Category: News

Grazed from Bizjournals. Author: Bill Hethcock.

Information and communications industry spending nationwide grew 6.6 percent in 2013, to $1.3 trillion — the fastest growth rate in years and the first time the United States has grown faster than the rest of the world. That number is forecast to climb to $6.1 trillion by 2017, a rate of growth that Grant Seiffert, president of the Telecommunications Industry Association, calls remarkable.

The demand for data, especially video, is fueling the telecom industry’s growth, as is the proliferation of gadgets “talking” to each other, Seiffert said today (Wednesday) at TIA’s Network of the Future conference in Dallas. “How the value chain continues to change, and the pace of that change, is incredible,” he said…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. AuthorL Julie Bort.

Cloud computing is producing a huge crop of big and successful companies. There are already 23 public cloud companies trading at more than $1 billion in market cap, tracked by Bessemer Venture Partners’ BVP Cloud Index. Bessemer has also identified another 300 successful cloud startups; among them, 16 have already hit a $1 billion valuation or on the verge of it, a concept BVD calls the "cloud unicorn."

The unicorn indicates the mythical nature of crossing that $1 billion valuation milestone. BVD predicts many of these companies could hit the $1 billion valuation through an acquisition. The companies are:

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloudamize, the leading cloud infrastructure analytics platform for Amazon Web Services, today released the results of a three-month study of the cloud computing marketplace. After analyzing more than 77,000 Amazon Web Services instances for its clients, Cloudamize uncovered usage trends, customer misconceptions, and potential areas for improvement in how organizations utilize the cloud. Among those findings: 34% of analyzed instances had cost-saving opportunities of 30% or more.

“In exploring the benefits of cloud computing, many organizations are finding that they encounter a significant amount of noise that hinders their decision making,” commented Khushboo Shah, founder and CEO of Cloudamize. “This analysis deciphers the signal from that noise, dispels the myths around the cloud, and enables them to move forward with confidence and efficiency.”…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

Tech Data (TECD) has launched a new distribution agreement with cloud service provider dinCloud to provide the company’s cloud-based solutions to channel partners. The agreement makes dinCloud’s portfolio of hosted virtual desktops (HVDs), hosted virtual servers (HVS) and the new dinStorage S3 cloud storage platform available to Tech Data’s channel solution providers through the Tech Data Solutions Store.

“For businesses seeking to leverage secure cloud infrastructure and business provisioning, we are excited to offer dinCloud solutions to our channel of resellers,” said Stacy Nethercoat, vice president, Product Marketing, Software and Cloud Services at Tech Data, in a prepared statement…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bernard Golden.

Speaking at a recent conference, Salesforce.com’s Peter Coffee put up a provocative slide: The number of Google searches for the term "cloud computing." It proves, he says, that people no longer find cloud computing compelling. You might be tempted to think that people aren’t interested in cloud computing because they’ve got it all figured out and have moved on to new challenges.

The reduced lack of interest in cloud computing notwithstanding, I certainly don’t think that cloud computing adoption is finished. Far from it. In fact, I’d say most IT organizations have barely started working with cloud computing, much less completed their journey.
Gartner’s Lydia Leong echoed this perspective in a couple funny tweets, plaintively noting that, far from being finished with cloud implementations, many IT personnel don’t even really understand cloud computing…

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP AG (SAP), the largest maker of business-management software, is speeding up its software to attract more customers to its Hana database, which competes against Oracle Corp. products. SAP introduced what it calls “simplified” financial applications to help businesses view cash positions, make forecasts and plan for events such as bad weather or closed shipping routes using the most current data.

SAP will initially target its Simple Finance software and Fiori user interface at large companies that want to use Hana to process more information in real time rather than overnight batches. “We want everyone to run a simple, gorgeous user experience for SAP,” Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott said today at the company’s Sapphire customer conference in Orlando, Florida…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mary Pratt.

Joe Roberts has had his pick of jobs. And with his experience in cloud computing, he still does. Roberts had several job offers when he moved in November from his former position as a senior IT lead/systems engineer working on a SaaS product to his current job as a senior DevOps engineer at Bit9 in Waltham, Mass.

And Roberts, who has seven years of cloud experience on his resume, is still in demand: He says he averages about 20 inquiries from recruiters each week. "I’m constantly getting calls from people looking for someone who not only understands IT, but engineering practices, agile methodology, who can work with operating systems, security, networks, and can automate all of those things," he says, noting that colleagues with similar cloud experience report the same high interest from employers…

Grazed from TheVar Guy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Canonical, whose Ubuntu Linux is already the leading platform for OpenStack open source cloud deployments, has broadened its OpenStack portfolio yet further with the announcement of official support for Mirantis’s OpenStack distribution. Through an agreement between Canonical and Mirantis that the companies announced June 3, Canonical will support Ubuntu in Mirantis’s integrated OpenStack platform, while Mirantis "will offer enterprise customers a commercial bundle that will include subscription to Mirantis OpenStack with support for Ubuntu host and guest instances," Mirantis said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Canonical will also continue supporting the separate Ubuntu OpenStack distribution that it already offers. Mirantis touts itself as "the #1 Pure Play OpenStack Company" for its vendor-agnostic integrated OpenStack solutions, and the collaboration between Canonical and Mirantis creates another way for enterprises to deploy Ubuntu-based OpenStack clouds with official support from Canonical. The Ubuntu-Mirantis software and support bundle will allow enterprises to "benefit from having another proven, supported OpenStack cloud solution," the companies promise.

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Kevin Jackson.

In February 2011, Vivek Kundra announced the “Cloud First” policy across the US Government. The directive, issued through the Office of Management and Budget, required agencies to give cloud technology first priority in developing IT projects. He also described cloud computing as a “10 year journey”.

According to a Deltek report, federal agency spending on cloud computing will grow from $2.3 billion in fiscal 2013 to $6.1 billion by fiscal 2018. This forecast clearly raises the importance of understanding what has happened over the past few years. In my opinion, the Top 5 most important lessons learned are:…

Grazed from Yahoo. Author: Rob Pegoraro.

The news from Apple at Monday’s Worldwide Developers Conference left me with the same impression I’ve had about many presentations from the company: This looks neat, but at what point will I find my data or my apps on the wrong side of an elegantly designed, Apple-built wall?

iCloud still closed

For a worst-case example, see the new iCloud Drive online storage system. In a welcome and overdue fix, iCloud will now let you get at online files through the desktop Finder, not just in the Open and Save dialogs of particular apps. This desktop access will be reserved for the Finder in the upcoming OS X Yosemite (which will at least be free). Apple’s preview page, however, says Windows uploading will be limited to just Windows 8 — as in, the version that CEO Tim Cook mocked at the start of the WWDC keynote for running on a mere 14 percent of PCs…