Category: News

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Bob Violino.

Without proper analytics in place, many cloud services customers are wasting resources, struggling with compliance and suffering from outages and unexpected costs, according to a new study from Forrester Research. The study, sponsored by enterprise cloud hosting provider iLand, shows that all of the 275 IT decision makers and senior business executives surveyed in the United States, United Kingdom and Singapore said they’ve experienced at least one negative financial or operational impact due to missing or hidden metadata.

These negative business impacts include outages, wasted resources, unexpected costs and challenges reporting to management. “Companies aren’t just using the cloud—they depend on it,” the report says. “Nevertheless, cloud providers fail to keep cloud users happy. As companies expand their use of cloud services, they need to be confident that their cloud providers aren’t holding anything back, and are committed to their success.”…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Lisa Beilfuss.

Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced a deal to buy privately held MaintenanceNet for $139 million, the latest acquisition for the network giant. Carlsbad, Calif.-based MaintenanceNet, which was founded in 2004, operates a cloud-based platform that uses data analytics to help automate sales processes.

The companies have partnered since 2009, whereby MaintenanceNet’s software alerts Cisco clients to service contracts that are coming up for renewal or overdue and enables automated quoting and online ordering. In a blog post, Cisco said MaintenanceNet will join its global customer success organization and called the ability to easily track and manage contracts “critical” as more information technology business models shift to a recurring revenue model for products and services…

Read more from the source @ http://www.wsj.com/articles/cisco-plans-to-buy-cloud-platform-maintenancenet-1436281361

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Amazon (AMZN) is providing Cloud Drive users with the ability to access files via smartphones and tablets. The technology giant this week launched Cloud Drive applications on iTunes, Google Play and the Amazon Appstore. So what do the new apps mean for managed service providers (MSPs)?

These apps offer a simplified folder list and a way to view and share files that could make it easier for sales representatives and service technicians to access files on the go, according to TechCrunch. The Cloud Drive apps allow users to view files stored with Amazon and navigate through directories, InformationWeek noted…

Grazed from TheRegister. Author: Editorial Staff.

From every angle, developers are the key to the public cloud. Unfortunately, today’s developers often aren’t up to the challenge and frequently end up being as much of a roadblock as operations administrators. New breeds of technologists are required, bringing new ways of thinking to using the emerging infrastructure superpowers of tomorrow.

Actually, I lie. What’s needed isn’t – for the most part – a particularly new way of thinking. It’s a rather old one, with a twist. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s start at the beginning, of the modern era of computing. This began with the introduction of the microcomputer. Suddenly (it took about 15 years) everyone had a computer on their desks. Servers held some centralised resources, but individual PCs could crunch away on things and nobody had to worry about time sharing on mainframes…

Grazed from CCI. Author: Editorial Staff.

Parallels, has announced the rebranding of its virtualisation and cloud service provider business unit. Effective from today, the company’s Service Provider business will operate as Odin while the cross-platform solutions unit will continue to operate as Parallels. From this week the new Odin brand will handle the businesses cloud hosting solutions which currently powers a wide range of businesses from small and local hosters to some of the world’s largest telecommunications providers.

The brand will service and support more than 10,000 service providers in delivering applications and cloud services to more than 10 million SMBs from 15 countries. The Odin business will provide consultancy, a catalogue of cloud applications (Plesk, Plesk Automation, and Virtuozzo), and a selection of software including web business builder, server virtualisation, provisioning, and billing automation…

Read more from the source @ http://cloudcomputingintelligence.com/item/2239-parallels-renames-service-provider-business-unit-odin

Grazed from FoundersWorkbench. Author: Gerry Stegmaier.

Having recently examined scalability as a key motivation to founders’ use of cloud computing funding, we will now take a look at the various legal issues that may arise from cloud computing-based transactions. The implementation of cloud computing infrastructure implicates several issues inherent to the technology – most notably data control and regulatory compliance.

The simple act of contracting with a cloud computing service provider, for example, requires a company to delegate significant control over its data and computing infrastructure to that service provider. Because the purchasing company likely continues to have responsibility for that core business data, ensuring that the cloud relationship addresses this responsibility remains an important operational consideration…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Charlene OHanion.

One of the topics I often find myself discussing with both vendors and partners is cloud services. To be more specific, the role cloud services should play in channel partners’ business models. And with every conversation, one thread keeps popping out: Channel partners should embrace cloud services, but shouldn’t expect to make the transition overnight.

In other words, make it an evolutionary event, not a revolutionary event. Two conversations I had last week bolstered this idea. One was with Blake Wetzel, vice president of CenturyLink’s Channel Alliance, and the other was with Bob Skelley, vice president of Global Channel at Infinio…

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Barb Darrow.

After years of competitive price cutting, it looks like Microsoft, at least, is hiking prices on its cloud computing infrastructure. IBM is also making changes. Will Amazon follow suit? Companies spoiled by round after round of price cuts on cloud computing services over the past year or so had better gird themselves for change.

It turns out nothing falls forever. Microsoft is raising prices on its Azure cloud. Last week blogger Aiden Finn, a Dublin-based Microsoft-focused consultant, posted excerpts from a company email alerting customers that Azure prices in the Eurozone will rise 13% as of August 1. The message cited currency concerns, which is understandable given the current situation in Greece…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Frederic Paul.

Need more proof that cloud computing is taking over? Just before the Independence Day holiday, research firm IDC released its assessment of the Worldwide Cloud IT Infrastructure Market—and the numbers were astonishing. According to the firm’s Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, server, storage, and Ethernet switch revenue for public and private cloud systems grew by 25.1% year over year to nearly $6.3 billion in the first quarter of 2015.

Even more importantly, perhaps, the percentage of total IT infrastructure spending devoted to the cloud continues to mushroom to nearly 30%, up from 26.4% a year ago. Private cloud revenue jumped 24.4% to $2.4 billion, while the public cloud grew even faster—25.5%— to $3.9 billion. Servers led the way, up 28% for the private cloud and 33% for the public cloud…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Tony Pagano.

It’s mid-2015, and it’s clear that the cloud paradigm is here to stay. Its services are growing exponentially and, at this time, it’s a fluid model with no steady state on the horizon. As such, adopting cloud computing has been surprisingly slow and seen more IT leaders, as well as business leaders, try to get their footing on what can otherwise be described as a very slippery slope.

Businesses are involved in a struggle to transform their firms into innovative and agile organizations, as well as gain a competitive advantage in their respective industry via a collaborated effort between the IT department and its internal business units. And this is impacting all types of enterprises…