Category: News

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Daniel Green.

Apple’s launch of the iPhone 6 Plus reflects a wider trend of mobile devices slowly replacing PCs as the central device for the consumer’s every day use. The rise of cloud computing has enabled mobile devices to fulfil most computing tasks so that “any trade-offs are outweighed by the convenience and flexibility provided by the mobile devices.” Companies like Apple and Samsung have capitalised on the growing consumer demand for PC-like devices, with the introduction of ‘phablets’ beginning to change the very concept of a ‘personal computer.’ While tablets have certainly found a niche market, they remain an awkward size for basic mobile uses such as receiving mobile calls and texting.

The increased size of mobile screens, with the iPhone 6 Plus screen measuring 6.22 x 3.06 x 0.28 inches in size, will also help to close the gap between mobile phones and the traditional desktop experience. Video conferencing via user-friendly mobile apps such as Skype are predicted to be even more commonplace in the work place, with corporations investing more in remote working and flexible working practices by relying more on cloud technology and online productivity tools…

Grazed from TechPageOne.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Business agility. It’s the true driver of cloud computing adoption — and it trumps efficiency, cost and the other things people talk about.  For example, when marketers sign up for Typepad online, they do so because the technology enables them to solve problems on their own timetables — not those of a centralized IT organization.

Likewise, when developers start virtual machines in the Amazon cloud because it takes six weeks to get similar resources from central IT, they do so because they need the virtual machines now — not because of how much less expensive the public cloud might appear…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Brandon Kelly.

We live in an era of constant, accelerating change, and the only organizations that are equipped to keep pace are those that are capable of competing at cloud speed. Does trading out packaged software installed on your own servers for the cloud based versions offered by your vendor accelerate your organization to cloud speed?

Sorry, no.   So what the heck is cloud speed anyways?  Competing at cloud speed is a goal that every organization should have, and it requires learning fast not failing fast, it involves creating the flexibility to adapt to trends that spread globally faster than ever before, to respond to competition from unexpected sources, and provides a potential antidote to decreasing corporate lifespans.   Accelerating to cloud speed requires your organization to operate under a series of principles that make it both FAST and agile…

Grazed from FederalTimes.  Author: Anthony Robbins.

Access to data is driving how today’s world operates, now more than ever before. Rarely is anyone disconnected from a device that acts as a data source — be it a computer, smartphone or even an object like a car. On top of the data individuals are generating, satellites are collecting information and geodata in exponential quantities. In many cases, organizations struggle to put all these data to meaningful use.

The federal government is actively paving the way to creating best practices and programs that activate the value of data. On May 9 President Obama signed the Digital Accountability and Transparency (DATA) Act, which requires agencies to uniformly code their spending data to improve transparency and visibility into how taxpayer dollars are being spent…

Grazed from TechTarget.  Author: Dan Sullivan.

Deploying and configuring AWS resources can be time consuming and error-prone. If you ever had to configure an application stack using someone else’s janky documentation, you will appreciate AWS CloudFormation.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) CloudFormation allows developers to capture the state of existing platforms, tailor them to additional requirements and redeploy them as needed, in an automated way. It is designed to streamline the process of managing resources, such as storage, servers and security controls…

Grazed from GCN.  Author: Editorial Staff.

IBM and AT&T are teaming up to stay competitive in the cloud market, announcing a deal that would let customers link their IT services to IBM SoftLayer cloud using AT&T NetBond secure virtual private network (VPN).

The dual service offering would give customers a method for securely connecting their data and IT systems to a set of SoftLayer managed hosting and hybrid cloud services…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is an essential tool for IT. Once perceived as a potential threat to the IT department, forward-thinking IT leaders recognize the cloud’s potential to better serve the business.

Cloud qualities such as rapid provisioning, elastic capacity, and extensive automation mean IT departments can deploy new services quickly, and get out of the business of babysitting infrastructure to focus instead on high-value initiatives…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Could financial losses by cloud vendors pose a serious risk to all business customers? Steve Brazier, CEO of Canalsys, has suggested that major players in the cloud industry run the risk of going belly up in hard times, taking customers with them to the brink. Quoted in a Channelonomics piece by Sam Trendall, Brazier suggests that as is the case with banks, economic failure within the cloud industry – particularly infrastructure providers — could have catastrophic ripple effects for large swaths of businesses that increasingly depend on their services.

The financial ground of the cloud industry is already shaky, Brazier opines: “On public infrastructure-as-a-service, I am going to give you a very clear warning: hundreds of millions of dollars are being spent on public cloud infrastructure, but we do not know of anyone [in that space] who is profitable.”…

Grazed from TechPageOne. Author: Drew Robb.

The explosive growth in data volume in today’s cloud-based environments is staggering — as is the cost of storing it. So how do IT departments stay in control of the budget? Clearly, it’s important to pay close attention to pricing and the fine print in any contracts. Just as clouds are nebulous, cloud pricing can be, too. Some vendors quote a ridiculously low cost per gigabyte (GB). But lurking behind that are additional costs for uploading and downloading data, and other hidden fees.

Greg Schulz, an analyst with storage research firm StorageIO Group, advised that anyone looking to the cloud should be wary of lowballing. According to Owen Rogers of 451 Research, cloud computing once promised simple, usage-based charging similar to other utilities such as electricity but the reality is far from this ideal…

Grazed from Net-Security.org. Author: Mirko Zorz.

In this interview, Ravi Ithal, Chief Architect at Netskope, discusses the top threats to cloud security and how they are changing the way we’re using the cloud. He also talks about how the power of the cloud influences the agility of a modern security architecture and offers insight about who is ultimately responsible for data security in the cloud.

There’s no doubt, the cloud is here to stay. If you look at today’s fast paced threat landscape, what are the top threats to cloud security?

One of the biggest threats in cloud computing today is the data breach. There’s no doubt that we are on a cloud-data breach collision course as enterprises adopt cloud rapidly and data breaches grow in number and intensity. There are three ways that the cloud can impact data breaches:..