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Cloud Computing News
Red Hat Launches Storage Appliance for Amazon's Cloud
February 07 2012 - CIO
By: Mikael Ricknas
Red Hat has announced the Virtual Storage Appliance for Amazon Web Services (AWS), which can take advantage of Amazon's cloud while at the same time offering excellent performance, the company said on Tuesday. "Essentially what we are providing is network-attached storage in the cloud," said Tom Trainer, storage product marketing manager at Red Hat.
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Amazon Web Services Lowers Price of Storage in Its Cloud
February 07 2012 - CIO
By: Mikael Ricknas
Amazon Web Services has cut the cost of storing data using its Simple Storage Service (S3) -- saving users with 50 TB stored on the service around 12 percent on their monthly bill, the company said on Monday. S3 users are charged monthly for the amount of storage they take up in Amazon's cloud. Amazon has cut the cost of storage in its U.S. Standard region from US$0.14 per gigabyte per month to $0.125 for the first terabyte of data, and for the next 49 TB the cost is now $0.110 per gigabyte per month, instead of $0.125.
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Taiwan’s Cloud Computing Industry Poised to Tap the Chinese Market
February 06 2012 - CENS.com
By: Philip Liu
A number of domestic firms will jointly forge a cloud-end supply chain, dubbed “Cloud Valley,” which will be inaugurated at the end of February and seek to link up with mainland China’s cloud bases, in an attempt to tap the tremendous business potential of 1 trillion yuan (NT$4.67 trillion) across the Taiwan Strait. The “Cloud Valley” project is being pushed by the Cloud Computing Association in Taiwan, which put related industries under its auspices to create a complete supply chain, in order to help suppliers of cloud- end hardware, software, and application products tap the international market.
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Is Workday Silicon Valley's Next Big IPO?
February 06 2012 - TheDailyBeast.com
By: Dan Lyons
Everybody’s talking about Facebook’s initial public offering, but unless you’re Warren Buffett, you’re probably better off looking for a sleeper among the lesser-known companies set to go public this year. One candidate: Workday, a small but fast-growing company in Pleasanton, Calif., that sells software to manage personnel departments, payroll, and other back-end chores. That sounds mundane, until you realize that every company in the entire world needs this stuff.
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Cloud Computing Is Still A Leap Of Faith
February 06 2012 - InformationWeek.com
By: Michael Healey
Next time someone starts in about how "the cloud is going to change everything," feel free to point out that "everything" has already changed. So say the 511 business IT professionals responding to our InformationWeek 2012 State of Cloud Computing Survey. Adoption of public cloud services has been on an upswing for the past four years, since we began keeping track. Today, just 27% give a thumbs down. In our 2008 cloud survey, people couldn't even agree on a definition--21% agreed that cloud was "pretty much a marketing term used haphazardly". OK, so not everything has changed.
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Peer Networking Key in Cloud Computing
February 06 2012 - Datamation
By: Jeff Kaplan
The phenomenal growth of Cloud Computing has been driven by a number of factors. But in order for the Cloud industry to build on its initial momentum, a broader cross-section of IT and business decision- makers must become adept at taking full advantage of the rapidly expanding array of virtual resources available in the Cloud. The whirlwind of activity surrounding Cloud alternatives over the past few years has not only spawned countless start-ups seeking fortune in the Cloud marketplace, but also attracted a myriad of established players attempting to repurpose, or ‘Cloud-wash’, their existing products and services to exploit the escalating demand for Cloud solutions.
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The Cloud Software Companies You Need to Know About
February 06 2012 - The Motley Fool
By: Alex Planes
The cloud computing industry can be a little daunting. Every week there's a new start-up promising to be a Netflix for YouTube, or claiming to leverage the cloud for customer relationship algorithmic optimization. You know, marketing gibberish. What does it all mean? There may be a ton of companies in the cloud, but many may not survive, and a number of them are just full of hot air. Let's take a look at a few of the most promising stocks in the sector, and try to figure out why they've gotten this far.
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How to Protect Your Intellectual Property in the Cloud
February 06 2012 - COMPUTERWORLD
By: Stephanie Overby
Around this time last year, the cloud computing contract signings were coming fast and furious -- not just for commodity work like IT management or email, but for software and infrastructure closer to the core of corporate value. Not long after that, the calls started to come in to Greg Bell, principal and the Americas service leader for information protection at KPMG.
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Is The Cloud Really Cheaper?
February 06 2012 - ITWORLD.com
By: Ed Zwirn
That there is growing company demand for cloud or software-as-a-service solutions should come as no surprise. Finance and IT professionals, facing the need for greater computing power for everything from operational management to hedge accountingare understandably tempted by SaaS, given the cloud's relatively low startup costs and the fact they may lack the skills needed to build their own analytic solutions.
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Armored-Truck Company Entrusts Tracking Software to Windows Azure Cloud
February 06 2012 - CIO
By: Tim Greene
U.K.-based cash-transport firm G4S is trusting the security of Microsoft's Windows Azure cloud service to keep safe the application that tracks where the money is as it travels to and from customers and the company's vaults in armored trucks. G4S runs fleets of armored vehicles in 70 countries, and in seven of those is switching its eViper tracking application into the Azure cloud, starting with Cyprus but expanding to the others over the next four months, says Richard Wallace, the company's technical director for its Cash Solutions division.
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Another Sunny Day for Cloud Company NetSuite
February 03 2012 - AllThingsD.com
By: Arik Hesseldahl
You know, this whole cloud computing thing might just turn out to be something after all. NetSuite, the cloud-based software outfit that businesses use to, well, run their businesses, just reported its latest quarterly and annual results, and the results are pretty good.
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Google: Digital Music Case Has Cloud Law Implications
February 03 2012 - InformationWeek.com
By: Thomas Claburn
In an effort to defend the legal basis of cloud computing, Google on Wednesday asked a New York court for permission to file an amicus curiae, or friend-of-the-court brief, in a record industry lawsuit against ReDigi, an online market that facilitates the resale of digital music files. A letter from the law firm representing Google, Fenwick & West, warns against granting the preliminary injunction requested by plaintiff Capitol Records. "A premature decision on incomplete facts could create unintended uncertainties for the cloud computing industry," the letter states.
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BMC, VCE to Jointly Enhance Converged Infrastructures in Cloud Computing
February 02 2012 - CBR
By: CBR Staff Writer
They will collaborate across other areas of the BMC Business Service Management platform Business service management firm BMC Software and Virtual Computing Environment (VCE), a company formed by Cisco and EMC, have partnered to address the demand for converged infrastructures in cloud computing projects. Under the partnership, BMC and VCE will enhance the interoperability and integration of their products and collaborate to promote and offer their offerings in the market. The VCE Vblock Infrastructure Platform is integrated with BMC's business-centric cloud management offerings to help joint customers for BMC and VCE automate their management of comprehensive cloud infrastructures.
