Category: News

Grazed from TMC.  Author: PR Announcement.

A growing number of high-profile regional organisations will present their strategies and highlight the potential benefits of business analytics at Dubai’s forthcoming GCC BIG DATA & ANALYTICS SUMMIT in March 2015.

 This top-management GCC forum has been designed for CEO and COO level participants – just as much as for CTOs and CIOs. It will take place at Dubai’s Address Marina Hotel from March  8-10 next year, with the support of leading GCC corporates and official organisations…

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that it radically simplified and made it easier for customers to enter into cloud computing services agreements by creating a standard, two-page agreement to replace longer, more complex contracts that typically required long negotiations and reviews before a deal was signed. In comparison, IBM’s cloud competitors require customers to review and commit to more complex contracts that commonly are at least five times longer and also incorporate terms and conditions from other websites.

In recognition of this achievement, IBM received the 2014 Innovation Award for Operational Improvement from the International Association for Contract and Commercial Management (IACCM) for boldly and rapidly transforming its cloud computing contract process – an achievement that significantly improved the company’s ability to quickly serve cloud computing clients around the world…

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Michael Vizard.

The use of OpenPOWER systems in cloud computing environments got a major boost today via an announcement from Rackspace is joining the OpenPOWER Foundation.  Aaron Sullivan, senior director and distinguished engineer, infrastructure strategy at Rackspace, said that after an extensive period of evaluation, Rackspace has determined that servers based on the Power processors originally developed by IBM will be deployed alongside x86 servers in its data centers.

Because of the ability to run more application workloads and virtual machines more efficiently by accessing more processing cores, Sullivan says that Rackspace will be deploying Power servers in support of variety of distributions of Linux…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

AURO Enterprise Cloud announced today the official launch of their Powered by AURO Cloud initiative that empowers their clients to use and benefit from flexible Cloud Computing Services, including the company’spublic cloud computing and cloud services framework, to expand their cloud practices and generate new revenue opportunities.  With this launch, AURO has introduced three partner programs that provide partners with faster time to value and simplified cloud support for their business.

In line with AURO’s Canadian Cloud Computingstrategy to bring cloud computing across Canada, these new options to the Powered by AURO Partner programs enable value-added resellers (VARs) and global system integrators (GSIs) to offer their customers a delivery model that crosses private, managed and public cloud computing environments in Canada…
 

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…