CloudCommons 2012

Watch CloudViews Unplugged Watch the latest edition of CloudViews Unplugged – a monthly video blog analyzing the top cloud news stories. Cloud News Can Google Apps unseat Microsoft Office and Exchange? This CIO article shares insight from the CIO of New England Biolabs, which recently conducted proof-of-concept testing with Google Apps for Business. While New England Biolabs decided to stick with its Outlook/Exchange Server set-up and plans to transition to a hybrid solution that adds the cloud-based Microsoft Office 365, the article also highlights why organizations should consider Google Apps. Facebook’s open-source data-center project gained momentum as some top technology companies joined the effort and introduced server designs. New members include HP, Advanced Micro Devices Fidelity, Salesforce.com, VMware and Supermicro. Read more in this PCWorld article. In... (more)

VCs Spend $6.9 Billion on Cloud Startups

Watch CloudViews Unplugged Watch the latest edition of CloudViews Unplugged – a monthly video blog analyzing the top cloud news stories. Cloud News VMware introduced Accelerate Advisory Services, a set of IT benchmarking services focused on helping CIOs get more out of the investments they are making in virtualization and cloud computing. VMware recently acquired assets from Info Tech Health Check, an analytics vendor with IT performance metrics that span 20 industries and 4 geographical regions. Read more in this CRN article. This Wired article reviews Google’s recently launche... (more)

NIST Announces Security Standards for Cloud

New: Download the This Week in Cloud iPhone app. Now it’s even easier to get your weekly cloud news and perspectives. Cloud New NIST has released a major revision to the Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA). The public draft of the Security and Privacy Controls for Federal Information Systems and Organizations provides a set of security standards that are meant to help protect government agencies from threats that are emerging from mobile and cloud computing, according to this InformationWeek article. Users may have had a difficult time logging into Microsoft Azure ... (more)

US Patriot Act: Red Herring?

Download our iPhone app New: Download the This Week in Cloud iPhone app. Now it’s even easier to get your weekly cloud news and perspectives. Cloud News Is the US Patriot Act a red herring? Some European countries, as well as Brazil and China, have been using the U.S. Patriot Act as an excuse to set up barriers for the transfer of data into the U.S., but according to Business Software Alliance CEO Robert Holleyman, those countries have similar laws in place that allow them to inspect data when looking for evidence of terrorist activity. The reason for the barriers may be to stall ... (more)

This Week in Cloud, February 16, 2012: Google Drive, Telcos vs. AWS, Forecast AWS charges mid-month, New cloud security approaches. And more…

Download our iPhone app New: Download the This Week in Cloud iPhone app. Now it’s even easier to get your weekly cloud news and perspectives. Cloud News Google is reportedly close to introducing a cloud-storage service called Drive, which will be similar to Dropbox. This PC World article points out that the service offering could potentially turn Google partners into rivals. Are telcos poised to disrupt Amazon’s enterprise cloud? This Information Week article makes the case that they are, citing speakers from the Cloud Carrier Forum held at the Cloud Connect conference. One point ... (more)