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Cloud Computing: Facebook IPO to Dwarf Recent Groupon, Zynga, LinkedIn Stock Market Debuts
February 02 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Clint Boulton
Facebook filed for its initial public offering as expected Feb. 1, ending a week of hype, buzz and punditry that had financial and Internet analysts predicting the social network giant's initial public offering would be the biggest in the history of the Internet. The company will trade under the ticker symbol “FB,” but has not revealed whether it will trade on the NASDAQ or NYSE. While Facebook will go on touting its Like buttons for Web publishers and hawking its Timeline user interface for consumers and applications alike, the company's financial statements will be poked, prodded and pored over by hundreds of experts looking to divine just how big an Internet player Facebook is now and can become 5, 10, 15 years down the road.
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AMD's New Plan: Focus on Tablets, Cloud Computing and Developing Markets
February 02 2012 - engadget.com
By: Michael Gorman
Chipzilla has long been atop the PC chip manufacturing mountain, with AMD running a rather distant second. That's why AMD's new top man, Rory Read, plans to move the company in a more mobile direction. Speaking at the company's analyst day, Read stated that the chipmaker will focus on outflanking Intel in the tablet space and by growing its business in cloud computing and emerging markets like China.
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Army Looks to Cloud Computing to Trim IT Bootprint
February 01 2012 - GreenBiz.com
By: Tilde Herrera
We've all seen the recent headlines publicizing the Army's push to significantly scale back its operations. That push reaches far beyond its ground forces to include a fleet of data centers that must shrink from about 200 to 20. The military arm's top IT brass wants the Army to meet this consolidation target ahead of its original deadline of fiscal year 2014.
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Kindle Sales Soar but Amazon Mum on Actual Numbers
January 31 2012 - CIO
By: Nancy Gohring
Amazon said flooding in Thailand and economic problems in Europe weighed on its financial results for the fourth quarter but it also said it was pleased with the results, which disappointed investors. Some observers were likely also disappointed that Amazon didn't disclose unit sales figures for its popular Kindle e-readers. It said only that during the last nine weeks of 2011, Kindle unit sales, including the Fire tablet, increased 177 percent compared to the same period in 2010.
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Microsoft 'committed' to Hyper-V OpenStack Support
January 31 2012 - CIO
By: Nancy Gohring
Microsoft may try to revive support for Hyper-V in OpenStack as the community considers removing the code -- which one OpenStack developer called broken and unmaintained -- from the stack. "Microsoft is committed to working with the community to resolve the current issues with Hyper-V and OpenStack," Microsoft said in a statement.
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HP Extends Asset Mapping Into Amazon, VMware Clouds
January 31 2012 - CIO
By: Joab Jackson
Hewlett-Packard has updated its Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) software package so it will allow administrators to map their IT assets in the cloud. "When clients begin their journey to a hybrid cloud environment, we can help them," said Jimmy Augustine, a group marketing manager in HP's software division. The new cloud capabilities "give folks the required visibility they need to continue managing IT as a business."
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Salesforce.Com Launches Desk.Com Help-Desk Service
January 31 2012 - CIO
By: Chris Kanaracus
Salesforce.com on Tuesday unveiled a new SaaS (software as a service) help-desk application called Desk.com that can reach end users through social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Desk.com, which is based on Salesforce.com's recent acquisition of Assistly, can be deployed in a matter of days even by companies with no dedicated IT staffers, according to Salesforce.com.
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Intel to Buy RealNetworks IP
January 30 2012 - SOAWorld
By: MAUREEN O'GARA
Intel last year bid billions trying to get the Nortel patents. Thursday RealNetworks said Intel was paying it $120 million cash for 190 "foundational media" patents, 170 patent applications and next-generation video codec software good for stuff like streaming. The IP is apparently supposed to brace Intel's Ultrabook, smartphone, tablet and digital media interests. Intel's also picking up Real's video codec engineering team.
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Tilera Unleashes New Many-Core 'Meshed' CPUs for Cloud Computing
January 30 2012 - PCMAG.COM
By: Damon Poeter
Tilera, the upstart maker of many-core microprocessors that sprung on the scene just a few years ago, had some big news to share Monday. The fabless semiconductor startup is bringing co-founder Devesh Garg back into the fold as its chief executive and also announced the widespread availability of its 16-core and 36-core TILE-Gx 64-bit central processors. The company, which bills itself as "on track to be the first successful high-performance microprocessor startup" of the 21st century, reports that it has more than 80 customers lined up for its latest CPUs. Tilera's 40-nanometer Tile-Gx16 and Tile-Gx36 chips have been shipping in limited qualities since last September, the San Jose, Calif.-based company said in a statement.
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The Rise of Cloud Computing on Wall Street
January 30 2012 - WallStreetandTechnology.com
By: Ivy Schmerken
As Wall Street continues to struggle with volatile markets, uncertain global economic conditions and vanishing profits, many firms are looking to reduce their capital expenditures. Targeting the costs of building data centers and maintaining server farms, more and more Wall Street organizations are looking to outsource pieces of their infrastructures to the cloud.
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Indiana University PhD Students Get $100K to Study Cloud Computing, Bioinformatics
January 30 2012 - hpcwire.com
By: Indiana University
Two doctoral candidates at Indiana University Bloomington's School of Informatics and Computing will share equally in a $100,000 gift from international software company Persistent Systems to support research in cloud computing and bioinformatics. Thilina Gunarathne, a fourth-year computer science student working with distinguished professor Geoffrey Fox, and Anoop Mayampurath, a fourth-year informatics student working with associate professor Haixu Tang, will each receive $50,000.
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MSPWorld Tackles Cloud Computing, Cloud Services, SLAs
January 30 2012 - MSPmentor
By: Joe Panettieri
When the MSPWorld conference kicks off this week (Feb. 1-3, Miami, Fla.), a healthy portion of the event content will focus on cloud computing and cloud services. That’s hardly surprising, considering nearly 60 percent of top MSPs now offer cloud and SaaS services to their customers, according to our fifth-annual MSPmentor 100 report. But what cloud trends will be on display at MSPWorld? Here are some guesses.
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Cloud Computing Both More Agile and Less Expensive
January 30 2012 - itworld.com
By: Bernard Golden, CIO
In Silicon Valley, the saying "it's a dessert topping and a floor wax" is often used to puncture the pretensions of a product that promises that it can address every need; it's applied to products claiming oxymoronic qualities. For example, the saying would be applied to a product that claimed to perform network management and word processing--two different, mismatched, and disharmonious functionalities. I'm reminded of this when I listen to a debate common to cloud computing discussions. One person will assert that cloud computing is less expensive than the traditional IT infrastructure operations; a second person then says "cost isn't really the issue for IT, what they really want from cloud computing is greater agility," meaning rapid provisioning of infrastructure resources.
