Category: News

Grazed from Mirantis. Author: PR Announcement.

Mirantis, the number one pure-play OpenStack company, today announced the general availability of Mirantis OpenStack Express, an on-demand private Cloud-as-a-Service for enterprises. The new web service enables companies to stand up private clouds and make them available to developers and end users in minutes.

“Mirantis OpenStack Express is extremely easy to use, straightforward to setup and the support team at Mirantis has been fantastic,” says Binh Phan, Senior Security Architect at McAfee. “This is a dramatically better way to build and run your private OpenStack cloud.”…

Grazed from Government Technology. Author: Penelope Lemov.

Some 50 years ago, states and localities missed the boat on keeping their sales taxes current. As the economy shifted from manufacturing to services, most governments failed to slap sales taxes on them. Now there’s a new wrinkle confronting states and localities: The migration of commerce — the sale of goods and services — to the cloud.

The shift poses a number of challenges for tax departments. Namely, if software is provided virtually and hosted by a worldwide network, has real property changed hands and can states tax it? With software sales on the cloud expected to generate $17 billion in revenue worldwide this year, states and localities are in a hurry to sort out these kinds of questions…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

TeraDiscoveries, Inc., a bio-therapeutics company focused on cloud-based drug design and development, announced today that effective immediately, it has changed its corporate name to Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Cloud Pharmaceuticals designs new drugs and drug candidates and accelerates the development process by implementing new, innovative cloud computing technology in place of traditional methods. The company manages the development of multiple drug candidates through an extensive network of partners.

"The worldwide pharmaceutical industry is in need of new drugs that target smaller market segments. They need to be developed faster, have novel IP, and offer greater drug safety, efficacy, and affordability," says Ed Addison, company president and CEO. "Our approach uses cloud technology and high-performance computing to efficiently calculate which of all possible molecules are the best drug candidates. This reduces cost, decreases development time, and creates novel molecules with therapeutic value. Our new name more aptly reflects our approach and value proposition."…

Grazed from The VarGuy. Author: elliot Markowitz.

Technology worlds are colliding, causing the Perfect Storm for organizations that aren’t prepared and creating tremendous opportunities for solution providers that are. Data is being generated at a breakneck pace and organizations are in dire need of storage, access and security solutions. Much of this data-generation is coming from the communications and easy sharing of information on mobile devices.

That is only going to increase moving forward and, as a result, businesses are turning to cloud computing to meet their needs. This intersection of mobile device usage, management and integration with the adoption of cloud computing is putting solution providers in the catbird seat. In fact, many managed service providers already have begun transitioning their business models for this new opportunity by reinventing themselves, focusing on the user experience rather than server monitoring, and have learned how to upsell services in the era of cloud and mobility…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

This week, at its annual Discover user conference, Hewlett-Packard put cloud computing and big data on the top of the agenda, capitalizing on the heavy work it has been doing with these technologies. Recently, the company unified its cloud services under the Helion brand name, using the open-source OpenStack as a foundation.

The company continues to work on its software stack for big-data processing, called HAVEn (Hadoop, Autonomy, Vertica, enterprise security, apps). The company also plans to launch an online magazine, called Matter, designed to help top executives understand how best to drive business value through technology…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Jon Roskill.

It may just sound like semantics, but there is a real difference between something that was “built for” versus “adapted to.” Would you rather buy a house that was “designed for” energy efficiency or one that was “adapted to” be energy efficient?technology “Built for” describes a software product that engineers designed from the ground up to utilize and incorporate the features of cloud computing technology.

“Adapted to” implies a software product wasn’t specifically designed with cloud computing in mind, but rather a company made its older, legacy solution “compatible “ with the cloud. This is an important distinction for several reasons. The National Institute of Standards and Technology’s definition of cloud computing identifies “five essential characteristics“:…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Eric Lundquist.

Hewlett-Packard held press briefings on two new initiatives as the company’s Discover conference drew toward a close this week. One briefing highlighted an HP Labs project aimed at reinventing enterprise computer architecture. The other briefing highlighted how HP is going "all in" on OpenStack. The OpenStack press briefing was the more important one.

OpenStack, a community-developed, open enterprise computing stack, represents a first chance for startups anxious to sell into the enterprise and a second chance for established vendors anxious to find their footing in an era when cloud computing is becoming the central computing engine for enterprises…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Doug Bonderud.

Partly cloudy: That’s the "sweet spot" for many midsize companies. Mixing local and off-site services produces a sunny kind of optimism, and why not? Providers have been singing the praises of agility and flexibility for the last five years, and many have delivered on their promises. According to a recent Ponemon Institute study, however, the public cloud forecast looks grim — are torrential rains coming for IT security?

Triple Threat

A June 5 Top Tech News article takes a look at the recent Ponemon report, "Data Breach: The Cloud Multiplier Effect." The title itself is ominous enough, and the results aren’t much more encouraging. The research firm asked 613 IT and security professionals to estimate the chances of a breach targeting 100,000 or more consumer records. Not only did respondents feel that cloud services were less secure, but they also put a number to that feeling: They believed that adding one percent more cloud services meant a three percent higher breach chance; in other words, using the cloud could triple a midsize company’s risk to lose millions of dollars…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CK Arlotta.

CloudLock on Thursday announced its acquisition of Innovode, the cloud-based file security company known for Innovode Armor — an integrated encryption solution for Google Drive. The financial terms of the deal were not publicly disclosed, but the Waltham, Massachusetts-based cloud information security provider said it has acquired Innovode’s technology and hired key team members as part of the transaction.

To further accelerate its product innovation and introduce additional expertise, CloudLock will work Innovode’s technology into its current offerings, the company said. In a letter to customers, Innovode said the deal will further implement its "cloud security vision within CloudLock’s cloud service portfolio":…

Grazed from ITWorldCanada. Author: Andrew Brooks.

With the release of SQL Server 2014 earlier this year, Microsoft Corp. marked another milestone in its vaunted plan to plunge into cloud computing. SQL Server 2014 found a favourable response in early reviews, with commentators noting its cloud features as well as its incorporation of major data centre technologies like in-memory databases, enhanced backup and high availability features. The InfoWorld Test Center reviewers gave the release a 9.5 score out of ten.

Now InfoWorld has published a reflection on the significance of the new version. J. Peter Bruzzese starts by describing SQL Server 2014 as a “worthwhile upgrade” that pushes SQL further into the cloud. Bruzzese points out that it “brings in cutting-edge data center technologies such as in-memory databases pioneered by SAP’s HANA and recently adopted by big companies like Oracle.”…