Category: News

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Jeffrey Burt.

At Cisco Live 2014, CEO John Chambers says that the cloud computing services vendor doesn’t fit in with his company’s plans. Cisco Systems has never been shy about buying a company if executives think the deal will add to the vendor’s wide range of ambitions, from security and cloud to the data center and Internet of everything. However, despite speculation in the industry, cloud provider Rackspace isn’t going to be one of those acquisitions.

Rackspace has been a pioneer in the cloud computing market and a key developer of the OpenStack technology, and it competes with such large and well-financed companies as Amazon Web Services and Google. However, as the competition has increased, Rackspace has seen its stock price fall by almost half over the past year, and in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) earlier this month, Rackspace officials said the company has hired banker Morgan Stanley to help them explore possible partnerships or sales…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Michael Cusanelli.

If you hadn’t guessed already, cloud computing is becoming an increasingly big deal as enterprise users begin to realize the cost savings and convenience of hosted virtual desktops. A new report from Research and Markets confirmed the importance of cloud computing to the industry in its Global Hosted Virtual Desktop Market 2014-2018 report, which found that the cloud computing market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63.7 percent from 2013 to 2018.

VMware (VMW) was named as one of the essential vendors to the overall growth of the industry. Among the advantages provided with hosted management services, the report found that the rapid rate of adoption of new services is one of the major boons for cloud computing, as enterprise users are able to quickly and easily upgrade their systems virtually without the need to deploy IT admins to each of their workstations…

Grazed from TechRadar. Author: Juan Martinez.

SAP has launched a set of solutions designed to enable organizations to more quickly adopt cloud computing, the company said in a statement. The “SAP Rapid Deployment” solutions will help streamline the implementation experience with accelerated time to value at reduced costs, according to SAP.

SAP Rapid Deployment is geared toward parties interested in implementing on-premise or hybrid clouds. Rapid deployment is meant to reduce risk, improve Rapid Deployment is built for large and small cloud integrations, or deployments of multiple solutions in the cloud or on premise, SAP said…

Grazed from SFGate. Author: Thomas Lee.

Anaplan CEO Fred Laluyaux has a ready answer whenever someone asks him to describe his company’s product. "Excel on steroids," Laluyaux said. With all due respect to Laluyaux, that doesn’t quite capture it. That’s what happens when you work in a market as opaque as enterprise performance management software – souped-up code that allows companies to store, access, manage and analyze huge amounts of data.

So here’s an alternative description: Anaplan has created technology that could kill off industry giants Oracle and SAP. Think I’m exaggerating? DFJ Growth doesn’t think so, which is why the venture capital firm led a group, including Salesforce.com and Workday, that recently invested $100 million into the San Francisco startup…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Microsoft (MSFT) is adding another licensing option for Azure, the tech giant’s cloud computing platform for channel partners. Microsoft this week announced in a blog post that it will make an additional Azure option available to the channel on August 1, 2014 through its Open Licensing program, to assist partners with transitioning to the cloud.

Partners can take advantage of Microsoft Volume Licensing, flexible monetary payments and additional opportunities through this new option, the company said. Josh Waldo, senior director of cloud partner strategy at Microsoft, wrote in the blog post, "With Azure, partners are able to help customers embrace the speed, scale and economics of cloud through an open and flexible platform that provides all the building blocks to quickly build, deploy, and manage cloud-based solutions."…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/052214/microsoft-welcomes-azure-open-licensing-program

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Peter Burrows.

After co-founding Salesforce.com (CRM) in 1999, Marc Benioff spent years preaching the gospel of its radical new business model, cloud computing. The days of the hard sell are long gone, Benioff says. Just this month, the Salesforce chief executive officer played host to News Corp. (NWSA) Chairman Rupert Murdoch and Wal-Mart Stores (WMT) CEO Doug McMillon, who’d traveled to Silicon Valley to hear how Salesforce could help them cut costs and increase sales.

Murdoch and McMillon didn’t come just to hear about the customer-relationship-management software that’s Salesforce’s bread and butter. According to Benioff, they wanted to learn more about Salesforce’s cloud “platform,” a mélange of programming tools, data centers, and partnerships that let companies quickly and cheaply create cloud services of their own. “The world’s most important CEOs realize that their companies also need to become cloud platforms, and that’s why they’ve become so interested in our services,” says Benioff…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Fred O’Conner.

A printer that connects to the Web may pose as great a risk to enterprise security as an OS vulnerability, but yet companies worry about the latter and too often ignore the former, said a CTO during a discussion at MIT. With more devices gaining Web connectivity as part of the Internet of Things movement, hackers have greater opportunities to exploit weaknesses, said Patrick Gilmore, CTO of data-center and telecommunications service provider the Markley Group.

The people who write software for printers may not be worried about security, he said. “No one talks about what if your printer is hacked and every document your CEO printed is posted to a blog,” he said. The session, part of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sloan CIO Symposium Wednesday, covered a range of security issues, including cloud computing, emerging threats and data security…

Grazed from StratNews. Author: Editorial Staff.

In the field of cloud computing, much has changed in recent years. Our ability to process large quantities of data and apply high-octane computing to various problems continues to grow at a fantastic rate. While there are many security issues that remain relevant in cloud computing, a recent FiRe panel featuring Dave Campbell, CTO of Cloud and Enterprise, Microsoft, Mathew Lodge, VP Cloud Services VMware, David Nelson, Chief Strategist, Cloud Computing, Boeing, and Michael Liebow, Global Managing Director, Accenture Cloud Platform agreed that at this point, there is no getting out of the cloud.

When questioned by Greg Ness, VP of WorldWide Marketing at CloudVelocity and SNS’ Ambassador for Cloud Computing, the panel agreed that the cloud is so efficient as to have become absolutely necessary to firms looking to remain competitive. While security issues remain, panelists noted that despite the “four walls and a ceiling” nature of traditional data centers (which come with a sense of security one panelist termed “the Hogwarts illusion”) the risks involved in using the cloud are not in actuality much higher…

Grazed from Blouinnews. Author: Juliana Kenny.

It has been tough for some enterprises to adjust to the changing information technology landscape; virtual technologies have begun to revolutionize the way IT is structured for businesses, especially with the introduction of cloud-based services. By now, businesses are aware of the benefits of cloud computing versus the complications it brings, but according to new research from IBM, the awareness does not correspond with the enterprises’ willingness to jump aboard the cloud bandwagon.

The mobile and social media bandwagons present challenges as well, although different ones. IBM’s full research will be available in July, but the preliminary findings show that only 10% of businesses are ready for the “new IT”, or the pending incorporation of cloud, mobile, social, and big data…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Louis Columbus.

In contrast to SAP ’s cautionary tale including the abrupt departures of Vishal Sikka, Shaun Price and continued attempts to recapture their customers’ cadence, Salesforce shows how powerful galvanizing customer-facing systems are in redefining manufacturing today. The revolution that manufacturers want starts in their front offices, focusing on making every relationship count. Trust, not transactions, matter most in manufacturing today. Defining a mobile-first application development strategy that includes deep contextual customer intelligence, Salesforce shows potential to lead a revolution in manufacturing with its Salesforce1 platform.

The recent Salesforce announcement that they are focusing on a delivering solutions that solve specific industries’ issues is noteworthy. It provides a blueprint for helping manufacturers navigate away from an inward-centric, myopic transaction mindset to one that embraces customer’s rapidly changing needs…