Category: News

Grazed from CCSKGuide. Author: Editorial Staff.

The DoD’s new Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG), released by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), replaces their previous Cloud Security Model. The guide outlines an overall “security posture” that directs cloud service providers (CSPs) seeking to work with the DoD. This article is a continuation of a previous one, which introduced the four new information impact levels. Here, we will examine the DoD process of risk assessment of cloud service offerings, as defined by the SRG.

Risk Assessment Process

Shifting to cloud computing means that risk management processes must change as well. The goal is to address requirements and controls, relative to the criticality of DoD information in the external cloud, in a cost effective way. At the same time, it is also to assure the security of DoD core missions and networks in accordance with the DoD RMF…

Grazed from iMarketReports. Author: Clint Boulton.

The benefits of shifting business applications to Web-friendly cloud services is proving far more complex than lining up a partner and flipping a switch, say executives who have made the transition. Absent proper expense controls, they say the cloud can be exceptionally wasteful of expensive resources.

What to watch for? Experts say always keep future costs in mind when planning the shift. Some common mistakes include ordering too much computing power, failing to program software shutdowns in off hours, not using monitoring tools to keep tabs on wasted computing cycles, or allowing programmers to believe cycles are free…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

AppDirect announced $50 million in Series D funding led by Mithril Capital Management. New investors Henry Kravis and Paul Fribourg join existing investors Mithril, Foundry Group, iNovia Capital and StarVest Partners to bring the cloud commerce compay’s total capital raised to $110 million.

"This new funding will enable us to continue our growth and further drive innovation and redefine one of the fastest- growing sectors of cloud computing, cloud service commerce," Daniel Saks, CEO at AppDirect, told eWEEK. "Over the next year we’ll expand geographically to increase our global market share in Europe, Asia and Latin America regions."…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

A recent pact between Google and VMware reflects a new air of co-opetition among major cloud computing service suppliers, as companies try to keep Amazon from running away with the market. Ray Noorda, the late founder of Novell, popularized the term co-opetition, meant to convey how competitors will cooperate where their interests overlap in one narrow sphere, while continuing to compete on many other fronts.

Amazon’s continued ability to innovate and create new on-demand computing services around its online retailing base of operations has made it a formidable competitor. As enterprise IT shops experiment with and embrace cloud services, rivals including VMware, Google, Microsoft, Rackspace, and IBM SoftLayer have reason to worry that Amazon will win today’s cloud-services land grab before they can bring forth a full suite of competing services…

Grazed from Financial Times. Author: James Crabtree.

Infosys has bought US-based technology group Panaya in a $200m deal, marking the most significant step in chief executive Vishal Sikka’s drive to offer high-end software and boost the outsourcer’s growth. On Monday, the Bangalore-based group announced it had acquired Panaya, which was founded by an Israeli entrepreneur in 2006 but has its headquarters in California, in an all-cash deal based on an enterprise value of $200m.

Panaya specialises in automation technologies, in particular those that can help large companies manage and upgrade complex software packages bought from the likes of US-based Oracle or German technology group SAP. Infosys’s move provides the clearest indication yet of the direction outlined by Mr Sikka since he took the helm of the group last June, having previously been SAP’s chief technology officer…

Read more from the source @ http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/05682e48-b5e4-11e4-b58d-00144feab7de.html#axzz3RwCdrYMo

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

Cloud computing isn’t going anywhere. In fact, there are more cloud platforms, services and environments being developed each and every day. The evolution of the cloud has seen many organizations evolve from private to public and now hybrid cloud platforms. In reality, almost every cloud environment within a pubic cloud has some sort of connection back to the central data center.

So, at some level, all public clouds are some percentage hybrid. Moving forward, the hybrid cloud model will give end-users even more services and benefits. A recent Gartner report found that the use of cloud computing is growing, and by 2016 this growth will increase to become the bulk of new IT spend…

Grazed from SiliconAngle. Author: Maria Deutscher.

The promise of cloud computing remains elusive for the traditional enterprise nearly a decade after the trend first reared its head. Organizations are caught in a trade-off between control and flexibility that makes it difficult to realize the full benefits of the model, but striking the right balance became a notch easier last week as the vendor community took a collective step forward toward seizing it.

AppDirect Inc. led the charge, revealing a $50 million funding round meant to fuel the development of its namesake platform, which provides a way for business workers to consume cloud services on their own terms while still upholding governance policies. It offers a selection of pre-screened applications that administrators can assemble into catalogs tailored to the requirements of their organizations and regulate usage accordingly…

Read more from the source @ http://siliconangle.com/blog/2015/02/16/what-you-missed-in-cloud-disrupting-consumption-models/

Grazed from BackupTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

Complete automation is a myth. Absolute agility is a dream. But, the cloud makes it possible to automate those routine processes and activities that would otherwise consume considerable amount of time and deprive the organisation of the precious time that can be spent innovating, communicating, and building up their business.

The first step towards smarter computing is to spell out your rules and policies. These are triggers and frames for intelligent process definitions. For instance, if you want only certain section of your employees to have access to a specified set of data, it is important to have a user management policy. Each employee who can be authorised for access must be given a user id and password that allows access to the data set…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Is cloud computing finally opening up the doors to analytics? Everyone wants advanced data analytics, but the bar to achieving these capabilities has been high — requiring high-level skills, as well as highly scalable data management and storage. Cloud offers a way into the world of analytics, especially for small to midsize organizations that may may never have been able to afford it.

For large enterprises, it provides ways to quickly spin up or test new applications and data sets without crowding out existing infrastructure. A recent survey by O’Reilly Media and sponsored by Teradata finds that 40 percent of respondents who identify themselves as big data practitioners currently use cloud services for analytics…

Grazed from FutureGov.  Author: Editorial Staff.

As the mobile channel becomes an increasingly important access point for government services, HP has launched a new Software-as-a-Service solution to improve the way government agencies monitor their mobile apps.

HP AppPulse Active monitors the performance of both native apps and browser-based apps, allowing IT departments to see service levels in real time – rather than when it is too late and a fault has already occurred…