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Tilera Launches Two New Speedy Cloud Processors, Names New CEO
January 29 2012 - VentureBeat
By: Dean Takahashi
Tilera is announcing today it has launched new cloud computing processors with either 16 or 36 computing brains, or cores. The company is also announcing that its founding chief executive, Devesh Garg, has rejoined the company as CEO. Garg served as CEO from 2004 to 2007. He moved back to India for personal reasons and became managing director Bessemer Venture Partners India fund. Omid Tahernia took Garg’s place in 2007 and is now stepping down and leaving the company.
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Virtualization, Cloud Having Little Impact On Databases
January 29 2012 - NetworkComputing.com
By: Chris Talbot
Cloud computing has taken center stage during the last two years as the hot enterprise technology, but in the database realm, the public cloud and off-site hosted database services still represent too many unknown factors to truly have mass adoption. According to the co-author of the InformationWeek "State of Database Technology" report, the public cloud is so far having very little impact on enterprise databases.
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5 Low-Profile Startups That Could Change the Face of Big Data
January 28 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Derrick Harris
Big data is hot, but infrastructure-level platforms such as Hadoop, which focus on storage and processing, still need help to take them into the mainstream. They need a killer app or two that will let companies analyze, visualize and act on all that data without hiring a team of Stanford Ph.Ds, or that will let developers write big-data apps without having to reinvent the wheel.
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7 Steps for Business Success with Big Data
January 28 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Chad Richeson
No longer the new technology on the block, big data continues to generate significant buzz. Technologies such as Hadoop and HBase are seeing rapid growth, analysts are experimenting with new techniques and approaches, and business leaders are adapting their business models to rely more on the power of big data. McKinsey calls big data the “next frontier” for business, with the potential to transform business in the same way the Internet did over the past 15 years.
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Fujitsu, ServiceMesh Expand Cloud Offerings
January 27 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Frank Ohlhorst
Cloud platform vendor ServiceMesh has forged a relationship with Fujitsu, giving ServiceMesh customers access to Fujitsu’s global, on-demand cloud computing footprint. ServiceMesh's customers will now be able to build hybrid cloud instances, which can be optimized to deliver IT services at lower costs, while speeding the time to market, thanks to Fujitsu's global cloud platform.
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Geography Matters: The Proximity Paradox of the Cloud
January 27 2012 - MPSNEWS.com
By: Erin Harrison
Due to government regulations in countries around the world, an enterprise’s data needs to reside in the region where it is produced – the “proximity paradox” is important for businesses to understand as they shift toward a cloud computing infrastructure. The upcoming ITEXPO session, “Where is the Cloud? Why Geography Matters” will explore the competitive advantage in having data closer to end users, better performance, less latency in applications; latency threshold and bandwidth issues of specific vertical markets; and why distributed computing is the best way to go since it provides cost savings.
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Juniper's Financial Challenges Continue
January 27 2012 - CIO
By: Jim Duffy
Juniper Networks' challenges are due to timing with new product rollouts and shifts in investments from customers and channel partners. As expected, Juniper this week announced a disappointing fourth quarter and an even more disappointing outlook for the first quarter of its 2012 fiscal year. Due to softened demand among service providers for its routers and switches, Juniper posted a 6% drop in revenues for the fourth quarter of 2011, and a 33% plunge in earnings.
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U.S. Spy Agencies Look to Cloud Computing, Clapper Says
January 26 2012 - Bloomburg.com
By: Viola Gienger
U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper said cloud computing will play a major role as the nation’s spy agencies work to integrate computer and information systems to share more data securely. Cloud computing has “huge potential for achieving savings and promoting integration,” Clapper told an audience today at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a policy group in Washington.
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Cloud Computing Both More Agile and Less Expensive
January 26 2012 - NETWORKWORLD.com
By: Bernard Golden, CIO
In Silicon Valley, the saying "it's a dessert topping and a floor wax" is often used to puncture the pretensions of a product that promises that it can address every need; it's applied to products claiming oxymoronic qualities. For example, the saying would be applied to a product that claimed to perform network management and word processing--two different, mismatched, and disharmonious functionalities. I'm reminded of this when I listen to a debate common to cloud computing discussions. One person will assert that cloud computing is less expensive than the traditional IT infrastructure operations; a second person then says "cost isn't really the issue for IT, what they really want from cloud computing is greater agility," meaning rapid provisioning of infrastructure resources.
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Cloud Computing vs. Custom Integration
January 26 2012 - Datamation
By: Loraine Lawson
As many IT managers will tell you, data integration continues to be a major headache for IT. Tech blogger Loraine Lawson talks to a vendor about some of the issues involved, especially those relating to cloud computing. Study shows that data integration is still costly and requires a lot of manual coding. Cloud is driving growth for data integration vendor Pervasive Software — which isn't surprising. But what is surprising is that 65 percent of the integration work is still on-premise, according to Lance Speck, general manager for integration at Pervasive Software. How's that again?
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Davos Does Data
January 26 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Barb Darrow
Big data has gotten very big if the talking heads at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, are talking about it. And they are talking about it. The big data phenomenon refers to the explosion of data of all types — location coordinates churned out by cell phones and GPS, machine data from manufacturing gear, consumer data from Twitter and Facebook.
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Amazon Web Services Moves Backups to Cloud with New Appliance
January 25 2012 - CIO
By: Mikael Ricknas
IDG News Service — Amazon Web Services has launched a public beta test of AWS Storage Gateway, which allows enterprises to back up application data in Amazon's cloud using a software appliance, the company said on Tuesday. The Storage Gateway appliance is a virtual machine that runs on VMware's virtualization software. It uses an iSCSI interface to integrate with applications. The appliance stores data on local storage hardware, while uploading backup snapshots to Amazon's cloud. This provides low-latency access to data and off-site backups in the cloud, Amazon wrote in a blog post.
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EMC Reports Record Quarter, Driven by Cloud Storage
January 24 2012 - The Street
By: James Rogers
Storage maker EMC posted record fourth-quarter revenue and profit, powered by a push in cloud computing. It was the latest technology company to report strong results. EMC, which reported its results in the wake of strong numbers from IBM, Microsoft, Intel and Texas Instruments, brought in consolidated revenue of $5.6 billion, an increase of 14% from a year earlier and just above analysts' estimate of $5.57 billion. Excluding items, EMC earned 49 cents a share on net income of $1.07 billion, gains of 17% and 16%, respectively. The company's earnings were in line with Wall Street's estimates.
