Category: News

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Todd Thibodeaux.

The New Year is still a few weeks away, but 2015 is already shaping up to be rough for chief security officers (CSOs). After waves of high-profile attacks against major corporations and governments in 2014, many firms are rightly concerned about their vulnerability. Unfortunately for CSOs, the usual constraints around funding, available talent and user awareness will stand in the way of the best security intentions. To meet the rising security challenge in 2015, CSOs must evolve within their organization and adapt to the new realities of cybersecurity.

When, not if

It’s an oft-repeated saying that a determined hacker will find a way to bypass any system, given enough time. While deterrence is important, it’s just as critical for firms to conduct regular analyses of their cyberattack preparedness. As many recent attacks have shown, few of the targeted organizations were primed for the possibility that their systems could be breached. In one instance, retailer Jewel-Osco suffered two data breaches within a six week span…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/12162014/changing-cso-role-what-expect-2015

Grazed from CloudComputingIntelligence. Author: Andy Singleton.

As businesses move closer to a virtualised reality the network has shifted from secondary IT concern to critical business imperative. The cloud can offer vast efficiency and cost benefits but only if an effective network is in place. In the past this created a significant dilemma for businesses – infrastructure affordability, performance considerations and security measures were balanced against each other and compromises were common.

In recent years this has changed as cloud networking, and unified-communications-as-a-service(UCaaS) delivery methods and managed services provision have altered the relationship between core infrastructure and the cloud. They have become entwined, which from an Enterprise point of view helps these businesses meet challenges like globalisation, cost containment, general application experience and staff mobility…

Grazed from Fujitsu. Author: PR Announcement.

Fujitsu today announces the availability in Australia of Fujitsu Cloud for SAP® Solutions, an enterprise-grade managed cloud offering for running all production workloads in SAP software. The new cloud service leverages Fujitsu’s proven IP for the optimal management of systems running SAP software, and is offered via Fujitsu Australia’s Private Hosted Cloud Platform hosted on its secure, highly available local data centres.

Fujitsu Cloud for SAP Solutions offers support for the leading databases for SAP including Oracle, DB2, SAP MaxDB®, SAP Adaptive Server® Enterprise, SAP IQ and SAP HANA®. The customer is able to scale cloud capacity to address spikes in business demand, and will receive monthly subscription fees on a pay-for-use basis…

Grazed from GetVOIP. Author: Reuben Yonatan.

The internet is packed with information about cloud computing. In fact, here at GetVoIP we like to think we have a valuable contribution to make in that arena. When it comes to getting a coherent, big-picture, start-to-finish view of a subject, however, sometimes it’s hard to beat a good old book. We’ve taken a look at some of the hundreds of titles on the subject that were published in 2014, and made this list of the ten best cloud computing books for SMB owners.

The vast majority of cloud computing books are aimed at developers, data scientists, and other elite technical professionals. Finding great books that can benefit those on the user end of the spectrum can be a bit of a challenge. You don’t want the information dumbed down (at least not too much!) but you don’t have the time or inclination to wade through dense passages of esoteric detail…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Esther Schindler.

Do service-level agreements (SLAs) scare you? SLAs are often (and unfortunately) misconstrued as unattainable goals levied on system owners because of fancy dreams that organizations would like to have their customers experience. But that’s not the case. In this article, I explain the basics of SLAs, and what to look for as you and your service provider design a SLA to put in place.

An SLA does just what it hints at: It defines the service being offered and agreed-to by everyone concerned. The document describing an SLA covers particulars such as the level of service that customers expect, the metrics for measuring “enoughness” of the service, and the remedial course of action in the event that the service is not met…

Grazed from ProgrammableWeb. Author: Michael Vizard.

Thanks to the proliferation of REST APIs across the enterprise and the adoption of JavaScript on both the client and server sides of applications, Oracle envisions the emergence of multiple tiers of cloud computing services across the enterprise in 2015. Suhas Uliyar, vice president of mobile strategy for Oracle, says that while Java is still preferred for integrating back-end services, various forms of JavaScript are emerging as the preferred mechanism for building both business-to-consumer and business-to-employee applications that need to run on a variety of mobile computing devices.

The challenge is finding a way to make it possible to reuse JavaScript code across multiple applications. To address that issue, the Oracle Mobile Application Framework enables developers to build JavaScript applications on top of a Java Virtual Machine. That JVM then allows the code to be shared between application development projects, says Uliyar…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Cloud and hybrid backup and recovery solutions provider Carbonite (CARB) today announced plans to acquire MailStore for approximately $19.8 million. Carbonite CEO Mohamad Ali said he believes acquiring MailStore, a German email archiving solutions provider for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs), will help his company expand globally and improve its SMB continuity solutions portfolio.

"MailStore is a great fit for Carbonite, as both companies are committed to providing SMBs with powerful yet simple data protection solutions," he said in a prepared statement. "In addition to offering email archiving to businesses worldwide with MailStore’s existing solutions, Carbonite will integrate MailStore’s robust full-text search and indexing capabilities into our product portfolio to help our business customers better manage, understand and leverage their data."…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-mergers-and-acquisitions/12152014/carbonite-acquire-mailstore-approx-198m

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Riverbed Technology (RVBD) has been bought by private equity investment firm Thoma Bravo and Teachers’ Private Capital, the private investor department of Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan. The buyout is being valued at approximately $3.6 billion. The San Francisco-based company provides solutions designed to tackle issue with IT performance across wide area networks (WANs).

Riverbed’s solutions focus on CAD applications, data protection software, collboration, unified communications and more. Riverbed CEO Jerry Kennelly, who will remain with the company in the same capacity, said his company believes this acquisition "will be a winning proposition for all our stakeholders."…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-mergers-and-acquisitions/12152014/riverbed-be-acquired-thoma-bravo-36b

Grazed from AmericanBanker. Author: Penny Crossman.

As bank executives continue to debate, hesitate and worry over the security issues related to using applications that connect to the cloud, their employees are using cloud-based apps by the hundreds — often without banks’ knowledge. The average bank had 844 cloud services in use throughout its network in the third quarter of this year, according to an analysis conducted by Skyhigh Networks, far higher than bank IT departments estimated.

"If you did a survey where you asked the financial services companies themselves [how many cloud services they use], the answer would be somewhere between 32 and 34, because you approved those," said Rajiv Gupta, CEO of Skyhigh, which provides cloud security software…

Grazed from WindowsITPro. Author: Sameer B.

As more cloud-based technologies become available and their security and functionality improves, more companies are moving to the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model for all of their enterprise applications. The use of online software for customer service has lagged slightly behind its use in other areas, but it is catching up.

According to a Forrester Research survey, at the end of last year, only 15% of companies had moved most or all of their customer service and support to the cloud. However, an additional 14% planned to add some cloud-based tools over the next two years. Customer service itself has traditionally been an area where development has been slow, but new cloud technologies are speeding innovation…