Category: News

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Caitlan White.

As technologies change, so must IT admins. There is a massive shift going on in enterprises. Instead of building out on-premises infrastructure, they are shifting to the cloud or building highly automated private or hybrid clouds, and IT teams must learn to shift in response. Chief technology officers, chief information officers and IT pros have to capitalize on this sea change and fight to stay relevant in new cloud environments.

Eze Castle Integration Inc. provides strategic IT and cloud services, focusing on the financial space — an industry perhaps uniquely positioned to reap the benefits of cloud computing if it can overcome its security fears. Steve Schoener, its vice president of technology, provides technology consulting for a range of companies, and he has seen the whirlwind that cloud has brought his clients. SearchCloudComputing.com sat down with Schoener to discuss the roles in IT departments that are changing as a result of the cloud.

SearchCloudComputing.com: When a company decides to adopt cloud computing, who drives that decision? How has this changed over the past five or 10 years?…

Grazed from Manufacturing Business Technology. Author: Bob Vormittag.

Those who make the investment in BI and the cloud will realize improved cost and operational efficiencies, expanded real-time collaboration with customers, vendors and partners as well as faster and more personalized customer relationships. But how do you get there?

New advances in business intelligence (BI) and mobile cloud technology are transforming ERP as we know it. Bolstered by new innovation, ERP has become an even stronger business asset, and this is changing how mid-market customers define successful ERP implementations.

Key mid-market industries – such as manufacturing, retail, distribution, food, and services – are eager to harness the power of cloud computing to implement cost-efficient IT solutions that ultimately drive improved bottom-line benefits to their organizations…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Reuven Cohen.

“Is Cloud Computing really cheaper?” Of all the questions asked at a recent event, this particular one was the most difficult to answer. Earlier this week I was at the New Jersey Institute of Technology as the host of CloudCamp, a “un-conference” created to inform and educate on various cloud computing topics. Since the launch of the unconventional series of events more than four years ago, it has grown to more than 300 cities around the globe. Over that time a lot of things have changed in the tech world. The discussion has shifted from a question of what is or isn’t cloud computing, to one of what can be done with cloud computing?

I set out to attempt to get an answer. Many of the people I spoke to have described cloud costing as a “Dark Art”, a surprise at the end of the month. The most common response was “it depends.” Not satisfied, I continue on with my mission. I set forth asking as many people as I could “Is Cloud Computing really cheaper?”…

Grazed from ComputingIT. Author: Peter Gothard.

Many users of cloud data services are entirely unaware of inherent security risks, and security can only improve if customers pressure providers to deliver it, Frank Coggrave, VP of sales, EMEA & APAC at Guidance Software, has told Computing.

The company, which 18 months ago was responsible for assisting Sony in clearing up its widely-publicised and reputation-damaging PlayStation 3 server hack, sees a distinct lack in security provisions in many cloud providers’ commercial offerings.

Coggrave believes security provision in cloud companies falls into two categories…

Grazed from FierceEnterpriseCommunications. Author: Jason Meyers.

Internet-hosting service Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) expanded its portfolio of OpenStack-powered cloud products for enterprises, with Tuesday’s introduction of new open-source, public-cloud offerings and a new control panel for cloud-based service management.

"Rackspace is disrupting the current model of how IT is consumed," CEO Lanham Napier said in a statement.

"We have delivered on our promise to implement OpenStack in our cloud offerings, and to free customers from the vendor lock-in that they face at other major cloud providers," he said. "We’re delivering open, high-performance, scalable and easy-to-use cloud solutions, while empowering customers to choose features, services, prices and locations based on the needs of their business."…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Martin May.

One of the biggest lessons learned by many of Salesforce.com’s 2.1 million global subscribers, following the cloud computing giant’s recent catastrophic power outage, is that support problems don’t disappear when applications or infrastructures move to the cloud.

As the cloud-based service provider’s servers remained inoperative for an agonisingly long period, there seems little doubt that a sizable number of its 86 000 corporate customers were revisiting their service level agreements (SLAs) and quickly reading through the fine print detailing Salesforce.com’s support targets…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

We already know how powerful techniques such as machine learning and sentiment analyis can be when it comes to deciphering consumer behavior online, and now it seems they can identify bullies, as well. A group of University of Wisconsin researchers have developed a machine learning algorithm that’s identifying more than 15,000 tweets per day relating to bullying — complete with loads of associated sociological insights — which begs the question of how to act on that data. How do you govern a social web that can be simultaneously a communication platform, a research lab full of unknowing subjects and a boiling-over pot of criminal evidence?

How the model works and what it found

In order to train their model, the researchers fed it two sets of tweets — one they had determined to be about bullying activity and another that was not. Once the model had learned the language identifiers of tweets relating to bullying, it was time to turn it loose on real-world tweets. Not only did the system start identifying a great number of tweets, but it also discovered time patterns (they occur most frequently during the school week) and was able to pick out who played what role in the bullying…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Liz McMillan.

TwinStrata earned top marks in Info-Tech Research Group’s new report "Vendor Landscape: Cloud Backup Gateways."

• TwinStrata was given Best Overall Value award for "coupling its impressive product with an appealing price," said the Info-Tech Research Group Research Document.
• TwinStrata CloudArray® was the only product in the report given an overall score of "exemplary."

Nicos Vekiarides, chief executive officer at TwinStrata, stated, "The Info-Tech results validate our focus on meeting customer needs through our industry-leading feature set, broad solution partner ecosystem and flexible pricing models. We are pleased to have been rated top honors in both value and overall product; it’s a testament to what we deliver to our customers every day."…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Elizabeth White.

Symform on Thursday announced it has joined the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA). The CSA is a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within cloud computing, and to provide education on the uses of cloud computing to help secure all other forms of computing.

Jim Reavis, executive director at the CSA, stated that "Symform’s deep expertise in security will be a valuable addition to our organization as companies increasingly look to the cloud and distributed approaches to manage and protect their data."…