Category: News

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Dave Shackleford.

While much scrutiny has taken place in the realm of cloud security practices over the last several years, much of the attention has been focused on the largest cloud security providers (CSPs), like Amazon, Rackspace, Verizon’s Terremark and Google. Most of these large providers have well-documented and publicized security practices. However, many organizations are doing business with smaller CSPs in one vertical, such as Software as a Service (SaaS) services for medical billing or marketing firms.

The scant security information some of these vertical-specific CSPs make available on their websites, though, makes it difficult for a potential customer to glean any insight into their security controls. Cloud transparency is critical for an organization to make an educated buying decision, but an examination of some vertical cloud provider sites illustrates how elusive cloud transparency is…

Grazed from SiliconRepublic. Author: Elaine Burke.

Cloud has become more than just a buzzword, as more companies now see it as an integral part of their IT strategy, independent research commissioned by Cisco for its annual CloudWatch report shows.

CloudWatch 2012 surveyed IT decision makers across a range of vertical sectors in Ireland – including retail, finance, healthcare, the public sector and service providers – to examine changing attitudes to cloud computing. Of these, 90pc said cloud is on their agenda – a huge increase from just 52pc in 2011 – and 31pc of those consider it critical to their organisation’s activity…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Pano Logic, the leader in zero client desktop virtualization (VDI), today announced Pano System for Cloud, the lowest cost desktop computing platform for organizations moving to web-based applications. Pano System for Cloud eliminates the need for a local operating system and central processing unit and delivers web-based computing, using Google’s Chrome browser as the interface.

Pano System for Cloud is the most cost-effective computing platform available for many businesses, schools, governments and other organizations seeking an alternative to PC-based or thin client models that rely on costly end user software and hardware. The platform centralizes all computing activities in the cloud; end users see a familiar browser interface and use software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions or web-based applications to do their work. Other web-based computing solutions still require endpoint processing, increasing the overall cost by 50 percent over the new Pano System for Cloud, which utilizes a new low cost Pano Zero Client, the G2M, introduced at $149. The new platform also strips away costly infrastructure layers including software licensing, expensive SAN or NAS hardware and ongoing operational expenses…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Today’s “shadow IT” – in which business users acquire and run their own IT resources as a way to circumvent their IT departments – may eventually become part of tomorrow’s corporate IT portfolios. However CIOs and IT managers need to be proactive in broadening their resource base to include new platforms and devices. And, while until recently cloud providers attempted to mimic corporate data centers, now corporate IT seeks to mimic cloud service providers.

I recently had the opportunity to chat with John Engates, chief technology officer at RackSpace, about the new role IT leaders need to play in the new world of cloud computing. He discussed some of the surprises that emerged from RackSpace’s latest survey of 500 IT decision makers, particularly the fact that “shadow” or “rogue” IT is now prevalent across many enterprises, large and small…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Today, CrowdPC, Inc. announces the public unveiling of its completely new business computing platform for small businesses. The CrowdPC platform consists of an on-site wireless computer, a suite of business software applications, and an online data center, all working together to dramatically improve usability and flexibility, and decrease costs and complexity compared to Windows-based small business systems.

Developed quietly over a six-year period, the CrowdPC computer platform has been designed to leap ahead of the 25-year old Windows based approach now used in businesses around the world. Using state of the art hardware and software technology, CrowdPC delivers PCI and HIPAA compliant security, data safety, all commonly used small business software, real-time off-site backup, and easy connections to smartphones, tablets, and other customer and employee devices at a price of $299…

Grazed from Computer Technology Review. Author: Gilad Parann-Nissany.

We’re all hungry for best practices and tips for securing data in the cloud and also how shared computer resources can and should work to ensure privacy and protection. The focus is on data security, especially data at rest.

Cloud computing is all about increased scalability and productivity. However, new cloud security threats such as “snapshotting” a virtual disk are emerging. These create new threats to private data, compared to when data was stored and secured between the four walls of a datacenter.

With cloud computing, multiple customers may share a single physical disk, although logically separated from each other. In theory, one can share the same physical disk with a competitor – without data crossing over. The same is true for physical servers. Equally, within a single cloud account, different projects may be sharing the same physical disks or physical servers. This virtualized approach is at the heart of cloud computing; it provides many of its benefits…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Red Hat is planning to commercialize its 13-month-old OpenShift PaaS later this year when it splits the widgetry into two initial tiers: FreeShift and MegaShift. Until then it’ll be available as a developer preview.

FreeShift will offer three small gears, the ability to auto-scale and access to the languages, frameworks and data stores developers like to use. It will leverage community-provided support. Developers using the OpenShift PaaS now will be able to automatically migrate to FreeShift.

MegaShift, the initial paid tier, will offer up to 16 gears, and the ability to add storage past the 1GB-per-gear limit in FreeShift. MegaShift users will get support from Red Hat. The platform fee is supposed to be $42 a month with a per-gear-an-hour fee for gears past the first three. However, Red Hat says the pricing is provisional and subject to change…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Tom Krazit.

The lightweight mobile or web application is the must-have computing product of our time: both consumers and businesses demand access to key resources while on the move. But the intense pressure on mobile developers to quickly design and deploy apps requires solid tools to get the job done, and that’s what OneOps, a GigaOM Structure Launchpad finalist, hopes to bring to developers.

OneOps, currently in private beta with plans to go live later this year, has designed a set of application development tools to help developers build cloud-based apps block by block, said Kire Filipovski, co-founder of the company and — like fellow founders Vitaliy Zinchenko and Mike Schwankl — a code slinger at heart…