Category: News

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

The cloud computing market is typically broken into three buckets: IaaS, SaaS and PaaS. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) represents on-demand compute and storage; Software as a Service (SaaS) vendors host applications in the cloud; and Platform as a Service (PaaS) is a cloud-based application development platform.

But a recent Forrester’s Wave report throws those buckets out the window. “The popular wisdom that cloud computing comes in three flavors — SaaS, IaaS and PaaS — no longer describes reality,” say some of Forrester’s top cloud analysts, including John Rymer and James Staten (Staten now works at Microsoft)…

Grazed from FierceWireless. Author: Phil Goldstein.

Around three months after Ford Motor Co. chose BlackBerry subsidiary QNX’s technology to power its Sync 3 in-car technology platform, and not technology from longtime partner Microsoft, Ford is now returning to Microsoft. Ford has contracted with Microsoft for the software giant to deliver cloud-based wireless updates to its connected cars.

When Ford chose QNX for Sync 3 in February, the company stressed it would continue working with Microsoft, including on older versions of Sync. Thus, the companies’ new partnership is an indication that there is no bad blood between the car maker and software giant–or at least not enough to derail their partnership…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Cliff Saran.

The use of cloud applications for desktop IT is gaining ground. IT decision-makers are spending more on cloud, while hardware and software investments are decreasing. The growing acceptance of cloud applications will influence future desktop strategies as businesses move away from traditional Windows-based PC upgrades.

The TechTarget IT Priorities 2015 survey reported that IT spending on cloud computing ranked third (39%) behind spending on hardware (45%) and software (48%). When asked which areas of their IT budgets would decrease, 63% of IT decision-makers said they would spend less on hardware and 49% said they would spend less on software…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerweekly.com/news/2240242447/IT-priorities-2015-Desktop-IT-investments-shifts-to-the-cloud

Grazed from Telecoms. Author: Auri Aittokallio.

Deutsche Telekom (DT) and Huawei have announced an IT and cloud partnership at the computer expo CeBIT 2015. The two firms said the deal will see Huawei provide its hardware and solutions expertise to combine with DT’s systems integrator arm T-Systems’ cloud experience.

According to T-Systems Director of IT, Ferri Abolhassan the partnership is part of the company’s strategy in becoming a cloud technology leader. “We are bringing together strengths from two continents: T-Systems’ technology and quality leadership in cloud services, and Huawei’s cutting-edge technology and solution expertise,” he said…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

ProfitBricks, the provider of painless cloud computing IaaS, today announced Multi-User Access Management for its IaaS cloud. This group policy-based user permissions management enables users to provide additional governance to their cloud infrastructure, something especially important for IT operations professionals and Managed Service Providers (MSPs) who administer multiple cloud environments across several departments or customers.

With this new IT governance feature, account owners have the ability to themselves define which resources (e.g. users, virtual data center resources, snapshots, images, and IP blocks) should be assigned to which definable groups with which permissions. The number of groups and users is unlimited…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

I spend a fair bit of time pushing back on the lack of cloud progress from larger enterprise providers such as IBM, Cisco Systems, and Hewlett-Packard. However, could these companies actually be successful in the cloud through the infrastructure business only? If so, can they keep it up? The latest figures from Synergy Research state that Cisco and HP are the leaders in the cloud infrastructure equipment market.

Cisco continues to lead in the public cloud infrastructure space, selling networking equipment to those who build public and private clouds. Cisco is making major bank on the networking segment of the cloud market. Many predicted that cloud providers and enterprises would prefer lower-cost networking equipment, but that does not seem to be the case…

Grazed from ITWire. Author: Peter Dinham.

Verizon is bringing a suite of enhanced cloud services to its customers in the Asia Pacific region, including Australia. Verizon Enterprise Solutions says the new cloud services are designed to meet the demand for secure, enterprise-grade cloud capabilities “as opportunities for multinational companies in the region grow”.

Francis Yip, regional vice president at Verizon Asia-Pacific says customers in Hong Kong, Melbourne and Singapore will have access to a suite of new and significantly enhanced cloud services. “It’s not if enterprises are moving to the cloud, but when and how. Cloud has become the default delivery platform for almost all of our customers fuelled by the growth of data and the Internet of Things,” Yip said…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itwire.com/business-it-news/cloud/67321-verizon-expands-cloud-services-to-apac

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

The single biggest issue with telecommunications has always been how manual the process is. Whether it involves IP infrastructure or older time-division multiplex phone lines provisioning communications services usually involves weeks. Twilio starting today wants to change that by adding support for elastic Session Initiation Protocol (SIP) trunking to a communication service delivered via the cloud.

According to Twilio CEO Jeff Lawson, the elastic SIP trunking services being offered by Twilio can be provisioned in a matter of seconds via an online portal or application programming interface (API) the company exposes. Lawson contends that trying to deliver modern communications services using telecommunications technologies and process that are 150 years old is absurd…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

The cloud wants enterprise data, and so far it has been fairly adept at gathering the low-hanging fruit: mostly bulk storage, archives, B&R, low-level database workloads and other non-critical stuff. But the real money is in the advanced applications – the kind of data that organizations will pay a premium to support because it brings the highest value to emerging business models…

This is a conundrum, however, because that high value also causes the enterprise to keep critical data close to the vest, which means cloud providers need to go the extra mile to win enterprise trust. And for the most part, that has not happened yet. This is a shame because in terms of both security and uptime, the cloud is at least on par with the typical enterprise and in certain key metrics is actually superior…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

As a big supporter of cloud computing, this is never an easy topic to discuss. However, security concerns will always be present as threats continue to rise. Let me give you an example. As soon as the whole Heartbleed topic arose, our organization began fielding calls from various IT shops asking for remediation, fixes, and patches.

The crazy part was that not all OpenSSL systems were impacted. Many pre-version 1 OpenSSL systems were safe. Many others were facing the challenge up correcting and fixing this serious vulnerability. Cisco, Juniper, F5, and many others were actively deploying fixes to ensure that their systems stay safe…