Category: News

StackEngine, the platform that gives organizations the power to simply and massively deploy, manage, and scale resilient Docker applications, today announced the results of its inaugural ‘State of Containers’ survey, focusing on the issues and causes both leading to and prohibiting Docker adoption in the enterprise.

The survey, which polled 745 respondents in the enterprise virtualization and cloud computing field, was put together by StackEngine in partnership with both VMblog and CloudCow. It found that Docker adoption in the enterprise is indeed real and ahead of schedule, with more than 70% either using Docker or evaluating it in their organization. In fact, just 7% responded that they had not heard of the container solution, with 65% saying they were using VMware as their current infrastructure.

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Jay Chapel.

The cloud has changed the game for business and IT. The cloud is a disruptive technology – it fuels innovation, drives performance gains and enables businesses to do more with very little upfront investment. Users can source and deploy their own IaaS, PaaS and SaaS solutions in a matter of minutes with a few mouse clicks. These user-led cloud acquisitions produce silos of clouds with little to no IT governance, introducing risks to data security, business continuity and expense control.

What is Cloud Governance and Why is it So Important?

According to the website For Dummies, governance is the practice of applying policies that relate to using services. It’s about defining the organizing principles and rules that determine how an organization should behave. Before diving in, let’s take a step back and look at the IT governance process in general, because many of the same principles are relevant to the cloud environment…

Graze from Whir. Author: David Hamilton.

VMware made a series of announcements last week in support of unified “One Cloud” platform for the hybrid cloud that, according to the company, is the “first unified platform for the hybrid cloud.” On Monday, Feb. 2, VMware announced several updates that support this One Cloud effort including the new vSphere 6 platform, VMware Integrated OpenStack, Virtual SAN 6, vSphere Virtual Volumes, and vCloud Air Hybrid Networking Services.

With VMware being a direct provider hybrid and public cloud services through vCloud as well as through its ecosystem of cloud service provider partners, many voices from the hosting and cloud community have weighed in on VMware’s new capabilities and what it means for the industry…

Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Editorial Staff.

When you think about buying cloud apparatus, you probably think about a large IaaS providers offering up virtual machines in efforts to achieve your organization’s core objectives. What if it is your duty to find the top performing cloud solution and you’ve stumbled upon the concept to bare metal cloud computing. Instead of using virtualized instances of machines, bare metal does exactly what it says it does; it provides a cloud infrastructure using bare metal resources versus a hypervisor.

Bare Metal Clouds Outperform Virtualized CloudsRackSpace is a company that has reinvented itself as a cloud service provider. RackSpace has recently gone live with its bare metal cloud offering which is quickly becoming popular. RackSpace has a product line up that they have dubbed OnMetal; which guarantees administrators a bare metal instance of a system based on their cloud’s needs. This innovative technology is said to have surpassed virtualization endeavors in terms of speed and performance. According to research from RackSpace, they explicitly claim that their OnMetal offerings outperforms all virtualized instances of VMs…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Katherine Noyes.

Few would deny the appeal of the cloud for enterprise file storage and sharing, but for some organizations—particularly those in heavily regulated industries—security concerns can outweigh those potential benefits. Enter Box Enterprise Key Management (EKM), a new solution now in beta that aims to give businesses the ability to maintain exclusive control over their encryption keys.

Hard on the heels of its initial public offering late last month, Box on Tuesday unveiled Box EKM, a service that targets security-conscious organizations with technology delivered in partnership with Amazon Web Services and Gemalto. “In the old days, if you wanted to encrypt and protect data inside your organization, IT could set it up,” said Rand Wacker, Box’s vice president of enterprise products…

Grazed from CDW. Author: Editorial Staff.

It’s “heart”-ening just how many technologies there are to love this Valentine’s Day. Our HIT List this week is sweet on interoperability, connected care and cloud computing, to name just a few. Where would you have Cupid take aim?

1. Fast, flexible and free. Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources, aka FHIR, is a new standards framework garnering some serious attention from healthcare leaders and vendors. Developed by Health Level Seven (HL7) International, the no-cost FHIR platform is designed to help organizations quickly and easily address the increasing demand for interoperability. Bet you can’t wait to find out more…

Grazed from ITWorldCanada. Author: Don Sheppard.

With all the buzz on cloud migration, IT industry experts have insisted that enterprises need a corporate cloud computing policy, but is it really necessary for cloud success? Is an explicit cloud policy essential, nice to have, or optional? By cloud policy, I mean an enterprise-wide cloud governance statement of direction, not just a tactical IT directive or a departmental purchasing rule. Enterprise policies typically cover business critical topics such as:

• Product – what business do you want to be in (and not in)?
• Personnel – rules for human resources, ethical behaviour and fairness
• Legal – commitment to meet regulatory, compliance and government relations requirements
• Finances – practices for accounting, use of capital and delegation of authority…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Rick Delgado.

The modern office is nothing like it was in the past. In fact, in many cases it’s not even a physical location. Improvements in technology have allowed us to work from anywhere, whether right at home or flying on a plane. Our lives have become increasingly demanding, meaning we require better tools to help us get the same amount of work done while we’re on the go.

This has significantly contributed to improvements in mobile technology. Within the past few years we’ve shrunk our machines, cut their wires and made our cell phones smarter. These developments aren’t just for personal convenience either. Sure, the ability to access social media and take quick pictures is great, but mobile devices are also incredibly useful for sending and accessing information from almost anywhere. It’s this benefit that has caused such rapid integration of smartphones into the workforce…

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Steven Scheer.

Team8, an Israeli venture capital fund focused on the cyber-security industry, said on Tuesday it had raised $18 million in its first round of funding, including investment from Alcatel-Lucent and Cisco . Also participating in the round were Bessemer Venture Partners, Marker LLC and Innovation Endeavors, which was founded by Google executive chairman Eric Schmidt.

Led by veterans of the Israeli army’s 8200 intelligence and electronic espionage unit, Team8 aims to develop cyber-security companies that offer more in-depth protection than the usual defence against hacking attempts by generic malware. Bessemer partner David Cowan said that could set them apart from the legions of security start-ups in Silicon Valley…

Grazed from GovTech. Author: Brian Heaton.

The Texas Department of Information Resources (DIR) and Amazon Web Services have partnered to make it easier for state agencies and other customers of the DIR to move to the cloud. The DIR has negotiated a contract with Amazon that enables state customers to buy cloud services directly through the vendor.

Amazon is one of 22 companies the DIR has contracts with for cloud technology under its cooperative contracts program. Prior to the new arrangement, Texas agencies had to conduct their own separate procurements and vendor solicitations. While the DIR has contracts with various Amazon reseller businesses, the new contract is the first statewide agreement Amazon has held, according to Shannon Kelley, contract manager with the Texas DIR…