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Patriot Act Threatens American Cloud Computing
January 24 2012 - Wall St Cheat Sheet
By: Emily Knapp
The PATRIOT Act is generating concern among cloud users around the world, who suspect that the United States government, which now has easy access to any American-made platforms, will access their private data. United Kingdom defense contractor BAE Systems planned to adopt Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud-based productivity platform, but was warned against it by their lawyers. Though BAE Systems would be operating outside the U.S., Microsoft’s headquarters are in the U.S., and the company is subject to U.S. laws.
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Department of Justice Misdirection on Cloud Computing and Privacy
January 24 2012 - EFF
By: CINDY COHN AND KATITZA RODRIGUEZ
Does using cloud computing services based in the United States create a risk of US law enforcement access to people's data? The US Department of Justice (DOJ) seems to be trying to placate international concern by saying one thing in international fora; but it says something quite different in the US courts. On January 18, a senior Justice Department official tried to reassure companies and people around the world that hosting their data in the United States creates no increased privacy risk for them from the US government. Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz noted: "Cloud computing has important advantages to consumers (but) doesn't present any issues that have not always been present. Certainly not regarding Internet service issues, but even before that."
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Microsoft’s New Cloudware Could Cast a Shadow over VMware
January 23 2012 - SYS-CON MEDIA
By: Maureen O'Gara
Microsoft staged a Private Cloud Day Tuesday to herald the coming of System Center 2012 sometime between now and the end of June. System Center 2012 will put Microsoft squarely in the private cloud business and put VMware's teeth on edge because it's cheaper and reportedly has the same bells and whistles as VMware's widgetry. According to IDC VMware will have to start competing on price.
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Factors you should consider before storing information via cloud computing
January 23 2012 - The Economic Times
By: Nimish Dubey
Which is a better back-up option for the data in your computer-traditional, portable hard drive or the cloud? Consider the pros and cons of each before deciding on one. For most people, the information they store on their computers-contacts, documents, presentations, audio clips, etc-are often more valuable than the device itself. What happens if something goes wrong with your PC? Storing information safely is essential so that you can access it even if your computer crashes.
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Startup Piston 'Ready for Fight' with VMware
January 23 2012 - CIO
By: Colin Neagle
Having just released its new cloud operating system, Piston Cloud Computing finds itself in a contentious position -- and company co-founder Josh McKenty says that is exactly where the company wants to be. "We're building a product that's great for private clouds, and that puts us head-to-head with VMware," McKenty says. "And I'm ready for that fight." McKenty didn't mince words when describing his young company's new product, which it is touting as the industry's first private cloud operating system based on the OpenStack framework.
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Out with SOPA, in with Cloud
January 23 2012 - CIO
By: John Dix
Count us among the critics of SOPA and PIPA, the two ill-conceived bills that were intended to protect American firms against copyright infringement by foreign websites. We agree with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who writes, "There is no contradiction between intellectual property rights protection and enforcement and ensuring freedom of expression on the Internet." But these bills are too loosely defined and could result in a slew of unintended consequences that would be bad for the Internet and bad for business. We need to stop these bills in their track and require more study.
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Will Cloud Computing Kill Distribution?
January 23 2012 - CRN
By: Scott Campbell, CRN
Solution providers aren’t the only ones seeking to capitalize on cloud computing. Distributors are making their mark in the cloud as well, investing heavily in their own cloud programs and tools with one goal in mind: staying relevant to solution providers as the technology landscape shifts underneath them yet again. As more businesses adopt cloud technology, some channel observers feel distributors run the risk of disintermediation as sales of on-premise hardware and software lose share to off-premise solutions. Solution providers are forging relationships directly with cloud vendors, and the need for the so-called middleman will become obsolete. Or so the theory goes.
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Cloud Computing Helps VMWare Stock Reach for the Skies
January 23 2012 - Benzinga
By: Samuel Richter
VMWare is up in after-hours trading after strong earnings were reported on Monday, thanks to growth in the virtualization solutions sector and an increased integration of cloud computing solutions. Analyst averages of 60 cents earnings per share on revenue of $1.05 billion were short of the mark, with the company reporting Q4 2011 EPS of 62 cents per share on revenues of $1.06 billion. Earnings estimates from Estimize were closer to the mark, at 63 cents per share. The company's revenue for the year came close to the $4 billion mark for the first time. Shares jumped over 5% after the close of the bell on Monday as investors see great growth potential in VMWare.
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Building Your Cloud? Remember Your Workers
January 23 2012 - COMPUTERWORLD
By: Dallon Christensen
My post last week discussed the importance of long-term benefits related to productivity and cost when implementing cloud computing technologies. CFOs and their IT directors must understand the importance of hard costs, but they should not forget their employees who will ultimately be impacted by these changes. "The role of IT is changing, and businesses must recognize how this change will impact their employees", HCL Technologies' Global Vice President, Cloud Computing Sadagopan "Sada" Singam emphasizes. "IT is becoming more cross-functional, and companies must understand how their IT departments will impact business operations."
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Cloud provider Joyent gets $85 million for global expansion
January 23 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Barb Darrow
Updated: Joyent has netted $85 million in new venture funding to fuel a global expansion of its cloud services. Most of the new money comes from Weather Investment II Group and Accelero Capital, but Telefonica Digital is also investing. Existing Joyent backers include Intel Capital, Epic Ventures, Liberty Global, Greycroft Partners and El Dorado Ventures. San Francisco-based Joyent fields public cloud services itself but also sells cloud technology to businesses wanting to run their own public or private clouds.
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Who's Responsible for Uploads? The MegaUpload Question
January 22 2012 - PCWorld
By: Stephen Bell and Sarah Putt
How much knowledge does a platform provider need to have of the files being traded on its system before the site owner can be considered culpable? New Zealand Intellectual property and information and communication technologies lawyer Rick Shera declines to discuss the MegaUpload case specifically, as it is before the courts; but he says the existence of any number of similar "file-locker" sites, to which customers upload and from which others download files, raises an important general question about provider knowledge. Sites such as Newzbin have been held culpable for merely providing links to material traded, in its case, via Usenet newsgroups. A British High Court judge last year ordered British Telecom to block access to the Newzbin site.
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The Rise of Cloud Computing Ecosystems
January 20 2012 - ITBusinessEdge
By: Michael Vizard
It would be fair to say that in the last year the dominant form of cloud computing has been infrastructure- as-a-service (IaaS). As popular as those services have proven to be, the odds are good that IaaS is not going to be the dominant form of cloud computing going forward. The reason for this is that IaaS still leaves much of the responsibility for managing the software environment in the cloud in the hands of local IT people. That’s appealing to a subset of customers, but in reality most cloud computing customers are looking for a more turnkey experience.
