Category: News

Grazed from EETimes. Author: Levent Gurgen.

The ClouT project is a joint Europe-Japan collaboration to make cities smarter, helping them face emerging challenges in efficient energy management, safety and security, and economic growth and development. The project is creating a layer of services to bridge cloud computing and the Internet of Things to establish a communications and collaboration platform that exploits all possible information sources.

ClouT — which stands for cloud of things — is providing infrastructure, services, tools that will be used by cities, their citizens, service developers, and application integrators to create, deploy, and manage applications that take advantage of IoT and cloud capabilities. In addition, the program will help end-users create and share their own cloud services…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

NTT Communications is giving the power of choice to network administrators, releasing an upgrade for its Enterprise Cloud platform that will allow for on-the-fly changes to bandwidth capacity and VPN connections. The server side of cloud computing already offers IT managers a large degree of flexibility. Enterprises can use self-service options and APIs (application programming interfaces) to customize server functions…

However, network managers have far less control over network connections between users and cloud-based servers, according to Len Padilla, vice president of product strategy at NTT Communications. With its upgrade to Enterprise Cloud, which has been live for about two-and-a-half years, NTT wants to change that. The upgrade lets network administrators increase or decrease the available bandwidth of connections to the cloud service, depending on the amount of traffic they expect at a given time…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

Flash storage provider SolidFire has beefed up its funding pool with a series D round of $82m, bringing its total up to $150m. The funding was led by Greenspring Associates, a new investor, along with current investors NEA, Novak Biddle, Samsung Ventures and Valhalla Partners. SolidFire says the new funds will be part of a global push and to advance its all-flash storage architecture.

“Series D financing for SolidFire is important,” Jay Prassl, SolidFire VP marketing, told CloudTech. “When you’re building an infrastructure company and a storage company like SolidFire, it’s a capital-intensive business. “This D round funding is very important because it puts SolidFire very much on a path to profitability,” he added…

Grazed from TMCNet. Author: Editorial Staff.

TMC, a global, integrated media company helping clients build communities in print, in person and online, today announced the recipients of the 2014 Cloud Computing Backup and Disaster Recovery Award. The Cloud Computing Backup and Disaster Recovery Award recognizes technologies and vendors that have built cloud solutions that allow businesses small or large to remain active and productive under even the most challenging conditions, minimizing lost business opportunities.

"Congratulations to the winners of the 2014 Cloud Computing Backup and Disaster Recovery Award," said Rich Tehrani (News – Alert), CEO, TMC. "The winning solutions are enabling organizations to feel confident during regular business and in stressful situations. I look forward to seeing continued innovation from these award recipients."…

Read more from the source @ http://news.tmcnet.com/news/2014/09/30/8043634.htm

Grazed from InsideHPC. Author: Rich Brueckner.

Computing in the cloud could be seductive for scientists and engineers, but in his first report from the ISC Cloud conference, Tom Wilkie from Scientific Computing World finds that there are still problems to be overcome. Wolfgang Gentzsch is certain, both when writing in Scientific Computing World and in his talk to the ISC Cloud conference in Heidelberg at the end of September: the Cloud is the way to entice all those scientists and engineers who are still wedded to their workstations (about 95 per cent of them) to embrace the advantages of high-performance computing.

Michael Resch, who runs the Stuttgart supercomputing centre, worries about the obstacles – and they come in the form of lawyers, taxmen, accountants, and politicians, he told the conference. So much promise. But, rather as literal clouds are high in the sky, so ascending to ‘the cloud’ can be hard for scientists and engineers…

Read more from the source @ http://insidehpc.com/2014/10/hazy-future-cloud-computing/

Grazed from StarTribune. Author: Michael Liedtke.

Smartphones, tablets and other gadgets aren’t just changing the way we live and work. They are shaking up Silicon Valley’s balance of power and splitting up businesses. Long-established companies such as Hewlett-Packard Co. and eBay Inc. are scrambling to regain their footing to better compete against mobile-savvy trendsetters like Apple and Google, as well as rising technology stars that have built businesses around "cloud computing."

That term covers a swath of Internet-driven services that shifted technology from the days software users paid a one-time fee to buy and install programs on individual machines where they also stored all their data on hard drives. But with the advent of the "cloud," people can now rent software to use over the Internet…

Grazed from Barron’s. Author: Tierman Ray.

In the wake of last week’s breakup announcement for eBay (EBAY), this morning’s breakup announcement by Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), RBC Capital Markets’s Mark Sue wrote a note urging Cisco Systems (CSCO) to go the breakup route. “Split/spin-off parts of Cisco’s business and we think the lagging stock could get to $40, a price not seen in 14 years,” writes Sue.

eBay, Agilent, JDSU and even HP this morning get high marks from investors for their ability to adapt to a changing world.” Sue has in mind a switching and routing and services company, on the one hand, and a cloud computing company on the other: We believe Cisco could separate parts of its routing, switching and services into Cisco Solutions which are mature and profitable and manage these businesses for higher FCF. Cisco Solutions could also drive industry consolidation by acquiring high cash-flow businesses, taking capacity out of the system (carriers have all the purchasing power), improve profitability metrics through cost optimization and return FCF to shareholders via dividends and buybacks…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

PanTerra Networks, the leading provider of unified cloud services for mid-market enterprises, today announced that TMC, a global, integrated media company, has named SmartBox as its 2014 Cloud Computing Storage Excellence Award winner presented by TMC’s Cloud Computing Magazine. The Cloud Storage Excellence Award recognizes companies that have introduced or improved cloud storage solutions for their customer base. Previous winners of the Storage Excellence Award have included Citrix and Accellion.

"More and more companies today are transitioning their data into the cloud and are increasing the use of cloud communication services in the workforce," said Arthur Chang, CEO of PanTerra Networks. "Having a dependable service that allows you not only to securely store and share your data in the cloud, but also to instantly communicate with the people you’ve shared content to is a must-have for today’s mid-market enterprise. It’s an honor to receive this award from TMC; this continues to validate the need for a comprehensive unified cloud solution."…

Grazed from HSToday. Author: Amada Vicinanzo.

Although federal agencies continue to increase the percentage of their IT budgets allocated to cloud services, only 2 percent of government agency IT budgets go to cloud spending, resulting in agencies capturing only a fraction of potential cost savings. A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit of seven government agencies indicated the total number of cloud computing services implemented increased by 80 services, from 21 to 101, a 1 percent overall increase in cloud investments since 2012.

GAO found that the relatively small increase in cloud spending arose, in part, because the agencies had not considered cloud computing services for about 67 percent of IT investments. Most agencies said they only consider cloud options at times when the legacy technology needs to be modernized or replaced—a decision that is inconsistent with the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) “Cloud First” policy…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

Microsoft’s Windows 10 has been portrayed as way to placate the enterprise, create one platform for multiple screens and meld the interfaces of Windows 8, which had a rocky launch, and Windows 7, a hit. The reality is that Windows 10, which is expected to be the last of the traditional big bang launches, is likely to complete Microsoft’s transition from a software licensing model to a cloud computing one.

Windows 10 will be built around continual upgrades and stable releases on a schedule. There won’t be a Windows 11, 12 and 13, but the platform will evolve over time. In theory, enterprises will be able to consume innovation easier. For Microsoft, enterprise customers will become subscribers…