Category: News

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Cloud computing provider Joyent has long been respected for its technological chops, but has struggled to find an identity among a sea of cloud providers and technologies with much larger operations and much larger marketing budgets. Now, the tides might finally be shifting in Joyent’s direction — and it’s doing everything it can to ride them.

Last week, it was the announcement of a $15 million investment and a repositioning of itself as an infrastructure platform that’s all about containers. The company has actually been touting its container approach for years, but the fast rise of technologies such as Docker, CoreOS and Google’s Kubernetes container-management system has put containers at the top of a lot of minds. On Thursday, Joyent took an even bigger step by open sourcing the code that powers its cloud computing and object storage systems, respectively called SmartDataCenter and Manta…

Grazed from BCN. Author: Tim Skinner.

HP has announced it will begin developing original NFV capabilities in partnership with network virtualization specialist Wind River. Carrier-grade network technologies from Wind River will be integrated into HP’s Helion OpenStack technology, and is intended to provide service providers with an open-source based cloud platform bringing enhanced reliability to NFV.

HP claims the cloud-enabled NFV platform will deliver enhanced reliability, performance and manageability by utilising a Linux and kernel-based virtual machine hypervisor. Combined with self-healing properties, high performance vSwitch-based networking, and advanced orchestration of workloads, HP claims the solution will include the three primary properties being demanded by carriers for an NFV platform…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimsberger.

Promising new options for cloud platforms and software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications are keeping enterprise IT in the news these days. Just look at the long list of software-defined networking tools and services Google announced Nov. 4. These kinds of options are what Forrester predicts will lead to a $191 billion public cloud market by 2020.

While these new technologies allow IT to innovate faster for less money, it’s important to remember that cloud and SaaS need to be integrated to realize their full potential. Unfortunately, full integration among business systems continues to be a rare occurrence. With enterprise IT facing new promises and challenges in the cloud, its ability to integrate SaaS applications can often be the difference between transforming company culture with successful user adoption and running damage control for a failed IT project…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud computing is recognized by governments and private sector organizations as major, game-changing technology. It focuses on maximizing the effectiveness of shared resources. Whereas formerly most software programmes ran on a personal computer, cloud computing uses large networks of remote servers.

These enable the sharing of data-processing tasks, centralized storage and online access to computer services throughout the Internet. However, with the multitude of offerings and their fast-pace development, the need to ensure quality and compatibility through standardization was paramount…

Grazed from PrivacyLawBlog. Author: Mark Webber.

The summer of 2014 saw another ISO Standard published by the International Standards Organisation (ISO). ISO27018:2014 is a voluntary standard governing the processing of personal data in the public cloud. With the catchy title of “Information technology – Security techniques – Code of the practice for protection of personally identifiable information (PII) in public clouds acting as PII processors” (“ISO27018“), it is perhaps not surprising that this long awaited standard is yet to slip off the tongue of every cloud enthusiast. European readers may have assumed references to PII meant this standard was framed firmly on the US – wrong!

What is ISO27018?

ISO27018 sets out a framework of “commonly accepted control objectives, controls and guidelines” which can be followed by any data processors processing personal data on behalf of another party in the public cloud. ISO27018 has been crafted by ISO to have broad application from large to small and from public entity to government of non-profit…

Read more from the source @ http://privacylawblog.fieldfisher.com/2014/a-new-iso-standard-for-cloud-computing?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=a-new-iso-standard-for-cloud-computing

Grazed from Economic Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

The cloud market in India is heating up with the top four players — Amazon, Google, Microsoft and International Business Machines — trying different tactics to gain control over the still very nascent market here. Microsoft, which offers public cloud services under the Azure brand, says competing on price can no more be the strategy for cloud and it therefore is working on additional higher value services on top of its commoditised cloud offerings.

Amazon, which has cut cloud prices as many as 45 times since 2006, is forcing competitors to do the same, in turn impacting profitability and forcing them to look at other avenues to make money. Google on Tuesday announced a price reduction for cloud services, but corporate vice-president for Microsoft Azure Jason Zander said the company will not cut prices unless Amazon also decides to do so again….

Grazed from Computing. Author: Sooraj Shah.

Intel Capital, the global investment arm of chip giant Intel, has invested in 16 new companies covering a range of areas within IT, including big data analytics, the Internet of Things and cloud computing. The organisation has invested in Gigya, a Mountain View, California-based maker of a cloud-based customer identity-management platform that supposedly helps clients turn unknown web or mobile visitors into loyal and engaged customers.

Another US-headquartered company it has invested in is drone technology maker PrecisionHawk. The Raleigh, North Carolina-based company uses a small, unmanned aerial vehicle and cloud-based software to collect, process and analyse aerial data for clients within "civilian industries"…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Kat Popovic.

The more I read, the more it’s becoming clear that it’s midsize businesses who have the most to lose in the cloud.(Ironically, they also have the most to gain from a move to the cloud, so go figure!). The upside is that the shift to cloud based computing has made it possible for small and midsize businesses (SMB’s) to access software and applications they previously may not have been able to afford, which is pretty cool.

According to a report by Techaisle, 25% of firms with 100-999 employees are using one or more cloud computing-based systems. And these numbers are on the rise. The advantages are clear: cloud computing lowers costs and frees up time, money and resources to focus on productivity, innovation, and reaching new clients…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Heather Clancy.

Stealthy startup Bracket Computing made its debut last month with more than $85 million in backing for its radical virtualization technology, which allows businesses to move computing workloads from cloud to cloud more easily. The vision is to help organizations process applications wherever it makes the most sense from a cost or resource perspectives.

The approach could also be used to bridge operations between on-site servers and those hosted in a cloud service. "When you have a million servers at your disposal, you have the appearance of an infinite resource," said Bracket CEO Tom Gillis. "Our question to ourselves was: can we build a layer that could present applications with highly reliable and secure performance?"…

Grazed from The Australian. Author: Stuart Kennedy.

An upbeat Mr Dell took Dell private a year ago and was touting the ability of his firm to bring products to market quicker than as a public company. He described the new DCS XA90 storage unit as being capable of holding 90 3.5-inch drives in one 4U chassis and able to store 720 terabytes.

“This thing is cloud scale storage to the max,” said Mr Dell at the firm’s annual Dell World user and partner event in Austin, Texas. Dell also announced a number of fresh servers and an all flash memory storage array that sells for about US$25,000. Mr Dell described it as the cheapest all flash array from any major vendor…