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FBI Megupload Shutdown Cuts Off Users From Personal Files, Business Data
January 20 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Fahmida Y. Rashid
Megaupload users who stored backups and personal data on the site protested the loss of their files, highlighting the risks of using a consumer file-sharing service for business purposes. After law enforcement authorities shut down Megaupload, a popular file sharing service, for violating copyright laws, Internet users took to Twitter and online forums in protest, calling it a form of censorship. For many users, the shutdown had nothing to do with piracy and everything to do with the fact that their backups and data were now gone.
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Should NoSQL startups be afraid of DynamoDB?
January 20 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Derrick Harris
Top executives at NoSQL startups are putting on a brave face in response to Amazon Web Services’ new DynamoDB offering. They roundly cite the new product (as well as Oracle’s October entrance into the space) as validation for the technology NoSQL companies have been pushing for years, while generally dismissing the competitive ramifications of having major vendors now playing in the same pool. But is that confidence justified?
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Cloud Myth # 3: Cloud computing is an all-or-nothing proposition
January 20 2012 - EasyStreet
By: Karen Karger
InfoWorld’s David Linthicum has it right — there are many Cloud myths that just won’t go away. His contends that, rather than taking an all-or-nothing approach to Cloud computing, you can instead “move to cloud-based systems, such as storage and compute services, as needed, both intersystem and intrasystem. Moreover, you can move in a fine-grained manner, shifting only certain system components, such as user interface processing or storage, and leaving the remainder on premises.”
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The Patriot Act and Your Data: Should You Ask Cloud Providers About Protection?
January 20 2012 - CIO
By: Stephanie Overby
Worries have been steadily growing among European IT leaders that the USA Patriot Act would give the U.S. government unfettered access to their data if stored on the cloud servers of American providers—so much so that Obama administration officials this week held a press conference to quell international concern over the protection of data stored on U.S. soil. The unease over the reach of Patriot Act provision—which expands the discovery mechanisms law enforcement can use to access third-party data—has been amped up by the sales and marketing efforts of some European cloud providers, seeking to set apart their services as a way to keep corporate data out of the hands of the American government
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Linux Adoption Grows on Big Data, Cloud, Virtualization: Survey
January 19 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Darryl K. Taft
A new Linux Foundation survey on enterprise adoption of Linux indicates that growth in Linux usage is being driven by factors such as big data, cloud computing and virtualization, among others. Linux is poised for continued growth among new and existing users thanks to lower total cost of ownership, technical features and security, among other reasons, according a recent Linux Foundation survey. The January 2012 report from the Linux Foundation and Yeoman Technology Group titled "Linux Adoption Trends 2012: A Survey of Enterprise End Users" claims that affinity among new and veteran Linux users continues to increase at the expense of Windows and Unix.
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How Smarter Hypervisor Use Can Lead to a 'Big, Big Change' in Security
January 19 2012 - CIO
By: How Smarter Hypervisor Use Can Lead to a 'Big, Big Change' in Security
To gain insight on the months ahead as they relate to IT attacks, malware, cloud security, and the impact of virtualization on security, we recently chatted with Simon Crosby, former CTO of Citrix Systems' data center and cloud business. Crosby recently founded a cloud security startup, Bromium, with Guarav Banga, former CTO and senior vice president at Phoenix Technologies, and Ian Pratt, chairman of Xen.org and co-founder of XenSource. What do you think 2012 may bring in terms of malware?
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Foreign Cloud Privacy Issues Dismissed by U.S. Officials
January 19 2012 - CIO
By: Kenneth Corbin
A pair of senior Obama administration officials on Wednesday sought to tamp down recent stirrings of controversy over the privacy protections under U.S. law surrounding content stored in the cloud residing in data centers in foreign jurisdictions. Speaking to reporters on a conference call, Deputy Assistant Attorney General Bruce Swartz and Philip Verveer, deputy assistant secretary of state and U.S. coordinator for international communications and information policy, argued that as much as cloud computing has reshaped the way businesses store and provide access to data and services, the fundamental legal protections for overseas operations have remained consistent, and that U.S. policies offer privacy safeguards equally rigorous to those found in Europe.
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The State of NoSQL in 2012
January 19 2012 - Practical Cloud Computing
By: Sid Anand
If you’ve been working in the online (e.g. internet) space over the past 3 years, you are no stranger to terms like “the cloud” and “NoSQL”. In 2007, Amazon published a paper on Dynamo. The paper detailed how Dynamo, employing a collection of techniques to solve several problems in fault-tolerance, provided a resilient solution to the on-line shopping cart problem. A few years go by while engineers at AWS toil in relative obscurity at standing up their public cloud. It’s December 2008 and I am a member of Netflix’s Software Infrastructure team. We’ve just been told that there is something called the “CAP theorem” and because of it, we are to abandon our datacenter in hopes of leveraging Cloud Computing. Huh?
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Dispelling the Cloud's Myths
January 18 2012 - PCWorld
By: Dallon Christensen
The pace of cloud computing will only accelerate in 2012. The increasing development of information technology, and the intense focus on cost reduction, are highlighting the benefits of moving IT administration off-site. And one cloud computing expert wants CFOs to be aware of the short-term challenges and long-term benefits to organizations.
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Federal Researchers Push Limits Of Cloud Computing
January 18 2012 - InformationWeek Government
By: John Foley
Cloud services are proven for many business and consumer applications, but what if the problem to be solved is measuring the expansion of the universe? The U.S. Department of Energy has determined the cloud can help there too, but it won't be cheap or easy. The Energy Department set out two years ago to determine the feasibility of cloud computing for the kinds of CPU-intensive processing jobs done by its national laboratories, and the results of that assessment are now in. Researchers at the Argonne and Lawrence Berkeley national labs determined that cloud computing offers "many advantages," but with caveats.
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What's ahead in 2012 for cloud, mobile apps, cyber?
January 18 2012 - Washington Technology
By: David Hubler
Expect disruptive technologies – cloud computing, mobility, social computing, big data and smart analytics, IT appliances, and cybersecurity – to become more tightly woven into mission-critical systems and processes in 2012 as government and private organizations look for ways to innovate and also operate more cost efficiently. That’s one of Unisys’ predictions for 2012 based on its work with clients around the world. The findings were released on Jan. 18.
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Infographic: Linux lovers love big data
January 18 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Barb Darrow
For anyone thinking the big data trend is a flash in the pan, there’s some new evidence to the contrary. A hefty 75 percent of IT pros and developers responding to a new Linux Foundation survey have their eyes firmly on this big data phenomenon. More than three-quarters of the 428 respondents “expressed concern” about big data, and nearly 72 percent (unsurprisingly) said they will use Linux to support big data applications. The respondents, while biased towards Linux — this is the Linux Foundation after all – do not work in a vacuum. A respectable 35.9 percent said they plan to use Windows to meet their big data needs.
