Category: News

Grazed from DailyFinance.com.  Author: Alex Planes.

Without hardware, there would be no cloud. But cloud-centric hardware isn’t always the same as the box you use to surf the Web. Maintaining constant uptime, speedy data transfers, and always-on connectivity aren’t optional when providing service to thousands of demanding businesses.

I’ve put together a list of some cloud-serving hardware manufacturers that might be worth your time. You’ll find a few familiar faces (paired with some not-so-familiar numbers), and you might be surprised by who’s taking the pole position in this explosive market….

Cloud computing technology would allow new social gaming network to offer console-quality games without hardware limitations. Even mobile phones look set to be able to use GFACE’s cloud computing technology.Mr. Faruk Yerli, founder of Crytek, is shown speaking in Beijing in 2010. Crytek is backing a new social gaming network, called GFACE, that uses cloud computing streaming to allow lots of devices to interact in multiplayer games.

Crytek, the developer behind Crysis and Far Cry, is backing a new social gaming network called GFACE. Created by a “small team with big ideas”, GFACE promises to deliver high quality free to play multiplayer games directly to your browser, while also offering Facebook-like social network features…

Grazed from Deseret News.  Author: Blaze Bullock.

Grazed from CenterBeam.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Platform-as-a-Service, a core layer of cloud computing, will be driving the future of the cloud, according to a report from IT research firm Gartner. PaaS is the layer of the cloud that contains all application infrastructure services, eWeek said, and Gartner said all major vendors will have PaaS offerings by the end of 2013.

"With large and growing vendor investment in PaaS, the market is on the cusp of several years of strategic growth, leading to innovation and likely breakthroughs in technology and business use of all of cloud computing," said Yefim Natis, vice president and distinguished analyst at Gartner. "Users and vendors of enterprise IT software solutions that are not yet engaged with PaaS must begin building expertise in PaaS or face tough challenges from competitors in the coming years."…

Grazed from CenterBeam.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Although cost savings and the use of new technology are great reasons for moving to a cloud computing solution, Robert Youngjohns, president of Microsoft North Amerca, told a room full of IT vendors that business should be what drives companies into the cloud instead of any of the flash and frills, according to the Tampa Bay Business Journal.

“Going to the cloud is a business decision. It’s not about technology,” Youngjohns said at Tech Data Corp.’s Cloud Champion Summit in Florida, the news source reported. He added that businesses should take things such as costs and applications into effect, but the decision to move into the cloud should mostly look at what will work for the business and what will not…

Grazed from BOSS.  Author: Carl Davies.

Since at least 2006, the communications market’s best and brightest have predicted an epic battle between cable companies and telcos in the enterprise sector. 2012 may turn out to be the year that proves the soothsayers right, though not in a way anyone could have foreseen at mid-decade. An entirely new market – cloud computing – could turn out to be a major field where telecom and cable face head-on to win commercial accounts.

Last year, opponents fired the opening shots by acquiring or partnering with large cloud-computing companies. In the U.S., almost within the same week, Verizon bought Terremark and Time Warner snapped up Navisite. Not long after, CenturyLink purchased Savvis. Then Britain’s largest cable MSO, Virgin Media, partnered with CenturyLink’s Savvis to offer business-class cloud services up against its competitors, BT and Cable & Wireless…

Grazed from HostReview.  Author: Charles John.

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Thomas Clabiurn.

In an effort to defend the legal basis of cloud computing, Google on Wednesday asked a New York court for permission to file an amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court brief, in a record industry lawsuit against ReDigi, an online market that facilitates the resale of digital music files.

A letter from the law firm representing Google, Fenwick & West, warns against granting the preliminary injunction requested by plaintiff Capitol Records. "A premature decision on incomplete facts could create unintended uncertainties for the cloud computing industry," the letter states.

The court, however, denied Google’s request, on the basis that the parties in the lawsuit should be able to address the issues without assistance…

Grazed from ITWeb TechForum.  Author:  Martin Ray.

The adoption levels of cloud computing are on the rise, driven not only by advancing technology and convenience, but also by the recent downturn in the economic environment. Saving money has been a focus of companies in recent years, and what better way to achieve this goal than to employ cost-efficient cloud computing services.

The cloud, with its streaming media services and promise of near limitless storage and other cost-saving functions, has become an arena of extreme interest to both the public and private sectors…

Grazed from CTR.  Author: Rand Wacker.

While the cloud makes it far easier to procure and deploy computing resources, it also mandates a new set of security requirements that differ from systems running in an organization’s traditional private data center.

Traditional security technologies simply don’t work in these new cloud-computing environments. Without access to the physical network, appliance-based network-scanning can’t see traffic going to and from your servers, and host-based scanning agents usually consume a tremendous amount of CPU time — a resource that customers pay for directly in the metered billing systems popular in the cloud…