Category: News

Grazed from ITProPortal.  Author: Andy Lancaster.

As knowledgeable as heads of IT and CIOs inevitably are, there is at least one area where an admission of ignorance is wiser than faked knowledge: how to determine the true cost of transitioning an enterprise’s IT into the cloud.  At first, this might seem counter-intuitive.

After all, moving from on-premise IT to the cloud is such a fundamental strategic shift, with so many financial, technical and business considerations, that you’d expect any cloud proposal to contain a detailed breakdown of the costs of transition. This was certainly possible in the early days of cloud computing, when there were only the costs of in-house servers and software to measure…

Grazed from CNA.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Taiwan’s struggling computer manufacturer Acer Inc. will open an experience center for its Build Your Own Cloud (BYOC) business on May 29 in Taoyuan County in Northern Taiwan to showcase its cloud computing solutions.  The inauguration ceremony of the center and its global press conference will be hosted by Chairman Stan Shih, CEO Jason Chen and BYOC President Maverick Shih, Acer said in an invite sent last week.

Stan Shih told a local media briefing on May 4 that Acer is expected to announce more than 10 BYOC partners at the inauguration ceremony, including hardware manufacturers, software companies and content providers…

Grazed from Help-Net Security.  Author:  Jim Hietala.

Security concerns are still preventing many small businesses from using new technology methods to accelerate growth. The cloud is one major example of a “hot topic” that has perpetuated the news cycle as something that could help small businesses, but new and unsolved old risks are blocking a mass uptake in cloud-based services.

Revelations from such major events as the Snowden incident last summer have greatly set back the adoption of cloud services. There are a number of industry surveys (including this one commissioned by NTT Communications) that support the idea that potential customers are taking a more cautious approach to the cloud. With these stories only building, there is no question that the public image of the cloud has suffered, but are the dangers real for small businesses?…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective.  Author: Jon Smith.

Cloud computing has progressed from a niche buzzword to a business essential in recent years. But if you’re still lagging behind what’s the easiest way to get started?  In this guide you’ll find some expert advice on taking your first steps to cloud migration.

Minimise risk by taking baby steps

Though you may be suitably seduced enough by the cloud to want to migrate in one fell swoop, experts advise a more graduated approach.  First ask yourself ‘what should we put in the cloud?’ Your answer should be driven in the early stages by minimising risk. Doug Clark, IBM UK and Ireland cloud leader, advises firms to begin by migrating applications that are “relatively low risk and fairly generic”…

Grazed from Atos.  Author: PR Announcement.

Atos, an international information technology services company, and Bull (Paris:BULL), the trusted partner for enterprise data, together announced today the intended public offer in cash by Atos for all the issued and outstanding shares in the capital of Bull.

Atos offer is set at EUR4.90 per Bull’s share in cash, representing a 22% premium over the Bull’s closing price (EUR4.01) on Friday May 23(rd) , 2014, the last trading day before this announcement, and a 30% premium with respect to the 3 month volume weighted average share price (EUR3.77).The offer will also target the outstanding Bull’s OCEANEs at EUR5.55 per OCEANEs…

Grazed from CSO.  Author: John Gonsalez.

The need for a rock-solid, mobility-enabled network that reaches users no matter where they are is an investment priority for organisations, but what should enterprises be doing to prepare for the new era of total mobility?

First let us consider the situation. With the proliferation of mobile users and their devices, within a campus or across continents, the challenges of operating and managing a network have changed fundamentally. IT has moved quickly from a world of fixed computing to a new world of mobility where everything — people, devices, machines, and applications — is in constant motion…

Grazed from FutureGov.  Author: Editorial Staff.

From being a buzzword, cloud computing has transitioned to become a critical and strategic component for businesses across sectors. The next step for IT decision makers is to sort through the proliferation of information to make the right choices focusing on a holistic view of all aspects within the organisation – beyond IT — that are impacted by the initiative, including people, process, and technology. Effectively defining and building a complete cloud implementation (whether private, public, or hybrid) can lead to a total business transformation marked by expedited product delivery and reduced IT costs.

Making the Right Move to the Cloud

Just like IT in general, cloud implementations are increasingly moving towards a more hybrid infrastructure. Furthermore, spanning heterogeneous infrastructures, supporting multi-vendor environments, and bridging existing business workflows to this hybrid cloud world requires open approaches such as open source—just as leading public clouds have done. But within this broad open and hybrid framework, there’s also a need to take into account the specific needs of each individual business…

Grazed from WatersTechnology.  Author: Max Bowie.

Over 200 years ago, British chemist and amateur meteorologist Luke Howard laid the foundations for the classification of clouds used today, which, in their various forms, can resemble anything from gauzy material shrouding the sky, to flying saucers, wispy vapor trails to bulbous upside-down mushrooms. With such different perceptions of the same phenomenon, should we be surprised that cloud computing is also viewed so differently by different parts of the industry?

At last week’s North American Financial Information Summit, we heard vastly differing opinions on the potential opportunities and drawbacks of cloud computing. And interestingly, whereas regulators are often criticized for being behind the curve, when it comes to cloud, regulators are already taking advantage of cloud in ways that trading firms are still debating about…

Grazed from TechGig.  Author: Editorial Staff.

RackSpace has recently confirmed that they have retained Morgan Stanley in order to begin entertaining acquisition or partnership requests. As Cloud’s Big Three began their race to the bottom in regards to pricing, it left many industry analysts wondering what would happen to RackSpace once the dust settled.

RackSpace has become an important player in the cloud market. Although the company is a publically traded stock, it seems as if RackSpace just doesn’t have the brand name recognition or the capital to keep up with movers and shakers in the cloud industry. RackSpace has invested $1 billion in infrastructure since 2005. Recently, it was reported that RackSpace had been bleeding clients due to the slashing of cloud prices from vendors such as AWS, Google and Microsoft. While RackSpace’s commitment to cloud and their total investment within the industry is nothing to scoff at, it seems as if the large technology players are exponentially outspending RackSpace…

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author: Pete Sonsini.

After more than a decade of hype and billions of dollars of value creation, it would be reasonable to expect investors to start losing interest in cloud-related startups. In the venture business, me-too investors reap ever-diminishing returns compared to early entrants in a new sector. And while the sweeping transformation that began with the migration of non-critical applications from the data center to the cloud has proven massive indeed, it’s certainly no longer early days.

Indeed, even the second wave of cloud opportunity — essentially reinventing the infrastructure underlying cloud applications to meet the growing demands for performance and scalability in an increasingly mobile, app-centric world — has begun to level off in terms of new opportunity. The enabling technologies that were hand-sewn by cloud pioneers like Google or Facebook are becoming more and more commercially available; one by one, obstacles are being eliminated and problems are being solved, primarily by startups…