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Survey: Business Intelligence Back on Top of CIOs Minds
January 18 2012 - CIO
By: Mikael Ricknäs
IDG News Service — Business intelligence and analytics have again become the top technology priority for CIOs, replacing cloud computing, according to a survey of 2,335 CIOs conducted by Gartner. Business intelligence lost the top spot on Gartner's list to virtualization in 2010, but returned this year. "I think it dropped off the top for a couple of years because expectations were really high, and they weren't really met," said Dave Aron, vice president and a fellow in Gartner's CIO Research group.
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Into The Cloud -- Securely
January 18 2012 - CIO
By: http://www.cio.com/article/698305/IntotheCloudSecurely?taxonomyId=3024
Companies are on the path to cloud adoption. According to a recent report, 28% of U.S. organizations are using cloud computing today, with 73% reporting their first step was implementation of a single cloud application. Yet while 84% of organizations say they have employed at least one cloud application, most do not yet self-identify as "cloud users" who are "implementing or maintaining cloud computing."
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Amazon Web Services Launches Managed Database Service
January 18 2012 - CIO
By: Nancy Gohring
Amazon Web Services on Wednesday launched a managed NoSQL database service that lets users easily launch a database and scale it up or down as needed. The service meets the needs of web companies that are collecting, storing and processing an increasing amount of data. Without such a scalable database, AWS users would sometimes spend weeks forecasting and preparing their databases to perform during heavy usage periods, the company said. That's because traditional databases were not designed to scale quickly.
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Cloud Activity to Explode in 2012
January 18 2012 - CIO
By: Tom Henderson
In testing cloud computing services and observing the growth of cloud activities, we've noticed that there are distinct phases that organizations go through in adopting cloud. First, application developers fall in love with cloud-based disposable infrastructure and/or ready-built app development platforms that circumvent long purchasing cycles and capital asset growth limitations. Then other attractions, like commodity rentable infrastructure, or expansive platforms, become attractive. Sometimes applications are either extended to the cloud as private growth areas, or moved totally off premises.
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Clouds Must be Transparent
January 17 2012 - Channel Register
By: Glyn Bowden
Infrastructure and focus: I work in infrastructure. That means I’m most concerned with the hardware, software and methodologies that form the basis of cloud-based services. I work with organisations that are building cloud platforms to enable the delivery of these services for consumption by end users and I’ve noticed a trend in focus that we actively need to address. Before I detail exactly what that is, let’s refresh ourselves on who the players are in this type of arrangement.
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At Last: Standard for Cloud Infrastructure as a Service Launched
January 17 2012 - ZDNet
By: Joe McKendrick
One of the concerns with the emerging cloud paradigm is the lack of standards to guide development, deployment and integration efforts. Now, a step has been taken to standardize architectural principles in the cloud sphere — and service oriented architecture as well. The Open Group just announced the availability of two new industry standards intended to enable businesses to more effectively integrate fundamental elements of SOA and cloud computing into a solution or enterprise architecture.
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Microsoft Unveils Simplified Licensing Scheme for System Center 2012
January 17 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Frank Ohlhorst
If there is one data center problem that cloud computing has obscured more than any other issue, it is licensing. IT managers are finding the licensing surrounding cloud technologies, especially virtualization, have become near impossible to manage. Microsoft, in an effort to spur adoption of its cloud portfolio, is attempting to simplify the licensing scheme for the company’s System Center 2012 offering.
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Salesforce Snags Former Federal CIO
January 17 2012 - CRN
By: Andrew R Hickey
Salesforce.com has brought aboard former federal CIO Vivek Kundra, a longtime proponent of cloud computing, to oversee its growth in emerging markets and help build out Salesforce's social enterprise push. Kundra left his post as the Obama administration's chief information officer in August 2011 and took a fellowship position at Harvard University. During his more than two-year stint as federal CIO, Kundra pushed the government to adopt cloud computing technologies and launched the federal cloud-first initiative under which federal agencies must consider cloud computing solutions for new technology purchases to boost efficiency and cut IT spend.
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Capgemini’s CTO on How Cloud Computing Exposes the Duality Between IT and Business Transformation
January 17 2012 - The Open Group
By: Dana Gardner, Interarbor Solutions
This BriefingsDirect thought leadership interview comes in conjunction with The Open Group Conference this month in San Francisco. The conference will focus on how IT and enterprise architecture support enterprise transformation. Speakers in conference events will also explore the latest in service oriented architecture (SOA), cloud computing, and security. We’re now joined by one of the main speakers, Andy Mulholland, the Global Chief Technology Officer and Corporate Vice President at Capgemini. In 2009, Andy was voted one of the top 25 most influential CTOs in the world by InfoWorld. And in 2010, his CTO Blog was voted best blog for business managers and CIOs for the third year running by Computer Weekly.
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When Your Data's in the Cloud, is it Still Your Data?
January 17 2012 - CIO
By: Thomas J. Trappler
When your data resides on a cloud provider's infrastructure, your ownership rights could be compromised. For example, what's to prevent the cloud provider from deciding to access your data and use it for its own purposes? That's why any contract for cloud services should include language clearly affirming your ownership of your data. The good news is that well-established cloud vendors are beginning to include language along these lines in their standard contracts. For example, section 10.2 of the Amazon Web Services contract states:
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Tech Giants Back Standard for Cloud Portability
January 16 2012 - InfoWorld
By: Ted Samson
Among the allures of cloud computing is the promise of easily and seamlessly moving services from one cloud to another. Realizing that kind of portability, however, is difficult. Every cloud service has its own distinct requirements, such as security, governance, and compliance, as well its constituent parts, including Web server, database, storage, and networking requirements. In an effort to make cloud service more portable, a group of tech giants that includes IBM, Cisco, EMC, CA, SAP, and Red Hat today unveiled the first draft of open interoperability specification called TOSCA (Topology and Orchestration Specification for Cloud Applications). Capgemini, Citrix, NetApp, PwC, Software AG, Virtunomic, and WSO2, among others, are also contributors.
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Oracle's Onshore Cloud Attracts Blue-Chip Clients
January 16 2012 - iTWire
By: Stephen Withers
One of the question marks around cloud computing concerns the offshoring of data storage and processing. For many purposes that's not an issue, but in certain situations there are legal, regulatory or policy reasons for keeping things within Australia. For that reason, Oracle has been offering a locally hosted implementation of its SaaS CRM product since November 2010, taking into particular account the needs of the public sector.
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Symantec Acquires LiveOffice Cloud-Based Archiving Company
January 16 2012 - CIO
By: Jeremy Kirk
IDG News Service — Symantec has acquired LiveOffice, a provider of cloud-based data archiving and storage, for US$115 million [m], the companies announced Monday. LiveOffice, based in Torrance, California, offers a variety of storage and e-discovery services, for e-mail, instant messaging, social media, file sharing and other applications in order to meet regulatory requirements. The company works with 20,000 companies in 50 countries, according to its website. Symantec said the acquisition will allow it to add to its information governance products, allowing customers to have the choice to store information either on-premise or in Symantec's data centers or a mix of both.
