Category: News

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Barb Darrow.

If Microsoft is not weighing a bid to buy hotshot container startup Docker, perhaps it should be. The idea, talk of which cropped up late last week, is intriguing and a purchase would be a bold move by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, who is trying to position the company’s Azure cloud as the cloud-of-choice for businesses, but as part of that effort also a first-class home for containers and for open-source software.

Docker is an open-source container technology that lets companies package up applications in a lightweight way so that they can run on different sets of infrastructure with minimal tweaking. To confuse matters, Docker is also a venture-capital-backed startup, once known as DotCloud, that is commercializing this technology and is reportedly valued at over $1 billion…

Grazed from ITBusiness. Author: Robert Cordray.

Cloud computing has created a range of opportunities for businesses seeking to improve their working process. The technologies, services and options that are currently available can allow workers to enjoy greater flexibility while providing employers with enhanced security as well as reduced operational costs. Cloud computing services make it easy to update a conventional working process and ensure that workers and employers are able to benefit from the unique opportunities this technology is able to provide.

Enhanced flexibility

Limiting workers and staff to dedicated terminals and systems can reduce their effectiveness. Businesses that are seeking to make the most of their existing computer systems and equipment will find that cloud computing can provide an ideal solution. Ensuring that workers can more easily make use of a wider range of systems, devices and options is often much simpler than many employers may realize…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itbusiness.ca/blog/cloud-computing-offers-many-benefits-businesses-cannot-afford-to-ignore/56267

Grazed from CSO. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is now a well-established business practice in NZ. In 2013, 88% of NZ organisations already accessed emails via the cloud. Many businesses understand the financial advantages of using the cloud. Large, irregular, forecasted Capex can be replaced by smooth, predictable Opex spending.

Using cloud-based services to host your desktop, CRM, analytics and business intelligence is increasingly common. Senior executives have been quick to grasp the cost advantages. The next step is leveraging the cloud to build organisation-wide competitive advantages. What other aspects of your organisation should migrate (and when), to serve your customers better, faster, cheaper? How can the cloud help differentiate your products and services?…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Charles Cooper.

The desire to reduce costs clearly contributed to the first wave of cloud computing. To be sure, the cloud has helped companies get a better handle on IT costs. And that’s understandable given that many IT organizations remain stuck in a mindset of proving the business case for IT investment through cost savings.

But as we reach the midpoint of 2015, it’s increasingly clear that the promise of the cloud has more to do with the role it is fated to play in accelerating the enterprise’s rate of innovation. IT managers describe the cloud as the most important technology initiative they have on their agendas for this year. They also say the cloud is causing fundamental changes in their businesses by helping them to improve service and generate new revenue streams…

Grazed from Computing. Author: Graeme Burton.

The Council of the European Union has agreed to new EU Data Protection Regulations that will co-ordinate the law across the 28-member-state bloc for the first time. The agreement after three years of sometimes fractious negotiations was reached at a meeting of justice and home affairs ministers in Luxembourg today.

EU officials claim that making pan-EU data protection laws in the form of a regulation, rather than a looser directive, will provide a foundation for the so-called "digital single market" and instigate growth in the EU’s somewhat moribund technology and internet industries – an area in which Europe lags behind both America and Asia…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: John S. Webster.

Not long ago, the prospect of outsourcing mission-critical applications to a cloud service provider made IT managers cringe. Despite promises of agility, scalability, and the elimination of infrastructure management headaches, there were serious concerns about security and regulatory compliance.

But these fears have largely proven unfounded. In fact, Gartner recently went so far as to call the unsuitability of the cloud for mission-critical apps one of the Top 10 myths in the world of technology. According to Gartner, "Many organizations have progressed beyond early use cases and experimentation and are utilizing the cloud for mission-critical workloads…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Ingrid Lunden.

Are we headed for yet more price wars in the world of cloud computing? Amazon and Google have made huge inroads into the market on the back of deep discounts and generous storage allowances, and as a measure of their competitive threat, today one of the bigger and older incumbents out of Europe announced a partnership that it hopes will help it fight back.

Germany’s Deutsche Telekom, parent of T-Mobile, today announced that it would tie up closer with China’s Huawei to sell enterprise cloud services, specifically, as it notes, “to pit itself more strongly against the Internet corporations Google and Amazon in future.” The news today also signals a shift in how DT approaches its place in the cloud services market…

Grazed from Business2Technology.  Author: Matthew Eager.

OK, so you’ve got data spread across a number of cloud applications and you have decided to bring that data together to understand your business better. Great. But you have customer information over here and order information over there, invoices in this system, and inventory in that one. When it comes to lining up the data, how does that work, really?

In part one of this article, I will describe how to go about matching data across cloud apps. Be sure to read part two on data schema challenges related to getting the data you need from a particular app…

Grazed from New Zealand Herald.  Author: Adam Gifford.

Chief information officers who have spent years filling up their data centres are now clearing out space so they can do new things.  That’s the picture Jim Thompson, chief engineer and vice-president for engineering and supply chain at technology vendor Unisys, brought to last week’s ninth annual CIO Summit.

He talked on the rise of the digital business and how that is transforming the data centre.  Data centres, which are like fridges full of computers, have been changing physically anyway under the effect of Moore’s Law, which describes the steady rate at which silicon chips become smaller, more powerful and cheaper…

Grazed from TheWindowsClub.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft Research’s Project Premonition seeks to detect pathogens in animals before these pathogens make people sick. Project Premonition sounds nothing less than a blockbuster movie. It involves mosquitoes caught in the robotic traps, drones, the cutting-edge molecular biology and the advanced cloud-based data analysis.

Catching mosquitoes and training drones

Microsoft Research and Saint George’s University of Grenada have partnered to catch mosquitoes using drones and then analyzes their body contents for pathogens. By analyzing mosquitoes, early signs that can spread potentially harmful diseases can be detected…