Category: News

Grazed from CloudWards.net.  Author: Denise Sullivan.

The January 2015 Netskope Cloud Report has been released and in it there are shocking facts about how files are being shared on an enterprise level. Netskope, the company responsible for the paper, also noticed there was an increase in the number of business credentials that were compromised.

In the Cloud Report, Netskope noted that as much as 15% of business users had an account compromised during the October to December quarter. The company found that many of these customers often re-use passwords across several different applications. Which is what leads to possible data exposure of sensitive information…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babbcock.

The Apollo Education Group, parent organization of the University of Phoenix, wanted to modernize its IT operations to support larger-scale online education. As the producer of a pioneer system for working adults, Apollo needed to take greater advantage of digital outreach, or "distance education."

"We said we wanted to build the classroom of the future. We also wanted to use analytics to understand the data in our student platform and in student behavior," said Michael Sajor, CIO of the Apollo Education Group, in an interview with InformationWeek…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Chris Preimesberger.

Years ago, when he was asked whether Web services were going to be the "next big thing," Oracle co-founder and then-CEO Larry Ellison responded: "I’ve spent too much time in Italy to know that you shouldn’t ignore fashion."  In tech, we like nothing better than a new trend, because they become new products—and eventually new income streams—for enterprises.

We also know that fashion matters, so we’ve learned that it’s generally best to get on board with it—or at least become familiar with fashionable trends—if at all possible. In the IT industry, we also like to look ahead, based on what we experienced in the past, to anticipate what important trends are coming, so that we can be aware of new ideas in order to stay competitive…

Grazed from FierceMobileIT.  Author: Fred Donovon.

As more companies grapple with the challenges of allowing employees to bring their own devices to work, they can perhaps gain some insight from a bunch of rocket scientists at NASA.  Surprising as it might sound, the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) at NASA has embraced BYOD and implemented some innovative BYOD measures, a report by Lifehacker explains.

Tom Soderstrom, IT chief technology and innovation officer at the lab, says that to keep ahead of IT trends he maps out three-year IT increments and crowdsources innovation during seminars with JPL staff…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Yevgeniy Sverdlik.

Mirantis, which helps companies stand up OpenStack clouds of their own, has launched the latest release of its distribution of the popular open source cloud architecture. Mirantis OpenStack 6.0 is based on OpenStack Juno, the most recent release of the open source software package.

Juno came out in October 2014. This is the first OpenStack distribution companies can write their own plug-ins for that can be installed and deployed automatically. Lots of vendors want to be part of the rapidly growing OpenStack ecosystem and want customers to use their products as part of their OpenStack clouds…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Stuart Crawford.

The year 2015 has just started, and the smell of change is in the air. Last year was full of upheaval for the MSP world, and if you haven’t started making a gameplan to keep up with the evolving industry we find ourselves in, you’re going to find yourself left behind. Listen to an interview with BJ Farmer on what his MSP in Houston is doing to win in 2015. Click here to check out the interview.

BJ Farmer from Houston Microsoft Award-winning company CITOC knows that this has always been the case for our industry. “CITOC, the company name, stands for ‘change is the only constant,’” says BJ. “That holds true in the technology world. We need to be surfers — we need to ride different waves all the time. Don’t get stuck on any one wave, you’ll get squished; you need to keep moving to new waves.”…

Grazed from GCN. Author: Editorial Staff.

The National Institutes of Health aims to launch an electronic “Commons,” a community-controlled cloud infrastructure that would support collective uses of computing, storage and data for biomedical research by NIH and its academic and industry collaborators. NIH’s Office of Data Science is in the process of prototyping the Commons, which it described as “a shared computing environment that takes advantage of emerging cloud computing and existing high-performance computing resources.”

In a sources-sought notice for contributors, NIH noted that its biomedical and health sciences research was fast outgrowing the means – through journal articles, scientific conferences and simple networks – to circulate data to the research community. Instead, biomedical researchers need a new mechanism that is scalable, straightforward to use and could take advantage of emergent cloud and high-performance computing resources, said NIH…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ping Li.

Big data, cloud services and mobile technology are having a revolutionary impact on business. Not only are these innovations fueling the modern enterprise, they are also sending security risks sky high. Traditional network perimeters are dissolving as businesses reshape their organizations around these burgeoning technologies.

I actually have a lot of empathy for CISOs. They have one of the hardest jobs in the world these days, especially as the traditional perimeter-based approach to network security rapidly loses its relevance. Enterprise security has changed because the enterprise has changed, drastically so…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Douglas MacMillan.

After months of delays, the initial public offering for online storage company Box Inc. is finally a go. Box said Friday that it plans to register as many as 14.4 million shares, expected to price between $11 and $13 a share, and sees raising as much as $186.9 million. It began its road show pitching the stock to investors, putting it on track to have its shares trading by the end of January.

The company plans to list on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “BOX.” The IPO would value Box at more than $1.5 billion. The company said in its filing that it expects to receive about $134.3 million in net proceeds that it plans to use for general purposes…

Grazed from TechCocktail. Author: Rick Delgado.

Businesses can’t seem to stop talking about cloud computing. It feels like the term is everywhere, with many companies acting like it’s the solution to every issue your organization faces. There’s little doubt that the cloud has become extremely popular in the past few years, but some companies are reluctant to take that final step.

Your company might be one of them, constantly asking basic questions like, “What is cloud computing?”, expressing concerns about such a major transition, and essentially feeling uneasy about the cloud and all that it offers. While there’s nothing wrong with showing a little bit of caution with new technology, worries over your company’s readiness for the cloud might be a bit overblown. In fact, you’re likely already using it, even if you don’t know it…