Category: News

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mary K. Pratt.

Martin Slominis had a problem familiar to lots of IT executives: His staff didn’t have the capacity to fulfill all the demands users put on his department. So he did what technologists do best and used technology to solve the problem. Specifically, he turned to cloud computing.

“Cloud was an easy way to multiply our resources,” says Slominis, vice president of management information systems at the Wayne State University Physician Group in Detroit. His organization started moving applications to the cloud several years ago to save money, increase agility and improve flexibility while reducing the maintenance work his team had to handle…

Read more from the source @ http://www.computerworld.com/article/2843861/cloud-computing-claims-a-pivotal-role-in-2015.html

Grazed from ProgrammableWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Before investing in any new technology, an organisation must first establish whether that technology will meet the businesses’ needs. Similarly, the organisation must scrutinise the technology and its provider, to make sure it is up to standard with the company’s security and compliance requirements.

One such example of this, says John McLoughlin, MD of J2 Software, a distributor of SkyView Partners’ managed security solutions, is cloud computing. “The business benefits of cloud computing are widely accepted and documented, however, whether or not cloud computing meets your business requirements is dependent on the type of data being stored, accessed, and shared in the cloud.”…

Grazed from BusinessInsider.  Author: Julie Bort.

Cloud computing has completely changed the tech industry, but it’s got a dark side for the companies competing in the market, something those in the industry call "the race to zero."  There’s so much competition in the cloud industry that cloud companies keep cutting their prices, even while they increase their storage limits.

There’s a couple of reasons for this. For one, computer storage keeps getting cheaper. A gigabyte’s worth of storage on a hard drive in 1993 cost over $9,000, but it cost a mere 4 cents in 2013…

Read more from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/cloud-storage-race-to-zero-2014-11

Grazed from Washington Post.  Author: Editorial Staff.

As of now, the top three most widely used U.S. search engines, by a considerable margin, are Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s Bing. If you live in this country and you are actually online, there’s well over a 90 percent chance that you use one of them, according to the web data company comScore.  This we all know. But what few people realize is that if you are using these searches, it is growing more and more likely that you are also engaging in what is, in effect, a green pattern of Internet use.

The reason? Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are part of a growing number of tech and other major companies that are entering into long-term “power purchase” agreements (PPAs) with wind farms to ensure a steady stream of power, at a fixed cost, over a period as long as several decades. Most recently, last month Yahoo signed such a deal for wind power in the Great Plains with OwnEnergy, a wind energy developer…

Grazed from CCI.  Author: Editorial Staff.

For those looking to dive into cloud for the first time, Rick Delgado picks the top five things to consider when looking to create a cloud solution.  Companies are always on the lookout for new trends, tools and technologies and how they can incorporate the latest developments into their business. The hard part is finding where to start, and how to build a strategy around new features.

Such is the case with cloud computing. So many companies are recognising the cost-saving benefits and diminished IT risks and responsibilities by operating within the cloud. Company leadership is pushing for cloud integration, but many don’t have specific goals in mind. As a result, it can be difficult to determine where to begin…

Grazed from TechGenMag.  Author: Henry Festa.

Gone are the days when computer engineers and software developers worked together in developing innovative products that inspired the participation of users all over the world. Instead of an open source approach to program and hardware development with the PC at its center, the tech industry now promotes forced adaptability.

First came generalized OS configurations meant to service larger consumer bases at the expense of variety. Next, the explosion of apps gave way to anything and everything digital moving online. And now, with the future of traditional home computing in limbo, Big Data has set up one-size, fits-all cloud computing interconnectedness and all of a sudden the personal computer is no longer personal…

Grazed from SysConMedia.  Author: David H. Deans.

We’re nearing the end of 2014 and most smart CEOs already know their IT transformation game plan for 2015 – more digital differentiation woven into the fabric of their essential operations. Every enterprise is now a digital business, regardless of the industry. That’s why digital service innovators are in such high demand. Meanwhile, many of the more traditional IT process-oriented jobs will diminish in importance.

Are you evolving your IT support team’s roles and responsibilities, as a result these key trends? Forward-thinking CIOs and IT managers have already embraced business technology that will do some of the more tedious routine system administration tasks via automation, so that they can redirect their focus to higher-priority activities…

Grazed from HSToday.  Author: Kylie Bull.

Dell’s first Global Technology Adoption Index (GTAI), released November 4 at Dell World 2014, found security is the biggest concern in adopting cloud, mobility and big data.  The market research surveyed more than 2,000 global organizations and discovered that while 97 percent of those surveyed use or plan to use cloud services and nearly half have implemented a mobility strategy, big data adoption is trailing as approximately 60 percent of organizations surveyed do not know how to gain its insights.

While big data has proven marketing benefits, infrastructure costs and security tend to be the primary obstacles for implementing big data initiatives.  The Dell GTAI found IT decision-makers still consider security the biggest barrier for expanding mobility technologies (44 percent), using cloud computing (52 percent) and leveraging big data (35 percent)…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Joseph. Tsidulko.

Amazon Web Services introduced on Friday a new certification level and exam to validate the advanced skills of developers building applications on its public cloud platform.  The new DevOps Engineer Certification validates the technical expertise of software architects, developers and solution providers in provisioning, operating and managing distributed application systems on Amazon’s cloud. It’s the next step for AWS pros who have already earned the ranks of Certified Developer and SysOps Administrator.

"As you probably know, DevOps practices increase IT efficiency for your business, allowing you to respond more quickly to your customers by providing stable, secure and predictable IT environments," wrote Jeff Barr, Amazon’s cloud evangelist, on the AWS blog…

Read more from the source @ http://www.crn.com/news/cloud/300074739/aws-adds-new-certification-for-devops-pros.htm

Grazed from FederalTimes. Author: Aaron Boyd.

The Department of Defense will be releasing an updated cloud computing policy within the next two weeks, acting department CIO Terry Halvorsen said Thursday. The re-write of the 2012 policy is intended to speed up the procurement process by giving more purchasing authority to individual agencies.

“I was not really thrilled with the original cloud policy that came out,” Halvorsen said. “Mostly because I don’t think we were getting the cloud fast enough.” Noting that you should be careful what you wish for, Halvorsen was tasked with revamping the existing policy to speed up the process without sacrificing agencies’ strict security needs…

Read more from the source @ http://www.federaltimes.com/article/20141107/FEDIT03/311070014/DoD-s-new-cloud-policy-coming-two-weeks