Category: News

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.”…

Grazed from LinuxInsider. Author: Katherine Noyes.

Red Hat on Tuesday rolled out Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, the latest major release of the company’s flagship Linux platform, six months after the software’s beta version made its debut. Among the key new features included in the release are KVM virtualization technology, an improved installation experience, Active Directory/Identity Management integration, and Linux containers as a key application packaging and delivery technology.

"Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 redefines the enterprise OS because we deliver new tools and technical support to allow *enterprises* to take advantage of Linux containers," Mark Coggin, Red Hat’s senior director of platform product marketing, told LinuxInsider. "This includes distribution of Docker and all of the other features required for namespace isolation, resource management, security and process management," he added…

Grazed from MarketWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

GoodData, the leader in cloud business intelligence, today announced that it earned first place for cloud business intelligence functionality in the 2014 Wisdom of Crowds® Cloud Business Intelligence Market Study. GoodData was rated above 22 other BI vendors for its feature functionality and architecture.

Scores were based on feature functionality including advanced visualization, personalized dashboards, end-user self-service, interactive analysis, in-memory support, data integration and embedded BI as well as architectural functionality including public and private cloud, multi-tenancy, cloud application connections and more. The report found that Cloud BI importance showed visible gains year over year since 2012 in all positive levels of importance, reflected in a rising mean measurement of sentiment…

Grazed from HuffingtonPost. Author: Phil Simon.

There’s no one right way to launch products and services today, a point that I make in The Age of the Platform. Consider the two vastly different approaches that two iconic companies took to achieve equally impressive results. As Brad Stone writes in The Everything Store, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos stressed the importance of getting big fast from the get-go.

He astutely recognized that the Internet in 1994 was effectively a land grab. If his company established strong relationships with its customers, many would have a hard time switching. I’d argue that he was right. One can hardly quibble with Bezos’ results over the last 20 years. Contrast that strategy with Mark Zuckerberg’s much more measured approach at Facebook…

Grazed from CiteWorld. Author: Simon Bisson.

At every speech he’s made so far, Microsoft’s new CEO Satya Nadella has talked about his vision of the future of computing. Having a vision is good for Microsoft, a company that seemed lost, struggling to find relevance in a world dominated by the new giants of Silicon Valley. Now the sleeping giant has awoken, first with Office on the iPad, then with new versions of Windows, then with Cortana, Surface 3, and on and on, five months of announcement after announcement.

Much of what Microsoft has delivered was born under Nadella’s predecessor Steve Ballmer, but much of it has come from the groups touched by Nadella’s career, from Bing to Azure, to Office 365 and beyond. Much of it has also come from Microsoft’s secret sauce, the scientists and engineers of Microsoft Research…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

kloudtrack®, a leader in cybersecurity and cloud computing (cyber|cloud) technologies and solution services for sensitive data, process management and Governance, Risk and Compliance (GRC), will team up with the University of Maryland’sRobert H. Smith School of Business and Cisco Systems CSCO -0.04% to establish the first Innovation Sandbox™ exchange catering to the innovation, workforce development and technology roadmapping needs of public and private sector healthcare, and medical and life science (HealthTech) organizations.

The project was announced as part of today’s Maryland Economic Development Association Summer Conference at UMD, themed "Health Innovations: Impact on Economic and Workforce Development." The HealthTech Innovation Sandbox, which will be available via both physical and virtual data hosting platforms, is being developed jointly by kloudtrack and Cisco in partnership with the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems (CHIDS) — a research center at the Smith School. The project will allow healthcare, medical and life science organizations to test, research, teach and learn various innovative technologies and/or methodologies in a proof-of-concept "sandbox" environment…

Grazed from RapidScale. Author: Editorial Staff.

When it comes to business, cloud computing is on everyone’s mind. This next generation of computing technology is proving to be extremely beneficial for organizations of every size. With this increased consideration of the cloud, many are deciding how to best integrate it into their business. There are three main forms of cloud computing: public, private and hybrid. When considering the move, you shouldn’t just pick one of these at random. The choice should be strategic, based on the characteristics of your business. Each cloud model is best suited for certain types of organizations and needs, so picking the wrong one could backfire. It’s important to consider security, compliance, cost, efficiency, integration and scalability.

Multi-Tenant (Public)

A public cloud is based on the popular definition of cloud computing – it provides services, applications and computing resources off-site via the Internet. Multitenancy is a huge part of the public cloud, as the resources used are shared by multiple organizations. This leads to greater efficiency, amazing scalability and lower costs, all of which are huge draws of public cloud computing. Businesses typically use a pay-as-you-go model, truly purchasing the cloud “as a service,” similar to how electricity or water services work…