Category: News

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: David Taber.

When developing and integrating cloud systems, the public interfaces and external "contracts" among services mean that design and architecture can evolve rapidly and in parallel. But when they do and the teams are not in the same room, this speed is an invitation to chaos. As two teams work on opposite sides of an interface (the service provider and the service consumer), it’s easy for the teams’ definition of variables and methods to fall out of sync. Of course the service provider team could update its document and notify the other team about a new semantic of a field value or behavior of a service. But the reality is too often that they don’t, and the classic problem of distributed version control rears its ugly head.

Let’s start with some assumptions about cloud design and architecture:

1. The teams value speed and smarts over rigor and process.

2. The teams use an Agile process that stresses iterative development, with continuous integration and testing cycles…

Grazed from VentureBeat.  Author: Dean Takahashi.

Tilera is announcing today it has launched new cloud computing processors with either 16 or 36 computing brains, or cores.

The company is also announcing that its founding chief executive, Devesh Garg, has rejoined the company as CEO. Garg served as CEO from 2004 to 2007. He moved back to India for personal reasons and became managing director Bessemer Venture Partners India fund. Omid Tahernia took Garg’s place in 2007 and is now stepping down and leaving the company.

Tilera is launching its Tile-Gx36 and Tile Gx-16 chips for cloud computing, networking, and multimedia applications. In contrast to Intel server chips, these chips have many more cores on a single chip (compared to two to four for most Intel chips), Tilera puts anywhere from 16 to 100 cores on a chip, all of them connected through high-speed networking. The result is a blazing-fast chip that is also power efficient…

Grazed from Hydrapinion.  Author: Ian Grayson.

I recently sat through a presentation by the owner of a small software firm who was busy pitching a new cloud-based computing offering to sporting clubs.

The sales patter highlighted some key benefits: smoother administration, reduced book work, easier tracking of membership details and faster collection of fees. The presentation was warmly received by a number of club leaders who were obviously tired of dealing with exactly these kinds of issues.

While many were not sure exactly what cloud computing might be, the benefits it seemed to offer had them queuing for more information at the end of the session…

Grazed from ARN.  Author: Patrick Budmar.

The Business Line.  Author: Balaji Narasimhan.

Many companies, which are turning to cloud computing, will find the need to manage their cloud space becoming more important. Most of these companies rely on both public and private clouds. The impact in India could be higher than in developed countries, if one goes by a research study conducted by IDC in November 2011. According to the study, less than half of end-users across Asia Pacific (excluding Japan) will complete their private cloud projects by 2014.

The respondents of the IDC survey felt this was because of lack of experience in building these systems and because of higher-than-expected upfront investment requirements. IDC says that consequently an increased number of enterprises will make a detour to public cloud services. This, in turn, will result in the management of the hybrid cloud being more pronounced in countries like India…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly.  Author:  Jennifer Baker.

One year after announcing her intention to develop a European Cloud Computing Strategy, Europe’s Digital Agenda Commissioner Neelie Kroes this week made a first cash commitment to the initiative.

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Grazed from Investing.com.  Author:  Brandy Betz.

Goldman Sachs assigned a “neutral” rating to Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) this week after previewing the fourth-quarter report due for release on January 31. Analyst concerns include European sales potential and the investments that Amazon will need to make into its services, notably including cloud storage. Amazon has released two new cloud storage products in as many weeks that expand the data backup and recovery options available to businesses.

Cloud storage – which has been prominent in the news lately as the industry assesses potential fallout from the shutdown of storage site Megaupload, whose operators have been accused of digital piracy — provides users with a third-party-facilitated online storage network that charges customers only for the space they use. This setup is designed to take potentially costly backup and storage responsibilities out of the hands of business owners, allowing them to focus more on data production than its upkeep…

Grazed from The Journal of Accountancy.  Author:  Jeff Drew.

Cloud computing creates unprecedented opportunities for CPA firms to do more chargeable work faster and with better client communications. But transitioning to the cloud and having confidential information accessible over the Internet raises implementation and security concerns that CPA firms must address.

To help CPAs better understand the benefits and challenges of the cloud, the JofA invited five CPAs to share their cloud experiences in a round-table discussion…