No, Canada! You can’t keep cloud storage local
Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.
The Treasury Board of Canada is creating a government-wide policy on the use of cloud computing services. It has asked for input from the industry, but already this journey is taking some interesting directions. “Of particular interest are the privacy implications of using cloud computing services, particularly where the data is either hosted outside the country or by foreign-owned organizations,” writes Michael Geist, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.
Indeed, proposed contractual clauses address encryption and data storage, as well as rules about where the data can reside. Per the Treasury Board’s industry request: The services provider (the contractor) must not store any nonpublic, personal, or sensitive data and information outside of Canada. This includes backup data and disaster recovery locations…
VMware, Inc. today announced VMware vSphere® 6, the newest edition of the industry-defining virtualization solution for the hybrid cloud and foundation for the software-defined data center. With more than 650 new features and innovations, VMware vSphere 6 will provide customers with a highly available, resilient, on-demand cloud infrastructure to run, protect and manage any application. VMware vSphere 6 will be complemented by the newest releases of VMware vCloud® Suite 6, VMware vSphere with Operations Management™ 6, and VMware Virtual SAN™ 6.
Cisco has struggled to make inroads in public or private cloud, so the vendor is banking on its networking experience to play a key role in enterprises’ hybrid cloud deployments. The San Jose, Calif.-based company’s cloud strategy relies on shifting its networking focus from hardware to software. Cisco made a splashy roll out of its cloud intentions last year that hasn’t translated into much yet, but its latest efforts around a unified cloud networking platform and subscription models could change that — at least with its existing customers.
Many of the things we do online require an ID and password, but typically whilst this makes things easier for the site it doesn’t always do a lot to protect the user, who may be revealing more information than they need. For example you may have to reveal your full date of birth and address to a video streaming service in order to verify your age and region, running a risk that the information may fall into the wrong hands.
Technology giant EMC is to cut jobs after it forecast a lower-than-expected profit for the year, but CEO Joe Tucci said that he expects the launch of six new products to bring in more than $1bn (£663m) in revenues in the next few years. Although Tucci did not divulge what the new products would be, he said that they would be focused on cloud, mobile, social and big data.
If you are an aspiring entrepreneur in Hong Kong, there’s a new fund that may give you financial support – as long as you are setting up your business on Alibaba Group Holding’s platforms. The Chinese e-commerce giant said in a statement over the weekend that it is spending 1 billion Hong Kong dollars (US$129 million) to create the Alibaba Hong Kong Young Enterpreneurs Foundation, which provides select Hong Kong startups with funding, technical assistance and training to help them build up businesses through Alibaba platforms.