Articles about Cloud

As someone whose name also is his brand (welcome to 21st-century journalism), I watch with interest the new .sucks top-level domain, which is available for select preregistration through May 29—the only time to surely secure your.sucks. Today, I looked to a reputable registrar to see what joewilcox.sucks would cost me. Cough, cough: $3,797.99 now, during the so-called Priority Access (e.g., Sunrise) period, or $407.98 when general pre-reg starts in June.

The new TLD is just one among hundreds of available or forthcoming domain extensions sanctioned by governing body ICANN. "I think the motivation behind the release of all these new domains is money", says Roger Kay, who describes the sellers as shady land speculators. "The .sucks domain is particularly nasty", the president of consultancy Endpoint Technologies Associates emphasizes. "It's pretty close to blackmail". But is it really? This analysis means to help you decide.

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Much of the focus of talk about the Internet of Things surrounds what the IoT can do for home users. A clever cooker is great, but move up the scale a little, however, and things start to get really interesting. Now teaming up with Miele, Microsoft today announces that it is also partnering with Fujitsu.

The two companies will work together to create IoT based devices to improve the manufacturing of other products. By harnessing the power of IoT and the M2M (machine to machine) platforms, Microsoft and Fujitsu aim to improve production efficiency and help drive down costs.

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Open source database solutions specialist MariaDB is launching the latest version of its MariaDB Enterprise product offering high availability, scalability and security capabilities for enterprises.

It's aimed at meeting the requirements of web scale businesses for performance, scalability, disaster recovery and business continuity, along with database solutions that support flexibility including interoperability across SQL and NoSQL.

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Back in November, Microsoft and Dropbox joined forces to bring Office editing capabilities to iOS and Android users. Now the two companies have taken things to the next level, bringing the same capabilities to the web.

New integration between the ever-expanding Office Online and Dropbox means that it is now possible to create files in Microsoft's cloud-based office suite and save them directly to Dropbox. There's also the option of adding your Dropbox account to Office Online to allow for easy access to files ready for editing.

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You could be forgiven for thinking that there’s nothing more to say on the subject of cloud computing.

After all, the technology has been available and widely adopted for some years now, with businesses of varying sizes moving their data and infrastructure to the cloud. In fact, the recently published State of the Cloud report by RightScale found that 93 percent of organizations are using the cloud in some capacity. However, whether it’s a move towards a hybrid cloud approach or analyzing why some businesses have not yet made the transition, there are still plenty of reasons to get excited about the cloud.

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Placing your data in the cloud doesn't mean that you remove the need to properly protect it. For Google Apps users, New York-based SysCloud is launching a comprehensive security and backup solution in the form of SysCloud 360.

In addition to offering Google Apps security and protection in a single interface, the system features real-time backup and compliance capabilities.

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Enterprise data can be put at risk from DDoS attacks, but whilst larger businesses have the resources to guard against these attacks smaller ones sometimes struggle.

Security company Imperva is committed to protecting data for all sizes of business with the release of its latest Imperva Incapsula cloud-based application delivery service.

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Eighty feet below street level, the Federal Reserve Bank of New York holds one the world’s most secure vaults. With a comprehensive multichannel security system, tons of steel, concrete and a 24-hour monitoring service, the gold housed within is virtually theft-proof.

With such stringent security measures, it would be foolish to store items less precious than gold inside. However, when it comes to storing personal items on the cloud, 'precious' is a highly subjective notion. Although the items stored within a safe and on the cloud are often similar, there is no universal code for what users should be storing and digitally encrypting. What’s important to one user may not be so important to the next, and, with such unpredictable tendencies, cloud storage providers should allow users to decide what needs the most protection.

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Amazon's AWS cloud offering is hugely popular, with over a million users. But it presents a security challenge for IT teams as it uses a 'shared security model' protecting the underlying infrastructure but relying on users to secure anything they place on there.

Security startup AlienVault is aiming to make protecting AWS systems easier with the launch of its Unified Security Management for AWS, offering asset discovery, vulnerability assessment, behavior monitoring, alerting and integrated threat intelligence.

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Fraking fantastic is my reaction to Tidal's high-definition audio. I spent much of April Fools' Day testing, and quite enjoying, the music service, although I am skeptical that most streaming subsctibers will care—not for $19.95 per month. Still, I see hope for the 10-buck standard quality other option if Tidal delivers enough artist exclusives and superior curation. The iTunes hegemony, and Apple's rapidly evolving Beats Music acquisition, is all about content, much of it available nowhere else, better presented, and more easily discovered. With musicians' support, and unique content with it, maybe, just maybe, a Tidal wave approaches.

The service essentially relaunched on March 31, 2015, with a gala event hosted by Jay-Z and other music superstars. He acquired Tidal, for $56 million two months earlier, but the lossless streaming service launched in October 2014. Architecture, audio quality, two-tier pricing, and streaming are essentially unchanged. New owners' commitment, that of other artists, big marketing push, and 30-day trial distinguish Tidal today.

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Google got me. Not because I didn't get the joke but for how far it actually goes. Perhaps you saw the April 1st post, "Re-rethinking computing", which introduces the project from a "rogue team of engineers...Today, we’re excited to announce a way to make your Chromebook self-browsing". Of course, it's an April Fools gag.

I first saw the post on my Nexus 9 tablet while exercising on the stationary bike. Later, thinking to post a quickie to Google+, I pulled up the URL from synced History on Chromebook Pixel LS. On the N9, I had clicked the post's last link, which did nothing special but when opened on the Pixel took me to the Chrome Web Store with option to install the self-browsing extension. Now that was unexpected. What to do, what to do?

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Cloud security firm Skyhigh Networks has released its Cloud Adoption and Risk Report for Q1 2015, with some unsettling findings in terms of the risks businesses are taking.

The report is compiled by analyzing real-world cloud usage over some 17 million employees, and for the first time in this sixth report, it delved into the risk to enterprises posed by business partners connected via the cloud. This follows a spate of recent data breaches which have been the fault of a third-party, of course.

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Late last year, Google introduced support for multiple email providers in Gmail for Android, welcoming users of Outlook.com, Yahoo Mail and other such services to manage all their accounts using its app. There are plenty of folks who are not just Gmail or Google Apps users, after all. However, the app wasn't properly designed to handle all the extra accounts that users would set up.

The problem? Users had to switch between accounts every time they received new emails or wanted to reply to a message. Now, Google is finally correcting this by giving Gmail for Android a much-needed unified inbox.

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Although there's lots of talk surrounding the use of big data it seems that in many cases that's all it is and that companies aren't actually following through on deployments.

This is among the findings of a new report from Dimensional Research commissioned by data warehousing specialist Snowflake Computing which shows that whilst 91 percent of respondents have considered investments in big data, only 5 percent have actually put any investment into a deployment, and only 11 percent had a pilot in place.

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More and more businesses are moving their data to the cloud and adopting SaaS delivery models for software. In making this switch many assume that they're shifting the responsibility for looking after their data to someone else.

But companies still need to take charge of looking after their information. We spoke to Rob May, senior vice president of business development for Datto to find out more about how enterprises can protect themselves.

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