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The Downside of Cloud Computing: 4 Reasons to Think Twice
January 16 2012 - CloudBeat
By: Casper Manes / IT Channel Insight
You’ve probably seen tons of articles, editorials, and marketing anecdotes about how great the cloud is; how it can save you tons of money, empower you to do incredible things, free your staff up to do all kinds of important projects, and more. There’s a great deal that is true and accurate in all of those assertions to be sure, even if most of the writing is intended to convince you to buy into the hype. I’m a fan of cloud computing, having bought into it while at two separate companies and working in it now for a cloud services provider.
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Has SAP Gotten Cloud Religion?
January 16 2012 - GIGAOM
By: Barb Darrow
Last Friday, when SAP pre-announced better-than-expected earnings for its 2011 fiscal year, there was no mention of cloud computing. But, there’s a feeling the company, as it completes its buyout of SuccessFactors and closes more Business ByDesign deals, just might be able to put its reputation of cloud cluelessness behind it.
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ElasticHosts Launches across North America with scalable, easy-to-use Cloud Servers
January 16 2012 - realwire
By: Staff
ElasticHosts, the cloud server provider, has today announced its launch into North America. The company will open two new data center locations in Los Angeles, USA and Toronto, Canada, adding to its existing locations in London, UK and San Antonio, Texas. With a central, east and west coast presence sitting alongside London, ElasticHosts will now be able to provide its elastic, easy-to-use, pay-as-you-go cloud hosting to customers across North America. The ElasticHosts offering enables businesses to take advantage of on-demand, scalable cloud servers.
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Oracle v Google Java Trial Up in the Air
January 13 2012 - SYS-CON MEDIA
By: Maureen O'Gara
Last week Oracle's long-simmering Java infringement suit against Google, already postponed from Halloween, was scheduled to go to trial "on or after March 19." On Thursday the court entered another order saying it won't set a trial date any time soon and suggesting that given the demands on its calendar it could be 2013 before the case gets heard. Presiding Judge William Alsup, who figures, speaking "from experience," that the trial will take two months, also said in his order that "The court will not set a trial date until Oracle adopts a proper damages methodology, even assuming a third try is allowed (or unless Oracle waives damages beyond those already allowed to go to the jury).
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Cloud computing could drive vendor lock-in: Dell
January 12 2012 - TECHWORLD
By: Sophie Curtis
The move to cloud computing is undoing a lot of the good work that IT managers have done over the past decade to enable solutions based on open standards that can be built, supported and replaced, regardless of vendor. According to Ed English, Dell’s EMEA marketing director for next-generation computing solutions, cloud is allowing some enterprise IT vendors to shoehorn their proprietary technology back into the data center.
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Mobile Cloud Computing Will Soar in 2012
January 12 2012 - DATA CENTER KNOWLEDGE
By: Olafur Ingthorsso
It’s no surprise that many cloud experts predict that mobile cloud computing will become increasingly important in 2012. Given the numbers of smartphones, tablets and other mobile devices shipped every day, more and more users are relying on the cloud as the main driver for satisfying their computing needs, whether it is data storage, applications or infrastructure.
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Cisco Sending Enterprises to the Cloud
January 12 2012 - CIO
By: Jim Duffy
In an effort to accommodate enterprise users looking to implement private and hybrid clouds, Cisco in the coming months will unveil an "integrated" WAN routing system of existing, but enhanced, products. Cisco's Integrated Enterprise WAN Solution (IEWS) is comprised of its ASR 1000 edge router, ISR branch routers and WAAS WAN optimization appliances. It's designed to allow enterprises to connect to the cloud with an application aware infrastructure that is simple to provision and manage, says Praveen Akkiraju, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco's Network Services Technology Group, which oversees enterprise routing.
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Jaspersoft Aims Its Open-Source Analytics Suite At PaaS Vendors
January 12 2012 - CIO
By: Chris Kanaracus
Open-source BI (business intelligence) vendor Jaspersoft wants its software to become another arrow in the quiver for developers using commercial PaaS (platform-as-a-service) offerings. The community edition of Jaspersoft's suite is now available on Red Hat's OpenShift and CloudForms services, the company said Tuesday. Another announcement with VMWare is coming soon.
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Bond Uni gets into Cloud Computing
January 11 2012 - itWire
By: Peter Dinham
Cloud computing is one of the hot areas of the IT industry as the 2012 business year moves into top gear, and Bond University in Queensland has just introduced a specialist course in cloud computing in response to the market demand for graduates with skills in new technologies. With the new study course, students in IT at Bond have the option of studying infrastructure at both an undergraduate and postgraduate level.
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Cloud Computing and SMBs: They Get It
January 11 2012 - MSPNEWS
By: Erin Harrison Executive Editor, Strategic Initiatives
The misnomer that large enterprises are adopting cloud-based services at a rate faster than small to medium-sized businesses has officially been quelled based on the latest industry findings. Not only do SMBs “get it,” in fact, they are leading the way to cloud services. Approximately 44 percent of SMBs said they had a “full understanding” of cloud services, up from 20 percent in 2009, according to data from Cisco’s (News - Alert) 2011 SMB Cloud Watch report. Moreover, 45 percent of SMBs say they already use at least one cloud service.
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Cloud Computing and Home Gardening: Together at Last
January 11 2012 - The Street
By: Chris Ciaccia
The Consumer Electronics Show you could say is one of the least "green" conventions ever, with everyone running a variety of different gadgets, using enough energy and electricity that would make the Environmental Protection Agency implode with all carbon emissions being sent into the atmosphere. Panasonic is no stranger to the CES, having already shown off a TV using a MySpace app with Justin Timberlake making an appearance. However, the Japanese-based company has sort of combatted this, and has launched something it calls the "Smart Vegetable Garden."
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AMAX Joins Intel(R) Cloud Builders Program
January 11 2012 - MarketWatch
By: Staff
AMAX, a leading provider of enterprise and cloud computing solutions, has joined the Intel Cloud Builders program, which publishes best practices, hardware blueprints and software architectures on how to deploy cloud infrastructures. The AMAX-Intel reference architecture, published as part of the program, demonstrates how to build private cloud solution using Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor-based servers and helps to accelerate the deployment of secure and efficient cloud computing infrastructures.
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AMAX Joins Intel(R) Cloud Builders Program
January 11 2012 - MarketWatch The Wall Street Journal
By: Staff
AMAX, a leading provider of enterprise and cloud computing solutions, has joined the Intel Cloud Builders program, which publishes best practices, hardware blueprints and software architectures on how to deploy cloud infrastructures. The AMAX-Intel reference architecture, published as part of the program, demonstrates how to build private cloud solution using Intel(R) Xeon(R) processor-based servers and helps to accelerate the deployment of secure and efficient cloud computing infrastructures.
