Category: News

Grazed from FedTech. Author: Phil Goldstein.

The Defense Department does not have a consistent definition for cloud computing or a complete list of cloud computing service contracts, according to a report from the DOD’s inspector general. That makes it impossible for the department to assess the effectiveness of its cloud computing contracts, the report says.

The inspector general’s office, which issued the report in late December, had sought to find out whether its armed services branches and departments “performed a cost-benefit analysis before acquiring cloud computing services” and whether they had “achieved actual savings as a result of adopting cloud services.”…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Barclay Ballard.

Security is now a key driving force for cloud adoption according to the latest survey by Rackspace, marking a significant turnaround for the technology. The study, titled “The Anatomy of a Cloud Migration,” polled 500 IT and business decision makers in the UK who have either been through or are planning a cloud migration project and found that security was one of the top three motivations for moving to the cloud.

38 per cent of respondents cited security as a reason for migrating, beaten only by reducing IT costs (61 per cent) and disaster recovery capabilities (50 per cent). 58 per cent of organisations also said that they migrated business-critical data to the cloud first, indicating that cloud security fears are abating…

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Barb Darrow.

Maybe it’s just a media thing, but it sure seems that the price-cutting frenzy that roiled the cloud computing market two and three years ago simmered down over the past year. But the lull may be over. On Tuesday, Amazon AMZN 0.07% Web Services kicked off 2016 with a set of price cuts to three of its bread-and-butter Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) computing services.

The nitty-gritty details are here, but basically the public cloud giant is discounting three of its core Linux computing modules by about 5%. The reductions cover users running Amazon’s own version of the Linux open-source operating system. Customers who run Microsoft MSFT -1.62% Windows, or two other flavors of Linux from SUSE or Red Hat RHT -0.78% , will see smaller discounts…

With plans to supply 100 MW of electricity to the building, Infomart Dallas provides Nimbix the capacity it needs to scale both density and footprint, necessary for maintaining the high-speed networking fabric required to deliver its HPC cloud applications. With power density requirements equating to three to four times the industry average for cloud computing, Nimbix also takes advantage of the building’s access to low-cost power, which enables it to realize a 50 percent power savings as compared to other Dallas data center providers. Additionally, Nimbix’s cloud-based supercomputing solution benefits from Infomart’s flexible design options, including the use of containment and Vertical Exhaust Ducts (VEDs) to scale density and enable greater efficiency, and consequently, improve usage cost economics.

SimpliVity, a leader in hyperconverged infrastructure revolutionizing enterprise IT, today announced the company has been accepted into the Microsoft Enterprise Cloud Alliance program, and has opened its new Seattle Development Center to serve as an innovation and R&D hub on the West Coast, accelerating SimpliVity’s relationship with Microsoft Corp. and the engineering and marketing of SimpliVity’s hyperconverged solutions for virtualized Microsoft data centers.

SimpliVity designed its OmniStack 3.0 Data Virtualization Platform to be vendor-agnostic – aimed to support any hypervisor, any x86 server, any management tool, and any cloud provider. By virtualizing all IT infrastructure and services below the hypervisor onto x86 building blocks, SimpliVity is able to provide the best of both worlds: enterprise-grade capabilities with low-cost cloud economics, delivering 3x total cost of ownership savings.

VMware, Inc. today announced an expansion of its collaboration with Intel Security to include joint solutions for customers using the AirWatch by VMware Enterprise Mobility Management platform. The two companies have partnered on two initiatives to enable technology integrations that will help enterprises meet today’s complex mobile security challenges more effectively and efficiently.

VMware is now a member of the Intel Security Innovation Alliance, a world-class technology partner program that streamlines integration and accelerates the development of interoperable solutions by Intel Security and its partners. VMware and Intel Security plan to offer joint capabilities to their mutual customers, including sharing advanced mobility data via the McAfee Data Exchange Layer, a key component of Intel Security’s open, connected security system. McAfee Data Exchange Layer is a bidirectional communications fabric that distributes global and local security intelligence across Intel Security and third-party security products, including mobile clients and gateways, Intel Security threat intelligence technologies, and the McAfee ePolicy Orchestrator management platform. The integration of AirWatch with Intel Security technologies will be designed to help customers maximize the value of their current security investments, resolve mobile threats more quickly and reduce operational costs. This joint initiative augments the current portfolio of VMware and Intel Security solutions, which includes advanced security for the software-defined data center.

CloudPhysics, provider of data-driven insights for smarter IT, today announced a distribution agreement with Ingram Micro Inc., the world’s largest wholesale technology distributor. Under the terms of the relationship, Ingram Micro will market, sell and support CloudPhysics’ award-winning SaaS analytics solution, which makes it possible for VMware users to preempt and eliminate operational hazards that threaten to disrupt IT operations and applications.

"In today’s world of software-defined data centers, infrastructure is increasingly complex, change is constant and the need for specialized IT services providers is growing daily among businesses of all sizes," said Scott Zahl, Vice President and General Manager, Ingram Micro Advanced Solutions. "With CloudPhysics, our channel partners and their customers gain immediate insight into their infrastructure. This allows them to make more informed decisions about how best to manage and maintain a healthy, hybrid IT ecosystem."

“There is a lot of confusion and hype in the fast changing HCIS and SDS markets and it is critical to gather data about real-world usage,” explained Scott D. Lowe, partner and co-founder of ActualTech Media. “We believe this is the largest and most detailed account of adoption, buying criteria and use cases for HCIS and SDS. The new report provides IT organizations with critical insights on how HCIS and SDS technologies are being used, actual experiences from the field and the future plans of data center leaders from around the world.”

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

If the analysts at the IEEE Computer Society are correct, the coming year will see significant drops in the cost of cloud services, as well as better, faster performance. Thanks to increasing adoption of container technology, as well as network function virtualization, cloud computing will take some great strides.

Container technology and NFV are among the top nine tech trends identified by IEEE. The container phenomenon is of particular interest for companies moving applications to the cloud, the society’s analysts observe. "Containers represent a smarter and more economical way to make this move," they state. "Containers allow companies to develop and deliver applications faster, and more efficiently."…