Category: News

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Dirk-Peter van Leeuwen.

As 2014 comes to a close and IT departments reflect on their initiatives heading into the new year, we asked a group of 115 Red Hat customers — ranging from Fortune 500 companies to small businesses — about their priorities for 2015. What we heard from the respondents is promising going into the new year: Budgets are increasing (or at least staying the same); Linux adoption is increasing; cloud deployments will be dominantly private or hybrid; OpenStack is hot; and interest in containers is emerging.

Budgets — always a popular topic at the new year — look strong going into 2015: 84 percent of survey respondents are optimistic about their 2015 budgets, with 40 percent of respondents planning for a budget increase, and 44 percent expecting their budgets to stay the same. According to the survey results, respondents are planning for several key IT initiatives in 2015, including:…

Grazed from SC Magazine.  Author: Danielle Walker.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has drafted a new guide aimed at helping organizations find the right cloud service.  Announced Monday, the publication, called “Cloud Computing Service Metrics Description,”(PDF) is currently in a public comment phase. According to NIST, the 25-page guide “discusses the basic nature of the problem of measuring cloud services and offers a model and method for developing appropriate cloud metrics,” a release said.

An example of a “customer response metric,” for instance, might be characterized as “the time it takes from someone hitting ‘send’ on an email until it’s delivered to a recipient on the same cloud service,” NIST explained…

Grazed from CNN.  Author: PR Announcement.

Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the global interconnection and data center company, together with IBM today announced an agreement to provide enterprises direct access to the full portfolio of cloud services from SoftLayer, an IBM Company, via the Equinix Cloud Exchange™ in nine markets worldwide spanning the Americas, Europe and Asia Pacific.

Equinix also announced Cloud Exchange enhancements, including API functionality that makes it easier for service providers to use a single interface to the Cloud Exchange, resulting in scalable, private and secure connections to their cloud services with near real-time provisioning…
 

Grazed from SAP. Author: Editorial Staff.

While the cloud has gained in popularity in recent years, 2014 will probably be known as the year cloud computing truly exploded onto the scene. If you’ve used a mobile device, you’ve more than likely used the cloud. If your company stores information on the internet, it’s using the cloud. Adoption of cloud computing has reached unprecedented levels.

In terms of the numbers of organizations adopting public cloud services, almost 90 percent have made the leap with more ready to follow. Couple that with trends promoting bring your own device (BYOD) and the Internet of Things, and it’s clear that the cloud will continue to expand rapidly. But as the rate of cloud adoption increases, so too have the number of security risks associated with cloud computing…

Grazed from MSPAlliance. Author: Editorial Staff.

Security7 Networks today announced that it has successfully completed the MSPAlliance’s MSP/Cloud Verify Program (MSPCV) certification process, the oldest certification program for cloud computing and managed services providers. The MSPCV is based on the 10 control objectives of the Unified Certification Standard for Cloud & MSPs.

The MSPCV was the first certification created specifically for the managed services and cloud industry. Every certification comes with a written report with the entire process documented, validated and signed by a 3rd party accounting firm. The MSPCV has been reviewed by governmental agencies and regulatory bodies across the globe and is used and accepted in 5 continents around the world…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Christina Heath.

Lately, it seems like everyone is “in the cloud”; big corporations, small businesses–you name it. But as we’ve learned time and time again, great technological advances don’t come without security risks. Though it’s quickly been adopted by organizations all over the spectrum, cloud computing is still a fairly new concept and, as with anything new in our technological age, it can take a while for security measures and legal policies to catch up. For now, that means it’s your job to make sure your information, and that of your customers, is protected.

Defining the Cloud and its Security Concerns

At its core, cloud computing involves using a network of remote Internet servers to store and manage data. Working in the cloud allows multiple users to access the same information and pool resources in real time. It eliminates the much greater security risks of thumb drives or email attachments and makes data and documents easily accessible from anywhere, unlike information stored on a PC or local server…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

A new Dell survey showed that the majority of healthcare professionals want cloud solutions for their organizations. Dell’s "Global Technology Adoption Index," released this week, revealed 96 percent of mid-sized healthcare organizations are currently using or plan to use cloud solutions.

Survey researchers also found 64 percent of healthcare respondents said they are "very confident" that their cloud data is safe. "By providing the flexibility and scalability that enables small and [mid-sized] healthcare organizations to be more nimble in the face of constant change, the cloud can help speed and ease the transformation (to information-driven healthcare) as other newer technologies are adopted," Dr. Cliff Bleustein, Dell Healthcare and Life Sciences’ chief medical officer, said in a prepared statement. Other survey results included:…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-research/12172014/dell-most-healthcare-providers-want-cloud-solutions

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Google has adopted for use in its cloud a streamlined version of the Canonical Ubuntu Linux distribution tweaked to run Docker and other containers. Ubuntu Core was designed to provide only the essential components for running Linux workloads in the cloud. An early preview edition of it, which Canonical calls "Snappy," was released last week.

The new edition jettisoned many of the libraries and programs usually found in general use Linux distributions that were unnecessary for cloud use. The Google Compute Engine (GCE) joins Microsoft Azure in supporting the fresh distribution. According to Canonical, Ubuntu Core should provide users with an easy way to deploy Docker, an increasingly lightweight virtualization container that allows users to quickly spin up workloads and easily move them around, even across different cloud providers…

Read more from the source @ http://www.infoworld.com/article/2860401/cloud-computing/google-cloud-offers-streamlined-ubuntu-for-docker-use.html

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

The adoption of cloud computing within the enterprise has grown steadily, but that security and compliance remain key considerations when evaluating in-house and service provider options, according to a report from NaviSite, a Time Warner Cable company.The survey revealed one-third of US respondents have already migrated a significant amount (50-70 percent) of their IT infrastructure to the cloud, driven by their desire to improve reliability, uptime, and offer improved service levels.

Nearly all U.S. respondents reflected some level of concern in securing enterprise data as part of their list of IT priorities, with nearly half (48 percent) citing it amongst their top three concerns. "Much of the of the survey data was not surprising, as it aligned with trends we are seeing with our customers and within the industry," Chris Patterson, senior director of product management at NaviSite, told eWeek…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Matt Weinbergber.

Salesforce, the not-so-little cloud CRM company that could, is furthering its play to bring everybody everywhere into the fold with the launch of Salesforce Files Connect, a new tool that brings files from on-premises Microsoft SharePoint into a company’s cloud workflow.

The general idea is that attaching files to things, in general, is way harder than it has to be: Salesforce Senior Vice President of Marketing for Community Cloud Michael Stone cited a recent IDC study that found 61 percent of employees have to find files from four different data sources in the course of their day to get the job done. Salesforce wants to pull all of those data sources into one place — specifically, Salesforce…