By Joab Jackson, IDG News Service | August 26th, 2014 Google plans to give Zync users better pricing and more scalability. To beef up its cloud platform with more specialized packages, Google is acquiring Zync for its large scale rendering service for movie special effects, called Zync Render. Google plans to offer the Zync service…
By Jaikumar Vijayan, Computerworld | August 25th, 2014 Non-approved SaaS apps are growing rapidly, says PwC. A growing tendency by business units and workgroups to sign up for cloud services without any involvement from their IT organization creates serious risks for enterprises. The risks from shadow cloud services include issues with data security, transaction integrity,…
By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News Service | August 15th, 2014 Outages and service disruptions hit several Azure products in various regions of the world in the past seven days. Microsoft’s Azure cloud computing platform suffered a series of outages and service disruptions in the past week that affected several products and impacted customers in…
By Brandon Butler, Network World | August 12th, 2014 With competition being as intense as ever, Google is attempting to distinguish its cloud offering by appealing directly to developers. In the increasingly competitive cloud IaaS market Google is attempting to distinguish its platform by arming its cloud with unique features and cutting-edge technology that customers…
By Brandon Butler, Network World | August 01st, 2014 AWS makes four Trusted Advisor features free. Amazon Web Services has a program named Trusted Advisor that provides customers with advice on the best way to use the company’s IaaS cloud services. Today, the company made four checks that Trusted Advisor performs free for all users.…
By Bob Violino, CIO | July 30th, 2014 A global architectural firm sees big advantages in putting building design data in a cloud storage service. Perkins and Will, like many other global architectural firms, is struggling to manage ever-growing volumes of information. Data-intensive applications such as building information modeling (BIM) produce enormous files on a…
By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld | July 29th, 2014 Rivals also outpace Google though analysts expect it to gain momentum. Microsoft and IBM are gaining momentum in the cloud infrastructure services market, putting pressure on Amazon and outpacing rival Google, according to a new study. While Amazon, the cloud market leader, retained its position, it can…
By Stephanie Overby, CIO | July 25th, 2014 IT leaders need to learn how to manage the evolving legal, privacy and compliance issues of SMAC contracts. The convergence of social, mobile, analytics, and cloud technologies (SMAC) are complicating an already complex IT outsourcing value chain. But they’re also creating new legal and compliance issues for…
By Patrick Thibodeau, Computerworld | July 24th, 2014 State creates a cloud service that it believes can serve most of its IT needs. California is moving its IT services to a cloud, on-demand, subscription-based service that state officials believe may meet as much as 80% of its computing needs. IBM has created the cloud-based service,…
By Matt Kapko, CIO | July 23rd, 2014 Sprint business customers will soon be able to purchase and bundle Google Apps for Business on their wireless bill. The nations third-largest carrier will also provide technical support and enterprise mobility advice to its customers as part of the new partnership. The network operator is developing new…
By Joab Jackson, IDG News Service | July 23rd, 2014 IBM’s SoftLayer cloud will offer supercomputer-friendly InfiniBand as an interconnect option. IBM is offering a potentially powerful incentive in its attempts to entice organizations to move supercomputing jobs to the cloud: a high-speed network communications link called InfiniBand. “Companies are embracing cloud for standard workloads,…
By Jim Duffy, Network World | July 18th, 2014 Companies extend data center integration work with 3 year GTM agreement. Cisco this week expanded its data center arrangement with Microsoft with a multiyear sales and go-to-market effort for integrated products. The deal builds upon one agreed to 15 months ago, when the two companies combined…
By Thor Olavsrud, CIO | July 18th, 2014 Companies adopting cloud computing most aggressively say that business agility — not cost — is the primary driver of adoption. Companies moving aggressively to adopt cloud computing are winning competitive advantage by reducing complexity and increasing business agility, according to a recent study by Harvard Business Review…
By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld | July 17th, 2014 Companies interested in moving to cloud computing are increasingly choosing a private cloud for the increased security and, often, compliance features instead of the public cloud, according to a recent survey. “Companies have noticed that the public cloud only goes so far,” said Allan Krans, an analyst…
By Sharon Gaudin, Computerworld | July 16th, 2014 Looks to partners to help convince enterprises to switch from Microsoft software to its cloud services. Microsoft’s renewed push into the cloud computing market, announced this week, doesn’t change the fact that it faces unprecedented competition in a business that’s critical to its future. “This will be…
By Brandon Butler, Network World | July 15th, 2014 We’ve had collocation, managed services and cloud. Welcome managed cloud to the party now. Rackspace Tuesday announced a Managed Cloud offering, which combines the benefits of a managed service with the elastic scalability of a cloud. The San Antonio company’s move represents an attempt to differentiate…
By Ellen Messmer, Network World | July 14th, 2014 It’s been 20 years since Check Point FireWall-1 made firewalls mainstream. It’s been 20 years since Check Point Software Technologies shipped its first enterprise network firewall, marking the beginning of a mass market for firewalls that has protected millions of networks across the world. Check Point’s…
By Joab Jackson, IDG News Service | July 10th, 2014 Cloud rivals come together to develop a technology to help organizations manage their computerized work in the cloud. IBM, Microsoft, Red Hat and other IT vendors are lending a hand to Google to help build software that enterprises could use to manage their computerized workloads…
By Ben Taylor, PC World | July 10th, 2014 We break down the cost per gigabyte for different ranges of storage. The answer may surprise you. By now, you know the basic arguments in the on-site versus off-site storage debate. External hard drives are fast (everything backed up in minutes!) and safe from hackers (you…
By Thor Olavsrud, CIO | July 9th, 2014 IBM tomorrow will announce a $3 billion research and development investment to create a new generation of semiconductors geared for cloud, big data and cognitive systems. Over the next five years, Big Blue says it will use the money to fund two broad research and early-stage development…