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SUSE Linux Enterprise Server Now Available on Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud Datacenter Service
January 11 2012 - SUSE
By: Staff
SUSE today announced that SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server is the first Linux distribution for Dell's new VMware software-based cloud offering, Dell Cloud with VMware vCloud® Datacenter Service. SUSE Linux Enterprise offers the broadest application portfolio, as well as optimization with the VMware cloud infrastructure suite. Now, Dell customers can efficiently run a wide range of ISV applications, on demand with maximum performance, while receiving streamlined support from Dell and SUSE across the Dell public and private cloud offerings.
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Amazon Adds More Spots for Connecting Directly to Its Cloud
January 11 2012 - CIO
By: Mikael Ricknäs
Amazon Web Services has added four locations where enterprises can use its Direct Connect network service to communicate with its cloud, the company said on Tuesday. The new AWS Direct Connect locations are CoreSite One Wilshire in Los Angeles, TelecityGroup Sovereign House in London and Equinix in Singapore and in Tokyo. The two existing locations are both in the U.S.
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Feds Refine Cloud Security Standards
January 10 2012 - InformationWeek Government
By: Elizabeth Montalbano
The federal CIO Council has released security controls for the new agency-wide program that standardizes security requirements for cloud-computing products and services, a key move in setting standards for cloud security across the federal government. More than 150 security controls in 16 categories have now been defined for the Federal Risk Assessment Program (FedRAMP), which provides common security requirements for cloud implementation on specific types of systems. FedRAMP also provides ongoing risk assessments and continuous monitoring, and carries out government-wide security authorizations for vendors providing cloud services and infrastructure that will be posted on a public website.
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AT&T Joins OpenStack Cloud Community
January 10 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Darryl K. Taft
AT&T announced that it has joined the OpenStack community to deliver an open-source cloud computing platform. AT&T has joined the OpenStack community as the first major carrier to take part in the open-source cloud computing project. By joining OpenStack, AT&T can lend its hand in pushing the project forward while also tapping into the OpenStack cloud technology for AT&T’s own developer cloud initiative announced Jan. 9. OpenStack is an infrastructure as a service (IAAS) cloud computing project by Rackspace Cloud and NASA. More than 140 companies have joined the project including Citrix Systems, Dell, AMD, Intel, Canonical, SUSE Linux, HP and Cisco. It is free open-source software released under the terms of the Apache License.
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Hospital health IT tips and tricks: From Cloud Computing to Mobile Apps
January 09 2012 - MEDCITY
By: Shahid Shah
Last year I started a series of ’Do’s and Dont’s’ in hospital tech by focusing on wireless technologies. Folks asked a lot of questions about do’s and dont’s in other tech areas so here’s a list of more tips and tricks: *Do start implementing cloud-based services. Don’t think, though, that just because you are implementing cloud services that you will have less infrastructure or related work to do. Cloud services, especially in the SaaS realm, are ’application-centric’ solutions and as such the infrastructure requirements remain pretty substantial ’ especially the sophistication of the network infrastructure. *Do consider programmable and app-driven content management and document management systems as a core for their electronic health records.
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Cloud Computing Report Card: Grading Our Predictions
January 09 2012 - NETWORKWORLD
By: Bernard Golden, CIO
A year ago I laid out my predictions for cloud computing in 2011. In the spirit of honesty and willingness to display my errors in public, I thought it would be useful to recap those predictions, grade them, comment on them and review an exciting, tumultuous year. Below are my five predictions for cloud service providers and five for end users, followed by comments and a grade for each one. Cloud Service Providers Predictions Prediction 1: The CSP business explodes ... and then implodes CSPs will continue to pour money into building cloud computing offerings. Large companies will invest billions of dollars constructing data centers, buying machines and infrastructure, implementing software platforms, and marketing and selling cloud services.
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Cloud Computing Lifting Hewlett-Packard Stock To $42
January 09 2012 - Forbes
By: Trefis Team, Contributor
The increasing adoption of cloud computing and penetration of mobile devices are the two biggest trends shaping the IT industry today. While a lot is said about the rapid pace at which these technologies are being embraced by consumers and enterprises alike, networking is another industry that is growing as much as, if not more, as a result of the growth in mobile and cloud. Networking benefits from increased demand for bandwidth capacity and wireless network architecture that cloud computing and mobile devices are generating.
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IBM Closes Platform Computing Acquisition
January 09 2012 - eWeek.com
By: Darryl K. Taft
IBM completes its acquisition of grid and cloud software maker Platform Computing. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM announced the completion of its acquisition of Platform Computing, a maker of technical and distributed computing management software, to bolster its position in the cloud computing space. In a Jan. 9 press release, IBM said it closed the deal to acquire Toronto, Ontario-based Platform Computing, but financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. IBM initially announced in October that it had entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Platform Computing, a global leader in cluster, grid and cloud management software for distributed computing environments. Platform Computing will be integrated into IBM's Systems and Technology Group.
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Home Networks Reach for the Cloud
January 09 2012 - PCWorld
By: Yardena Arar, PCWorld
The move to cloud computing isn't just for businesses. At CES, home network giants D-Link and Netgear are showing a range of equipment that leverage cloud services to give consumers more access to and control over home networks--and network content--from mobile devices. D-Link cloud routerCloud features don't have to cost much. D-Link’s $40 Cloud Router (DIR 605L) lets you use the free MyDLink iOS or Android app to check up on what's using your network, what sites they're browsing, and whether a firmware update is available; you can also block unauthorized Wi-Fi users. The Cloud Router is a basic, two-antenna 802.11n router operating on the 2.4GHz band only and delivers top speeds of 300 megabits per second; it's available now.
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AT&T Joins OpenStack Becoming First Major Carrier to Join Open Cloud Effort
January 09 2012 - services ANGLE
By: ALEX WILLIAMS
First we had Rackspace and NASA form OpenStack. Then we started to see companies like Cisco and Citrix join in. They were followed by companies like HP which made its entrance this summer. And today marks the most important news in months as AT&T has announced at its developer summit that it is the first major telecommunications provider to join OpenStack.
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Microsoft Finally Making Good Products -- Too Late
January 09 2012 - CIO
By: Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols
If you've read many of my articles over the past 20 years, you may have noticed that I don't care for Microsoft or its products. That isn't because I think open-source software or Apple products are unbeatably great. It's because Microsoft's products are usually awful. A lot of you are thinking I can't possibly be right about that. After all, you work and play with Windows, Office and other Microsoft offerings every day. You're hardly in the minority. But has Microsoft enjoyed its enviable market position because it produced the best products? Nah.
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