Category: News

Grazed from CBROnline.  Author: Duncan MacReal.

New IT trends, including cloud computing, bring your own device (BYOD) and the Internet of Things (IoT), could kill off swathes of stack vendors as numerous start-ups emerge to cash in, one software development specialist has warned.

"When we look at business competition, each wave of these trends and changes brings about huge numbers of start-ups and new competition that we’ve never seen before," said Charles Race, SVP EMEA, Informatica…

Grazed from ITWorld Canada. Author: Andrew Brooks.

From its origins as an online bookseller, Amazon.com Inc. has gotten its finger in a lot of pies. Among other things, it has now become a major purveyor of cloud computing services to large organizations. As we reported a few weeks ago, even the Ontario government has moved its own web site onto Amazon cloud servers as part of a broad program of data centre downsizing.

Amazon wasn’t shy about hyping the cloud at a recent technology forum, according to a blog posting on our sister site IT Business.ca. The company was one of the presenters at Computex, the massive computer trade show held in Taipei, Taiwan this week. It’s the largest ICT event in Asia and the second largest in the world…

Grazed from PCMag. Author: Samara Lynn.

Perhaps your small business network is ready for an upgrade. A few years ago, having five computers in the office set up to share files might have been sufficient, but your data needs may since have grown to the point where you need a full-fledged file server. Or maybe you want a server and website for your killer new custom app. Instead of going out and buying new hardware—not to mention hiring new IT staff to support your growing network—consider a hosted platform service.

Hosted platforms are a subset of cloud computing that let you virtually set up technologies such as servers, Web apps, databases, storage, virtual networks, and more. The beauty of these hosted platforms is that IT and businesses can deploy these technologies without purchasing hardware or managing them locally, which often requires hiring additional IT staff. Instead, the hosting company, also known as the hosting provider, is responsible for maintaining the hardware and data center at which your in-the-cloud tech resides…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Chris Preimesberger.

The period of eight days from June 5 to June 12, 2013, was monumental in the history of data security. The timeline: June 5, 2013: The Guardian reports that the U.S. government has obtained a secret court order that requires Verizon to turn over the telephone records of millions of Americans to the National Security Administration. June 6: The Guardian and the Washington Post disclose the existence of PRISM, a program that allows the NSA to extract the details of customer activities—including "audio and video chats, photographs, e-mails, documents" and other materials—from computers at Microsoft, Google, Apple and other Internet companies.

June 9: The Guardian and Post disclose former Booz Allen IT specialist Edward Snowden as their source for the intelligence-related leaks. June 12: The South China Morning Post publishes an interview with Snowden in which he says that U.S. intelligence agents have been hacking networks around the world for years. The U.S. IT industry then went on the defensive amid concerns that customers would shift their hosted data and services to providers in other parts of the world. U.S. businesses ostensibly stood to lose up to $180 billion, according to Forrester…

Grazed from ITProPortal. Author: Guy Wright.

At a recent conference Salesforce.com’s Peter Coffee pointed out that Google searches for the term ‘cloud computing’ have been declining over the past few years. Does this mean people aren’t interested in the cloud any more or are IT departments just dragging their feet? In a series of tweets, Gartner’s Lydia Leong said that, far from being finished with cloud implementations, many IT personnel don’t even really understand cloud computing.

She went on to say that many IT organisations fail to understand the key characteristics of cloud computing and, as a result, fall far short of actually operating real cloud environments. The 451 Group recently published the results of a survey regarding server automation and configuration and they found that more than 25 per cent of all respondents had no cloud implementation plan at all, while nearly one-third were six or more months away from providing server automation…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Linda Musthaler.

Even after a decade of cloud computing, many organizations are still struggling over the issue of cloud security. The issue is especially acute when it comes to Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Developers love the aspects of the cloud that free them from limitations and delays — things like elastic compute capability, self-service and broad network access. On the other hand, network security teams have difficulty keeping pace with lots of servers that can come and go at the developers’ will.

The tools that security experts use in the data center don’t fit well in the cloud’s virtualized infrastructure. The traditional tools were built with some kind of perimeter and segmentation in mind, and that simply doesn’t apply when your servers can come and go with the ebb and flow of your application needs…

Grazed from Hitachi. Author: Editorial Staff.

Business applications (e.g., CRM and ERP) in private cloud computing systems are accessed from all over the world owing to modern-day globalization. This makes it difficult for the cloud to deliver a good response time in fact, the response time can be hundreds or even thousands of milliseconds if terminals access the applications from a great distance.

This exceeds the maximum response time for end users to use applications without deteriorated usability. Contents delivery networks reduce the response time of static (i.e., read-only) Web content, but it does not work for dynamic (i.e., read/write) content such as business applications. To lower the response time, applications and data should be replicated at datacenters (DCs) in the same geographical regions as the terminals by federating multiple clouds. Most terminals are globally distributed, while most DC locations provided by a cloud servicer are typically limited to a few regions…

Grazed from CloudComputing. Author: Editorial Staff.

If you are using a CRM, your CRM is most likely hosted in the cloud. If you aren’t using a CRM, you are light years behind your competition in regards to the amount of knowledge you have on your customers and your interactions with them. Cloud CRM presents distinct advantages versus the traditional model of setting the system up in an onsite data centre.

Technology research firm Gartner predicts that 50% of CRM tools will most likely be delivered by cloud in 2015 and by 2025, 85% of CRM offerings will be hosted in the cloud. Angus McFayden, a technology law expert affiliated with Out-law.com says, “The move towards cloud based solutions is predominantly being driven by cost effectiveness and the flexibility of those solutions.”…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Tim Culpan.

Acer Inc. is getting into the cloud-computing business to compete with the likes of Amazon.com Inc. and Google Inc. The difference is the maker of notebooks wants you to host the service on your own personal computer. Its private cloud offers more security than rival services that store information on off-site servers, according to the Taipei-based company. Acer’s software to operate a personal cloud is free and compatible with a wide variety of smartphones, tablets and computers, according to the company.

Facing a third straight annual loss, co-founder and Chairman Stan Shih came out of retirement in November to help lead a revival at the business as demand for PCs slumps. Amid the company’s $691 million loss last year, the fledgling cloud services unit was a lonely bright spot, turning a small profit…

Grazed from CNBC. Author: Nyshka Chandran.

Cloud computing isn’t just for humans – robots are getting in on the action too. Connecting robots to the Internet reduces the need for additional hardware, enabling greater mobility and communication. Softbank’s new robot, Pepper, for instance, owes its capability to read human emotions to cloud computing.

Pepper’s primary goal is to make people happy to interact with it, Bruno Maisonnier, CEO of the French robotics firm Aldebaran that developed Pepper, told CNBC. Pepper uses cloud computing to share data that enhances its emotional capabilities. "It’s very important that we gather as much data as possible to improve [Pepper’s] understanding of human emotion and recognition of environments and contexts…