Category: News

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Adrian Bridgwater.

Companies in all business verticals are using cloud computing and its hosted virtualized methods for supplying software applications along with data processing power and storage. This basic axiom we know to be true, so what factors are changing? Somewhere around ten years ago it was a case of ‘cloud is a security concern’. Five years ago it was ‘maybe let’s consider cloud for some use cases’.

Now as we close 2014 it is increasingly ‘cloud first’, or ‘born on the cloud’ if you will. This means that applications and data sets are being architected and structured for a hosted virtualized existence from the start. In turn then, this means that a new operational layer has sprung up i.e. firms are exchanging cloud-based information around the world and some of it is sensitive as it comes under the purview of regulatory controls…

Grazed from Fool. Author: Evan Niu.

Microsoft hosted a media event at its Redmond headquarters last week, and CEO Satya Nadella gave some key insights to investors on where his priorities lie. At a high level, the CEO only cares about three things when it comes to customer usage and the source of Microsoft’s revenue. Unsurprisingly, they are Windows, Office 365, and Azure.

The big three

Of course, Windows and Office have long been Microsoft’s two primary cash cows, followed closely by the company’s server offerings. Compared to those three businesses, Azure is relatively young. With the announcement of Windows 10, Microsoft is doing away with the distinction between Windows and Windows Phone. Windows 10 will operate on all form factors, including smartphones and tablets…

Grazed from NewsFactor. Author: Editorial Staff.

SoftNAS, the No. 1 Best-Selling NAS in the Cloud, today introduced version 3.2 for SoftNAS Cloud, a full-featured, enterprise-grade NAS (Network Attached Storage) filer for private, public and hybrid clouds running on popular cloud computing platforms, such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure and VMware vSphere.

SoftNAS also announced Express Edition, with a usable capacity up to 1 Terabyte (TB), as well as integration with Docker, an open platform, or container, where developers can build, ship and run distributed applications. SoftNAS Cloud version 3.2 provides persistent shared storage, as opposed to Docker’s native ephemeral storage, to the Docker container to ensure high-availability and scale-out clustering for DevOps professionals delivering continuous deployment/integration and applications that scale…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

Cycle Computing which specializes in technical and high-performance cloud computing, and Western Digital’s HGST unit ran the largest Fortune 500 production workload and went from zero to 50,000 cores in 23 minutes. The cloud computing run, executed over the weekend and code-named Gojira, utilized various regions on Amazon Web Services (AWS) and maxed out at 70,980 cores.

In 60 minutes, the companies built a 729 TeraFLOPS cluster, or the equivalent of the No. 63 supercomputer on the June Top500 list. The workload ran over 8 hours. Jason Stowe, CEO of Cycle Computing, said the HGST workload is an example of how enterprises are increasingly using technical computing and high-performance clusters to run analytics workloads and simulations…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Emma Byrne.

Whether you’re a CIO or an executive in a non-technical role, you owe it to yourself to be aware of cloud computing issues—particularly data security. While there are no easy asnwers, new industry standards are here to help… In the previous parts of this series I said the cloud could help, rather than hinder, your organization’s security, and I outlined the responsibilities of the executive team when it comes to assessing your organization’s readiness for the cloud.

In this third and final part, I’ll explain how to ensure that your cloud services are as safe as possible…

Grazed from IBTimes. Author: Salvador Rodriquez.

Microsoft last month announced it would give Office 365 paid subscribers unlimited storage in the cloud — a bargain at just $6.99 per month for a service that also includes the Office productivity suite. It was the latest example of a tech giant using free storage to lure customers into paying for other products.

Yahoo last year began giving Flickr users 1 terabyte of free storage in an attempt to drive traffic back to the forgotten photo-sharing service. More recently, Apple gave its users more incentive to store their files within its ecosystem by dropping the price of iCloud storage, offering 20 gigabytes of space for $0.99 per month — down from $40 per year, or about $3.34 per month. And in March Google slashed its 1 terabyte plan from a monthly charge of $49.99 to just $9.99…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

OpenShift 2.2, the newest version of Red Hat’s (RHT) open source platform as a service (PaaS) for cloud computing, is out, bringing with it more enterprise-readiness than ever through the addition of two new JBoss services, the company said. The new services, JBoss Fuse and JBoss A-MQ, bring additional service bus and messaging features to OpenShift. Both are based on the standard JBoss tools of the same names, which are also maintained by Red Hat, for use in traditional server environments.

Red Hat said the new JBoss features, combined with other functionality introduced in OpenShift 2.2, will do much to streamline enterprise application integration and deployment on the company’s cloud PaaS. The updated version of the platform "opens the door to a new paradigm for enterprise application development," according to Red Hat, by integrating the company’s "middleware stack and PaaS technologies to create a unified development and operations experience."…

Read more from the source @ http://thevarguy.com/open-source-application-software-companies/111114/openshift-22-adds-enterprise-jboss-services-red-hats-clou?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheVarGuy+(The+VAR+Guy)

Grazed from CRN. Author: Steve Burke.

Hewlett-Packard has done the next-to-impossible with its new pay-as-you-go Flexible Capacity channel model, solution providers said. The new offering, which is being announced Tuesday, provides the framework for both customers and partners to take advantage of breakthrough cloud computing economics without the pain normally associated with making the transformation to the new style of IT.

Flexible Capacity opens the door for customers to free up a significant amount of working capital by putting in place minimum three-year, private-cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service deals with flex-up bursting or flex-down capabilities. The services agreements, under which HP Financial Services arranges the financing and HP Technology Services holds the sales contract, are based on the same monthly fixed-fee, pay-as-you-go model that has fueled public cloud adoption…

Read more from the source @ http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300074764/partners-hp-flexible-capacity-is-cloud-computing-game-changer.htm

Grazed from TechTimes. Author: Christine deLooper.

Cloud computing is revolutionizing how we work and play, yet it’s not all good for the vendors competiting for users as they’re now embroiled in what the tech industry is calling the "race to zero." The phrase reflects the trend of increasing competition that is driving competitors to slash prices while offering more and more storage.

Luckily for the players, computer storage is getting cheaper so the price cuts aren’t killing bottom lines. For example, one gigabyte’s worth of storage in 1993 cost around $9,000. In 2013, that same storage space cost 4 cents. Cloud storage competition started heating up when Google began offering a free gigabyte of storage for Gmail users…

Grazed from Datamation. Author: Christine Taylor.

Backup as a Service (BaaS) provides backup and recovery operations from the cloud. The cloud-based BaaS provider maintains necessary backup equipment, applications, process and management in their data center. The customer will have some on-site installation – an appliance and backup agents are common – but there is no need to buy backup servers and software, run upgrades and patches, or purchase dedupe appliances.

Note that BaaS is not just a marketing term for online backup. Online backup is not a service: IT uses the cloud as a backup target, similar to disk or tape. In contrast, BaaS launches from the cloud service provider, who consults with the customer over needs and SLAs, and who manages the backup and recovery service…