Category: News

Grazed from Wired. Author: Robert McMillan.

Microsoft has made Verizon Communications the centerpiece of its effort to build out a worldwide network to speed up video delivery for users of its Azure cloud computing service. To some, the move comes a bit of a surprise. Microsoft had been building out this network itself, according to observers, but now appears to have reversed course.

When it comes to internet infrastructure, giant Web players like Microsoft typically build out their own offerings, rather than relying on service providers such as Verizon. And in recent years, these content delivery networks, or CDNs, have seen some big build-outs. When you’re Netflix and Google, it helps to have full control of your CDN, so that you can more efficiently deliver a significant slice of the internet’s Sunday evening data…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Nicholas Rando.

When it comes to cloud computing, there are three main options: public cloud, private cloud and hybrid cloud. Public cloud offers scalability, elasticity and a pay-per-use model on shared infrastructure. Hybrid cloud is a mixture of private cloud and public cloud services with orchestration between the two. But what about private cloud?

While private cloud and public cloud offer similar benefits, enterprises choose private cloud for its on-premises nature and control. In a private cloud environment, a firewall limits user access and eliminates many companies’ concerns regarding data security and compliance. However, companies must plan carefully for a private cloud project…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ginna Raahauge.

By now you’re probably tired of hearing about how cloud computing is changing the nature of business. We are familiar with the benefits: having access to data when and where we want, the ability to sync our mobile devices and the ability to collaborate in real time. Despite the cloud bringing us many great things; it has also brought business leaders many challenges since most people expect cloud-like experiences when not all enterprises can or will offer every application or business function in the cloud.

Whether it be budgetary constraints, technical limitations, security concerns or performance issues, not every application will make it to the cloud. This brings us to the hybrid enterprise, which is a mix of data center and cloud-hosted apps and data, and networks comprised of private (hosted), public (Internet) and cloud infrastructure…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Jordan Novet.

Cloudways, a startup that sets up and manages components for applications on top of cloud-computing infrastructure, has learned that developers want to try out the Google Compute Engine public cloud. So Cloudways is adding support for it, even though it’s still young in comparison with, say, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“They have slashed their prices drastically — by 40 or 50 percent — and are trying to give a hard time to AWS,” cofounder Aaqib Gadit told VentureBeat in an interview. The price cuts have brought more attention to the Google cloud, Gadit said, but it’s got “many, many complex options.” So it makes sense for Cloudways to simplify application deployment on Google…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

Once again, IBM received more patents than any other company in the world over the past year, and again Big Blue broke a record for the number of patents received in a year. IBM announced that it received a record 7,534 patents in 2014—marking the 22nd consecutive year that the company topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients.

IBM inventors earned an average of more than 20 patents per day in 2014, propelling the company to become the first to surpass more than 7,000 patents in a single year. The company’s record-setting 2014 patent output was led by more than 3,000 patents—40 percent of its annual total—covering a range of cloud computing, analytics, mobile, social and security inventions…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Liz Macmillan.

Citrix announced on Monday that is has completed its acquisition of Sanbolic, a provider of workload-oriented storage virtualization technologies. Sanbolic technology enables customers to software-define storage to optimize the delivery of application-specific workloads, from any media type – SSD, Flash and hard drives in NAS, SAN, server-side and cloud deployments – improving storage load balancing, application availability and delivering the highest-performance end-user experience.

The acquisition of this robust set of workload-oriented infrastructure technologies, combined with its XenDesktop, XenApp and XenMobile products, enables Citrix to develop a range of differentiated solutions. These solutions will improve the economics and reduce the complexity of Windows application delivery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments…

Grazed from TechTimes. Author: Quienten Plummer.

Microsoft’s presence in GameStop stores is moving beyond Xbox consoles. The company will prop up in-store beacons pushing video and promotions via the Azure cloud to customers’ mobile devices as they shop in the retailer’s brick-and-mortar stores. Microsoft is the latest company to sign on as a partner in the GameStop Technology Institute (GTI). Microsoft’s Azure cloud will also fuel employee tablets with customer data.

The "magic" begins as soon as a customer enters a GameStop location and an Azure-connected beacon pushes a "digital welcome message" to a shopper’s device. The welcome message will detail in-store promotions and deliver a map of the store’s other beacons, which will serve up game trailers and other product data…

Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Hadley Jones.

At the beginning, cloud computing was the promise of additional, more affordable IT resources for many organizations. Flexible, scalable and pay-as-you-went, cloud computing was the ideal add-on to cope with data growth and in-house servers that were struggling with workloads. On top of the infrastructure resources being offered, providers also created innovative business applications. IT power that had hitherto been reserved for only the largest corporations became available to the mid-sized and the small businesses too. Now the opportunity is open to beat the competition by not just bolting these online resources onto what you already have, but by directly basing your business in the cloud.

Not Just Cost Advantage, but Strategic Too

While cloud computing can be a better IT solution per se, there’s much more to be gained too. Cloud and collaboration go together. Opening up business processes to third parties (with appropriate security, of course) can reinforce partnerships, cement customer loyalty and increase business resilience…

Grazed from EnterpriseTech. Author: George Leopold.

IBM said Monday (January 12) it has been awarded more than 7,500 patents in 2014, including more than 3,000 related to cloud computing, data analytics and online security. The company also took credit for topping the annual list of U.S. patent recipients for the twenty-second consecutive year.

Since 2010, IBM claimed it has more than doubled the number of patented technologies in sectors like cloud computing and big data. Of these, more than 500 covered emerging computing technologies that could help propel its Watson cognitive computing effort. The annual patent race underscores the growing importance of intellectual property as the coin of the technology realm…

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP SE reported fourth-quarter cloud-computing sales that beat analysts’ estimates as more users of traditional business software bought programs delivered through the Internet. The shares rose the most in more than a year. Revenue from cloud subscriptions and support rose 72 percent to 360 million euros ($426 million), the world’s largest maker of business-management software said today, citing preliminary figures.

That exceeded the 319.6 million-euro average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Software and related services revenue, which captures newer cloud products, traditional on-premise software as well support sales, rose 8 percent to 4.73 billion euros, also topping estimates. The numbers show that Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott is convincing clients to add cloud products to the SAP software they already run in their data centers…