Articles about Cloud

Over half of organizations are considering adding one or more cloud infrastructure providers in 2021, and the extra supplier will be drawn from an alternative cloud vendor.

A new report by Accelerated Strategies and Linode shows that for small and midsized companies usage of alternative providers -- such as OVH, Linode, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, UpCloud and Equinix -- is on par with Google Cloud.

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Microsoft has been rumored to be working on an Azure-powered Cloud PC service for a while now, but it seems that we might be seeing the results of its labor as soon as June or early July this year.

The Cloud PC service, codenamed Project Deschutes, will let users access a Windows desktop remotely and run software such as Microsoft Office. This could be useful if you want to access the same desktop from multiple locations, and it would also allow Windows 10X users to run Win32 apps.

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Cloud misconfigurations are one of the major causes of data breaches and the problem has become worse thanks to the dash for remote working.

While cloud is undoubtedly the right choice for businesses looking to expand their infrastructure to keep pace with DevOps demands and embrace support for remote working, many enterprises are falling short of providing adequate Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM).

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While spending on cloud services is high with over half of respondents to a new survey spending $10 million or more, 32 percent say they are doing less than they need to, or nothing at all, to ensure the security of their cloud resources.

The study carried out by Osterman Research for Sonrai Security finds respondents have an average of 7,750 identities with access to sensitive cloud data. Overpriviledged identities are ranked a high risk by 41 percent of respondents, just below bad actors/cybercriminals at 46 percent.

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It has been a very, very long time coming, but Microsoft has finally decided to dole out some 64-bit loving to OneDrive.

The company has announced the availability of a public preview version of the 64-bit OneDrive sync client for Windows. For anyone running the 64-bit version of Window, making the switch makes complete sense thanks to improved performance and better handling of large files. The bad news for now is that there is no 64-bit ARM version available, only one for x64-based systems.

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There's been a major increase in cloud adoption because of COVID-19, but there's also widespread misconception surrounding responsibility for backup and recovery of data in the cloud and a lack of confidence in the security of data held by public cloud service providers.

A new report from Arcserve company StorageCraft shows 47 percent of respondents accelerated adoption of cloud services for data management, 59 percent confirmed increased use of cloud backup services, 56 percent increased the use of the cloud for IT infrastructure (IaaS), and 39 percent increasingly rely on cloud services for data recovery.

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A new study from the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and cloud security company AlgoSec finds that over half of organizations are running 41 percent or more of their workloads in public clouds, compared to just a quarter in 2019.

But 11 percent of respondents have reported a cloud security incident in the past year with the three most common causes being cloud provider issues (26 percent), security misconfigurations (22 percent), and attacks like denial of service exploits (20 percent).

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In February 2021, Atlassian Server officially retired and this means organizations can no longer buy new Atlassian (Core) Server licenses (such as Jira, Confluence BitBucket, JSM) as the product has now reached end-of-life (EOL). While customers can still upgrade or downgrade their Server licenses and maintenance, support will continue to be available for the next three years, and Server customers can continue to purchase additional functionality and apps via the Atlassian Marketplace. Atlassian’s ultimate goal is to move customers either to its Atlassian SaaS product or to Atlassian Data Center (allowing customers  to host where they want).

Those organizations unable to move to a cloud environment (SaaS), or those who want to take a slower transition to the cloud, either because of IP issues or because they work in highly regulated industries, should seriously consider a move to Atlassian Data Center. This not only provides high levels of stability, scalability and high availability, it enables IT teams to maintain control, stay abreast of ever-increasing demands and more effectively plan ahead.

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The shift brought about by the pandemic has accelerated many companies’ plans to move to the cloud. But all migrations come with some risk and rushing them through may be storing up problems for the future.

A successful hybrid strategy can help in avoiding these issues. We spoke to Arcserve's backup, DR, and ransomware protection evangelist Sam Roguine to find out about the potential risks of rushed cloud migrations -- like security gaps and missing data -- and how IT leaders can address them.

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In the last year especially, many businesses have turned to SaaS applications in order to aid remote working. But a survey of over 630 SaaS users across a mix of industries finds that 40 percent have previously lost data stored in their online tools.

The study from cloud backup company Rewind finds 53 percent of respondents cited using SaaS tools on the job, and 43 percent using four or more.

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Enterprises are keen to achieve the many business, technical and financial benefits of moving legacy systems to the cloud despite challenges along the way.

A new report from SAP to AWS migration specialist Lemongrass finds 77 percent of IT leaders say their primary motivation for migrating legacy systems to cloud infrastructure is either a desire to secure data, maintain data access or save money.

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The rapid shift to remote working has accelerated digital transformation and mass-cloud migration across almost every organization -- even those who weren't necessarily ready for it.

As IT professionals settle into long-term planning and management of their SaaS platforms and apps, CoreView's SVP Doug Hazelman believes they must now begin to effectively manage their cloud infrastructure so they can focus on maximizing the value of their investments. We spoke to him to learn more.

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Saving money in IT has always been an important consideration, but due to COVID-19 many corporate strategies and budgets have been pushed off course. For example, relative to pre-COVID levels, the likelihood of undertaking cost reduction initiatives has increased globally by 74 percent, 66 percent of companies are now expected to pursue cost reduction strategies over the next 12 months and it is predicted we will see a 38 percent increase in these cost reduction strategies in the next 12 months, compared to pre-COVID times.

Due to the need for greater flexibility caused by COVID-19 and the need to secure these cost reductions, many organizations are now looking to the cloud. Cloud spending rose by 37 percent to £20 billion during the first quarter of 2020 and, according to Gartner, we saw a 19 percent growth in cloud spending in 2020 even when IT spending overall was down by 8 percent. It goes without saying that there are many benefits to moving to the cloud, one of them being cost reductions, with others including agility, flexibility, scale, working from home capabilities and the transfer of budget allocations from CapEx to OpEx.

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The latest Flexera State of the Cloud report shows that 92 percent of enterprises have a multi-cloud strategy and 80 percent have a hybrid cloud strategy.

Respondents use an average of 2.6 public and 2.7 private clouds with 49 percent saying they silo workloads by cloud, and 45 percent integrating data between clouds.

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Last month we reported on public sector organizations suffering from cloud leakage. A new report out today shows that this is an issue in the private sector too.

The report from cloud governance platform CloudSphere reveals that 32 percent of enterprises have experienced unauthorized access to their cloud resources.

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