Category: News

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Tom Bice.

Shadow IT has been lurking in the dark corners of organizations for years now, but as BYOD and public cloud computing gain traction in the workplace more and more employees are stealthily adopting their own software and hardware without telling IT. When IT is left in the dark it makes it nearly impossible to mitigate potential risks, and in light of the recent barrage of data breaches executives are becoming increasingly concerned about the issue.

So what can you do? First and foremost, accept that shadow IT is here to stay. IDC found that the majority of information workers share files via email and other unsecure methods while only a small group, about 10 percent, use a service provided by their company. Rather than trying to squash all instances of shadow IT that pop up in your organization, put a plan in place to help manage it. The following tips can help get you started…

Read more from the source @ http://www.datacenterknowledge.com/archives/2015/01/26/shedding-light-shadow-management/

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP SE is trying to marshal business technology’s biggest suppliers to gather hacker-fighting intelligence following a spate of security problems with open-source software. The biggest maker of business applications has contacted companies including Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) and Apple Inc. (AAPL) about sharing information on analyses of the weaknesses in open-source code, which is generally free to run and available for the user community to improve, according to Gordon Muehl, chief technology officer for security at Walldorf, Germany-based SAP.

More cooperation among the business-software makers could help stanch security flaws found in the open-source programs, which increasingly touch online services and devices used by billions of people. A flaw called Heartbleed, discovered last spring, left hundreds of thousands of servers and routers vulnerable to attack. Another one, Shellshock, emerged in September…

Grazed from DataCenterDynamics. Author: Paul Mah.

Lenovo Group and the Hong Kong Cyberport Management Company Limited (Cyberport) have entered into a collaboration to establish the region’s first cloud service and product development center, as reported by Laura Luo on Datacenter Dynamic’s Chinese website. Paul Chow, chairman of Cyberport and Yang Yuanqing, chairman and CEO of Lenovo signed the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU).

Under the agreement, the two parties will cooperate in a number of areas, including research and development (R&D), personnel training and employment, cloud computing, assisting start-ups, big data, and Internet industry development. Cyberport runs a sprawling business campus of the same name that is designed to serve as a giant incubator to help develop start-ups, as well as firms involved in the digital or tech field. Run as a private business that is fully owned by the Hong Kong SAR Government, Cyberport encompasses a million square feet of office space that located a stone’s throw away from central Hong Kong…

Read more from the source @ http://www.datacenterdynamics.com/focus/archive/2015/01/lenovo-establish-cloud-rd-center-hong-kong

Grazed from CIO. Author: Dominick Paul.

Marshall Goldsmith, an executive coach to the corporate elite, is the author of the very popular book called What Got You Here Won’t Get You There. And while the title may be true as it relates to your individual career path, I have news for C-suite executives everywhere: it is not true when it comes to adopting new technology.

In fact, what got you here – to your current state of success – is precisely what will get you to the next level. The problem is, as CIOs and IT professionals, we sometimes allow ourselves to be pressured into acting contrary to what we know is the right thing to do. Here’s what happens. A CEO approaches a CIO and says (in a nutshell), “What’s our cloud strategy? We have to get everything into the cloud.”…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Chris Patterson.

Even with ‘The Internet of Things’ slated to be the buzzword of 2015, cloud computing will continue to remain firmly in the minds of IT departments. Therefore, I thought I thought I’d share my four big cloud trends to expect this year.

1. Cloud Computing Will Become More Mainstream

As cloud becomes more mainstream, the question among progressive IT shops when rolling out new applications will shift from “why cloud?” to “why not cloud?” This is bolstered by the increasing prevalence of public-private compute infrastructures that allow simple placement of workloads where they make the most business sense…

Grazed from Brookings.edu. Author: Cameron F. Kerry.

President Obama went to the FTC a few weeks ago to address ways to protect privacy and identity in what he called “a dizzying age” of new technologies. One of the many new technologies changing the ways people interact with information is cloud computing. Whether it’s Jennifer Lawrence saving intimate photos to Apple’s iCloud, startups scaling up with Amazon Web services, or businesses and consumers moving their documents to Microsoft 365 or Google Docs, cloud computing is becoming a familiar part of our digital daily lives.

Cloud services offer benefits of large-scale computing, which include efficiency, scalability, security, and computing power, as well as ubiquitous access to data from an increasing variety of devices. But turning over data wholesale to someone else also comes with questions about privacy, confidentiality, security, and control…

Grazed from Finance@Yahoo. Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM is reportedly planning its largest corporate layoff ever – cutting 111,800 of its staff. A report by a respected Silicon Valley journalist for Forbes says around 26% of the company’s 430,000-strong workforce will be cut this week. The previous largest corporate redundancy was also carried out by IBM, when it cut 60,000 staff in 1993.

The company’s reorganisation is codenamed Project Chrome, and most of the staff being laid off are in the US. It will pave the way for IBM to focus on cloud computing, it is claimed, rather than its traditional hardware business. Reporter Robert X Cringely wrote: "To fix its business problems and speed up its ‘transformation’, next week about 26% of IBM’s employees will be getting phone calls from their managers. "A few hours later a package will appear on their doorsteps with all the paperwork."…

Read more from the source @ https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/ibm-cut-more-110-000-091702312.html

Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: Charles Hall.

Cyber threats are becoming more advanced, persistent, and focused. The threat landscape is rapidly changing, and evolving faster than ever. Today it is difficult to determine who is winning: either those behind the cyber threats, or those fighting to prevent and remediate the threats. The strategy against cyber threats has been to throw more and more technology at the problem, in an attempt to keep up, and it is not working.

What if there was a way to prevent a cyber attack before it could ever happen? While no solution will prevent 100% of attacks, the goal should be to get as close as possible. Moving to a more proactive solution makes it increasingly difficult for attackers to achieve successful attacks…

Read more from the source @ http://www.sys-con.com/node/3284302

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

Let’s face it, cloud computing is uncharted territory for many organizations. To sort-of paraphrase Winston Churchill, never in the field of computing have so many depended on so few. Enterprises are gradually, and inexorably, turning over significant portions of their infrastructures to outside cloud providers. Lately, there’s been talk of consolidation of big cloud providers to a few major providers.

The potential over-reliance on cloud providers is, in fact, making many enterprise CIOs and business leaders nervous. This may be the second round of angst in the cloud maturity cycle, once the first hurdle is passed. For some lessons on what to expect here, look no further than the U.S. federal government’s huge web of agencies…

Grazed from StreetWise.  Author: Jacob Maslow.

A number of Microsoft (NASDAQ:MSFT) observers were shaking their heads at the seeming backsliding of new Microsoft CEO during the company’s recent Windows 10 roll out. In his short roll out speech, Microsoft head honcho Satya Nadella said that Microsoft’s goal should be to move people from simply needing Windows to loving Windows.

Some people had a problem with this line of thinking because they argue that this is precisely the corporate mindset that led to Microsoft missing the boat on some of the most important consumer technology shifts in the past two decades.  How exactly did Microsoft screw up by focusing too much on Windows? Let’s just stick to the big ones. Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) launched the iPod…