Category: News

Grazed from GenomeWeb. Auhor: Editorial Staff.

The National Institutes of Health issued a position statement this week revising its existing polices on use of cloud computing services for storing and analyzing controlled access data stored in the Database of Genotypes and Phenotypes (dbGAP). In response to repeated calls from the community, the NIH began reviewing its existing policies for accessing and using information contained in dbGAP to give biomedical researchers the option to use cloud infrastructure analyze data from the repository on.

Under the existing policy, dbGAP data could not be analyzed using cloud compute because of concerns about the security of the data and to avoid risking the privacy of research participants. Now, according to the newly issued position statement, the NIH will allow investigators to request permission to move dbGAP genomic and associated phenotype data from NIH repositories to public or private cloud systems for data storage and analysis…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Sander Van Vugt.

Every major IT vendor wants to convince data center administrators that their infrastructure isn’t up-to-date without cloud. But do you really need cloud to be considered modern? And what kind of cloud? Cloud computing offers a maximum amount of versatility on servers. Deploying a server in a cloud environment is easy because it is automated. System administrators are no longer needed for the install. Instead, the user can automatically deploy one within minutes.

OpenStack is an open source cloud infrastructure. It has origins in the Linux kernel for operating systems, but doesn’t just fit Linux apps. An OpenStack infrastructure is open enough for integration with other platforms, such as Windows. Integration happens at two levels. At the lower level there are the compute nodes, which are the servers that host VMs — known as instances…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

In its effort to appeal to a broader swath of large enterprise IT environments, Amazon Web Services is making moves to extend the reach of its public cloud into existing on-premises data centers. The latest example: AWS CodeDeploy now allows customers to launch code they store in AWS’s cloud on servers behind a company’s firewall. Previously, CodeDeploy would only run code on AWS servers.

CodeDeploy is a new service AWS announced at its re:Invent conference last year that allows application developers to centrally control and track code for new apps that they’ve built and control where it runs. It’s built on the same system that AWS uses internally to build new services…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Sharon Gaudin.

The European Space Agency (ESA) is looking to focus less on IT and more on rocket science so it’s launching a private cloud to store sensitive information, create a common infrastructure and enable scientists to work together more easily. "We wanted to encourage the use of a common platform across the agency," said Filippo Angelucci, head of the IT department and ESA’s CIO.

"Today, through the cloud, you could have engineers and scientists set up their computing environment in a few minutes, instead of weeks and months, as they did in the past when they had to go through a big process of buying servers and getting them set up." The ESA, an international organization with 20 member states focused on space research, has been using public cloud services from different vendors like AWS to store public data from different satellites and from the Gaia mission to map the galaxy…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworld.com/article/2905421/space-agency-turns-to-private-cloud-for-rocket-science.html

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Don’t look now, but the U.S. cloud service broker (CSB) market will grow from $225.4 million in 2013 to $2 billion by 2018, growing 55.3 percent per year. The global CSB market will grow from $1.6 billion in 2013 to $10.5 billion by 2018, growing 46.2 percent per year, according to MarketsandMarkets.

I deal with CSBs more and more as an increasing number of enterprises move to multicloud approaches. Another factor is that IT increasingly takes on the role of providing cloud services to the rest of the enterprise, and it needs automated ways to manage those services…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

OpenStack specialist Mirantis has joined the Cloud Foundry Foundation in a move being slated as furthering open standards in the maturing cloud industry, as Mirantis looks to support customers topping off their cloud computing stack with a developer layer for building out applications and services.

Mirantis styles itself as the "pure-play" OpenStack company, offering a straight build of the open source cloud computing framework that is not integrated with proprietary technology. Other vendors offer an OpenStack build that is designed to operate with their existing products, such as VMware, which runs OpenStack atop vSphere…

Grazed from Lexology. Author: Neasa Ni ghrada.

On 1 August 2014, the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) published the first privacy-specific international standard for the cloud: ISO/IEC 27018 "Code of practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors". Early adopters Microsoft announced on 16 February 2015 that it was the first company to receive certification for the standard.

ISO/IEC 27018 builds on existing ISO standards such as ISO 27001 (the existing best practice for information security management) and is aimed at increasing confidence in data security and cloud computing. Adoption of the standard would complement one of the exceptions to the prohibition on transferring personal data outside of the EEA such as model contracts, Binding Corporate Rules and Safe Harbour…

Grazed from EnterpriseNetworkingPlanet. Author: Joe Stanganelli.

This was the primary message at February’s Boston presentation of the invitation-only Oracle Cloud Roadshow, an eight-city tour of talks on Oracle Cloud developments particularly pertinent to software resellers, independent software vendors (ISVs), original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), and other enterprises and SMEs. Speakers highlighted both the positive outcomes of increased cloud deployment and the new pain points that have arisen with the democratization of efficiency.

Jeff Kaplan, Managing Director of Massachusetts-based cloud computing consultancy THINKstrategies, delivered a keynote at the event with the running theme of a tale of two cloud cities, frequently referring to the present-day market climate as "the best of times and the worst of times."…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

One of the first casualties of the OpenStack world is Nebula, a company founded by a of the pioneer of the open source cloud computing movement. Nebula posted an announcement on its website yesterday announcing it is shutting down. Chris Kemp, the former CTO for IT at NASA where much of OpenStack’s code was initially developed, founded the company in 2011.

Analysts say the move is not indicative of larger problems within the OpenStack community, but rather reflects the difficulties startups will have in competing with large name-brand vendors who are able to commit the resources needed over a long period of time to this still maturing market…

Grazed from Mashable. Author: Stephanie Walden.

By now, you’ve heard about the cloud -– and you’ve also likely heard about the benefits of using cloud computing for your business or enterprise. But people outside the world of IT may not know that there are multiple types of cloud — and we’re not talking about cumulus versus cirrus. Have you heard of the "private cloud" or the "hybrid cloud"? Do you know the advantages of each?

While there isn’t a specific industry or workload that universally makes sense for each type of cloud, there are certain considerations enterprises should take into account when deciding upon the right fit: For example, does the company frequently handle sensitive customer information online? Do they have a highly secretive recipe or patented design that needs to be protected? In these cases, public cloud computing may be a riskier choice…