, the concept and implementation of cloud computing is vague, fluffy, and hard to define. Larry Ellison had a point when he declared that cloud computing has been redefined “to include everything that we already do… It’s complete gibberish.”

If the definition of cloud computing is vague, the need to protect the rights of people who use cloud computing services is clear and pressing. We’ve compiled a list of five basic freedoms that are essential if the rights of the individual are to be protected against individual hackers as well as competing government and commercial interests. Each of these rights/freedoms is tied to real-world events that have threatened it…

Grazed from The Wall Street Journal. Author: Steve D. Jones.

After once dismissing cloud computing as “gibberish,” Oracle Corp. ORCL +0.64%Chief Executive Larry Ellison announced three new features for its cloud service at a customer conference in San Francisco.

Oracle will add infrastructure as a service to the Oracle Public Cloud, putting the enterprise software company in competition with pioneers Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.63% and Google Inc. GOOG +0.59% The Redwood Shores-based company also announced it will begin building and operating cloud services inside client data centers and a new version of its Exadata database machine with built in memory so it won’t have to rely on external storage…