Category: News

Grazed from Talkin Cloud. Author: Editorial Staff.

VARs can have mixed feelings about cloud computing. On the one hand it offers many opportunities for new business, but on the other there’s the question of which offerings will work with a customer’s current solutions. For Symantec partners, Backup Exec.cloud is a perfect example of how to effectively offer a cloud-based backup solution when customers already have an on-premise backup solution.

Because every business is unique, each will have varying needs when it comes to protecting information. For those businesses that prefer to keep data onsite and have enough IT resources to do so, locally deployed software might be their preferred backup method. Those that have fewer IT resources or don’t want to be a system integrator may opt for an all-in-one backup appliance that delivers backup software and storage device in one. And, cloud-based solutions might be better for smaller businesses with no dedicated IT support.
Branch Office Data Protection…

Grazed from Business Cloud9. Author: Katy Ring.

In a global survey of more than 1,000 CEOs IBM found that a key theme amongst them is the requirement to collaborate to reinvent customer relationships, and that they view technology as being an increasingly important external factor impacting on business.

I caught up with Fiona Cullen, Vice President Cloud Computing, IBM Europe, who told me that she believes that Cloud delivery is part of the solution to providing CEOs with what they are looking for. Furthermore, she thinks Cloud is now becoming business as usual in IT departments, with a recent IBM/Economist survey finding that around 75% of companies have piloted, adopted or substantially implemented Cloud in their organisation…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Everyone knows that the cloud, whether public or private, is good for reducing capital expenses. It’s an environment built out of off-the-shelf parts instead of best-of-breed systems; virtualization drives up the utilization rate of the equipment; and automated processes reduce personnel overhead.

Chris Perretta, executive VP and CIO of Boston investment management firm State Street Bank, believes there is another rarely discussed–but potentially huge–source of savings from using private cloud computing: more efficient, lower-cost software development. At State Street, the savings could be hundreds of millions of dollars. AdTech Ad

One source of development savings is that with a private cloud, both the development environment and production environment are standardized clusters of x86 servers. They frequently rely on Linux and other open source code, and they’re managed as a pool of resources. That means a developer can spin up multiple servers and try out code in various iterations and configurations, without needing IT to procure and set up servers…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Cloud storage player Box is launching its mobile app framework OneCloud for Android Monday, in advance of the Google I/O Conference.

This iteration of OneCloud — the iOS version came out in March — features 50 Android apps including Docusign Ink, Breezy, iAnnotate and Fetchnotes, said Chris Yeh, VP of platforms for Box.

Box, which promotes itself as the enterprise-class cloud storage solution, is trying to build an ecosystem of easy-to-use yet IT-acceptable services and add-ons for its storage service that users can access from their mobile device of choice. Box OneCloud for Android is available as of Monday in the Google Play Store and other Android app stores. Box also introduced a OneCloud SDK for Android to make it easier and faster for developers to integrate their applications with Box…

Grazed from InformationWorld. Author: Eric Knorr.

Last week I caught up with Rackspace president Lew Moorman [1] at the GigaOM Structure [2] event to promote OpenStack [3], the open source "cloud operating system" started by Rackspace and NASA.

Moorman’s pitch went something like this: In the quest for a more automated and agile data center, we need not slavishly follow the cloud leader, as Eucalyptus has done emulating Amazon Web Services, or get locked into proprietary clouds from VMware or Microsoft. An open source alternative needs to emerge — and it has, in the form of OpenStack.

"What I would argue is that there is going to be a Linux in this market," Moorman told me. InfoWorld explored precisely that issue in "Is OpenStack the new Linux? [3]" by contributing editor Oliver Rist just a few weeks ago…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: John Foley.

Federal agencies are moving beyond their phase one cloud computing initiatives. They’re testing and revising different cloud models, types of contracts, and security approaches, among other standard practices.

The Office of Management and Budget lit a fire under federal agencies and departments 18 months ago with its "cloud first" policy. With fed organizations already forced to close hundreds of data centers under the Federal Data Center Consolidation Initiative, they had little choice.

Much has happened in the past few weeks that points to the 2.0 phase of federal clouds. Following are 10 recent developments with long-term implications…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Nine in ten (91%) of IT decision makers have a positive opinion of cloud computing according to a national survey commissioned by Rackspace Hosting. IT decision makers view customer service and technical support as important considerations when choosing a cloud computing provider.

By a three to one ratio (75% to 25%), the IT decision makers surveyed prefer a cloud provider with strong customer service and technical support even if that provider has higher prices. This view was consistent by IT decision makers regardless of organization size and type.

IT decision makers also ranked the ability to add computing power, the ability to move data easily between cloud providers and concerns over vendor lock-in as important considerations when choosing a cloud provider…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: Olafur Ingthorsson.

Of course, we’re hearing more and more about cloud computing these days – but what is cloud storage, and how can it benefit your business?

The fact is that you’re probably already using the cloud without even realizing it. If you use a web-based email provider such as Gmail or Hotmail, you are using the cloud. If you’ve ever used Skype video calling or video interfaces like Vimeo or YouTube, you’ve used the cloud. If you’ve ever backed up data on the Internet rather than an external device, you’ve used the cloud.

Although the cloud in its current form is a relatively recent development, interest in cloud computing continues to grow. Cloud computing has a great number of benefits — here are the top five:…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

The cloud computing paradigm is steadily shifting the course of computing away from physical hardware with locally managed software platforms toward virtualized, cloud-based services. This new paradigm, brought about by cloud computing, provides users with instant access to virtually unlimited computing resources and, at the same time, allows providers to deploy complex IT infrastructure as a service (IAAS).

There is a huge benefit from economies of scale and tremendous gains in multiplexing offered by the sharing of the underlying physical infrastructure using virtualization. But all these benefits come at great cost. The sheer scale and highly dynamic nature of available cloud platforms bring considerable new challenges to service providers. To realize these complicated cloud services, a control framework must be present which can orchestrate cloud resource configuration, provisioning, utilization and decommissioning, and real-time monitoring across extensively distributed physical resources…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Matt Prigge.

On June 14, the Amazon Web Services cloud computing platform experienced a serious outage [1] in its Virginia (U.S.-East) data center. Apparently power-related, the outage took down portions of one of the four independent availability zones that operate in that data center. As a result, many popular websites and a slew of less popular ones disappeared from the Internet for several hours.

As in previous outages of megascale cloud implementations from likes of Amazon and Microsoft [2], this incident triggered a round of hysteria about the future of cloud computing. Surprisingly, unlike the response to last April’s AWS outage [3], many rushed to Amazon’s defense. This could be a reflection of the fact that attitudes toward the cloud and its inevitable failings are becoming more realistic, or it could simply be that this month’s outage was far less widespread. In either case, anti-public-cloud pundits and competitors alike wasted no time in using this failure to underline why the public cloud is an incredibly bad idea…