Category: News

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Ted Samson.

Among the allures of cloud computing is the promise of easily and seamlessly moving services from one cloud to another. Realizing that kind of portability, however, is difficult. Every cloud service has its own distinct requirements, such as security, governance, and compliance, as well its constituent parts, including Web server, database, storage, and networking requirements.

In an effort to make cloud service more portable, a group of tech giants that includes IBM, Cisco, EMC, CA, SAP, and Red Hat today unveiled the first draft of open interoperability specification called TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications). Capgemini, Citrix, NetApp, PwC, Software AG, Virtunomic, and WSO2, among others, are also contributors…

Grazed from ITWire.  Author: Stephen Withers.

One of the question marks around cloud computing concerns the offshoring of data storage and processing. For many purposes that’s not an issue, but in certain situations there are legal, regulatory or policy reasons for keeping things within Australia.

For that reason, Oracle has been offering a locally hosted implementation of its SaaS CRM product since November 2010, taking into particular account the needs of the public sector.

The company has now revealed that customers for the onshore service include NBN Co, the Victorian Department of Human Services, NSW Government agency NSW Businesslink, Suncorp, and energy and mining service provider AJ Lucas…

Grazed from Business Insurance.  Author: Judy Greenwald.

Grazed from ITWire.  Author: Peter Dinham.

That’s the view of research and market analysis firm, IDC, which says in its latest report on the region that the "cloud concept," which covers shared access to virtualised resources over the Internet while data and software are stored on servers, is becoming “more important for organisations.”

"The broad interest in cloud computing is understandable, considering that it enables IT organisations to become more cost-efficient and agile — for example, by centralising their applications, servers, data, and storage resources, and dynamically moving their resources, or virtual machines," said Sylvia Wünsche, research analyst, European telecommunications and networking for IDC…

Grazed from SBWire.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The Cloud Computing is a computational process that is done on demand through a computer network, or a virtual online space without the need of avant-garde or advanced infrastructure. This low cost & easy to manage approach handles online business. On the other hand, The services computing refers to a rising cross discipline that covers the science & technology of using computing & information technology to model, create, operate and manage business services.

The combined use of both these paradigms helps assuage some of the software engineering problems. We, at SynapseIndia, offer both these services that could be used by the application developers & software developers, both. The application developers can make use of services computing alone, cloud computing alone, or a combination of the two…

Grazed from CloudBestPractices.net.  Author: Neil McEvoy.

One of our major program areas is Cloud Identity and Security Best Practices (CloudIDsec).

Here is our Linkedin social community for this, and the practice will shortly be underpinned by a new Kantara Initiative working group of the same name that I’m currently launching.

As the name suggests this practice is focused on the intersection between federated identity systems and Cloud Computing security, and a perfect example to introduce the domain is this recent press release from NASA, about their use of ‘PIV’ technologies to secure their move to Google apps…

Grazed from Law.com.  Author: Gerry Silver.

Given the ever-increasing reliance on cloud computing, it is inevitable that disputes and litigation will increase between corporations and cloud service providers. The most obvious point of contention will occur if data in the cloud is lost, damaged, stolen or is otherwise rendered inaccessible for a period of time. In such circumstances, the corporation may be facing enormous liability and will seek to hold the cloud provider responsible, while the cloud provider will undoubtedly look to the parties’ agreement and the underlying circumstances for defenses. This article discusses five key considerations for litigators representing corporations and/or cloud providers to focus upon in litigating cloud computing disputes…

Grazed from SacBee.  Author: Editorial Staff.

 www.IceWEB.com, a leading provider of Unified Data Storage for cloud and virtual environments, was named in a predictive analysis entitled, "Unified Storage: A Must-Have for the Cloud," by independent industry expert Arthur Cole, IT Business Edge.

Mr. Cole cites a notion he credits to analyst Greg Schultz, portraying unified storage as the flip side of the cloud computing coin, providing the support infrastructure necessary to realize the true benefits of the cloud…

Grazed from CSOOnline.  Author: Bob Violino.

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) is an independent organization that aims to give its members a voice in shaping the future of cloud computing. The alliance is developing "usage models" to meet the challenge of providing secure cloud environments. The models lay out a set of standard tools that allow vendors to offer different levels of security to cloud-consuming organizations, so that IT and security executives can quickly understand where the threats are and mitigate the risks.

CSO contributor Bob Violino recently interviewed alliance president Curt Aubley, vice president and chief technology officer, Cyber & NexGen Innovation at Lockheed Martin Information Systems and Global Solutions, about cloud security issues and the alliance’s efforts to help secure the cloud…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

The 2012 National Defense Authorization Act directs the DoD (Department of Defense) to transition from private clouds controlled by the DoD to public, commercial clouds. The idea is that commercial clouds can provide better service at a lower cost to the taxpayers. But critics say that through this law "Congress has now increased costs, delays, and security risks for the DoD."

Having watched this work progress over the last several years, I believe Congress is right on this decision.

The act’s language clearly indicates a bias "to cloud computing services generally available within the private sector that provide a better capability at a lower cost with the same or greater degree of security." You can bet this came from the cloud computing lobbyists wandering around the District of Columbia. But as an overall policy, public cloud as the preferred option when all else is equal is correct…