Articles about Cloud

Cloud computing is all the rage today, to the point that it feels like you can’t fill out your "buzzword bingo" card at any meeting without using the phrase. There are all kinds of technical reasons why cloud has the market momentum it does, but what if you aren’t swayed by such things? If you’ve seen technology trends come and go, you need non-technical justification for moving your business in any direction, and cloud computing is no different for you.

So, what is the main justification for business owners to use cloud that doesn’t involve a lot of technical jargon? Let’s get to the bottom line and talk ROI and payback instead.

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Google has announced that it has acquired Qwiklabs in order to train developers how to use its cloud services.

Qwiklabs is designed as a way to give developers and IT professionals a hands-on learning platform from which they can gain experience with cloud platforms and the way in which they operate. The company launched in 2012 and its primary focus is teaching its customers how to use the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.

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Disaster recovery is something that all businesses need but few like to contemplate. It's tempting therefore to think that storing data in the cloud makes the problem go away, but of course it doesn't.

You need to look after your data wherever it's stored and to help AWS users with this, data protection specialist Druva is launching its Phoenix cloud-native solution for backup, archive and disaster recovery on the AWS Marketplace.

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Today's businesses face a wave of challenges when it comes to protecting their data. Securing data in the cloud, a rise in ransomware attacks, and increases in unstructured data all make it hard to plan operations effectively and can lead to unscheduled downtime.

Cloud data protection company Arcserve, however, sees this as an opportunity for organizations to re-assess their ability to cope with problems. The company has released a report setting out five strategies to help organizations prepare for and respond to unplanned downtime.

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Google has announced that early next year it will be adding graphics processing units (GPUs) as a service to its Cloud Platform in order to better compete with its rivals.

GPU as a service is already available on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and IBM's Bluemix, but Google's Cloud Platform will seek to differentiate itself by offering a variety of GPUs for customers to choose from. The company will allow users the option to use two AMD FirePro S9300s or either a Nvidia Tesla P100 or K80.

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Businesses are turning to the cloud as a way of coping with ever larger amounts of data. But moving to the cloud at the same time retaining control of where data resides and how it’s accessed is a challenge.

To help enterprises migrate and more easily generate business insights, IBM is announcing a range of new services on its Bluemix cloud platform.

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According to a new study, 69.7 percent of cloud applications do not specify whether the customer keeps ownership of uploaded data, just 8.7 percent commit to not sharing data with third parties, and only 16 percent delete data immediately after contract termination.

All three of these things could leave businesses open to non-compliance files under the EU's GDPR requirements. The report from cloud security company Skyhigh Networks analyses real life cloud usage data from 30 million cloud users worldwide to assess the risk the cloud presents.

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The cloud-based office productivity software market is expected to reach $17 billion in 2016. That’s more than a 400 percent increase from 2009 when the market was valued at $3.3 billion.

With the success of cloud-based applications and their pay-as-you-go model, it shouldn’t be surprising that the cloud version of one of the most widely used desktop application packages would grow to become a popular choice for businesses. I’m of course referring to Office 365, Microsoft’s leading productivity and work software package delivered via the cloud.

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In the dash to the cloud it's easy to lose sight of the fact that it isn't necessarily always the answer to spending your IT budget in the most efficient way.

New data released by cloud management company RightScale reveals that cloud users could reduce their spend by an average of 35 percent by making better use of resources.

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Cloud adoption has hit an all time high in 2016, largely driven by productivity packages like Microsoft Office 365 and Google's G Suite, according to a new report.

Data protection company Bitglass scanned the cloud use of more than 120,000 companies to identify the primary cloud productivity suite used. It finds 59 percent of organizations worldwide now use one of these two apps, up from 48 percent in 2015.

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More and more companies are moving their office applications to the cloud and Microsoft Office 365 is one of the most popular options with around 85 million subscribers.

One of the major concerns with this trend is keeping information secure, to address this IT management solutions provider Kaseya is launching its latest AuthAnvil. An identity and access management solution, this provides single sign on (SSO), multifactor authentication (MFA) and automated user provisioning for Office 365.

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As companies move more of their data to the cloud it's not surprising that they’re turning to encryption in order to keep their data safe.

But if you're using a third-party cloud provider, who owns and controls the keys to your encrypted data? Rui Biscaia, director of product management at data classification specialist Watchful Software believes it's vital for companies to know.

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Information technology infrastructure is made up of many components, servers, storage, networking hardware, systems management software, and more. This can lead to a complex system being built up of components from several different suppliers.

What converged infrastructure does is to bring together all of these things into a single, integrated package. For businesses this means that they can centralize the management of all their IT resources with a view to increasing use and cutting costs. Converged infrastructure is often associated with the cloud and outsourcing, but it can work just as well applied internally within large organizations too.

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Enterprise application company SAP is releasing a new version of its in-memory SAP HANA real-time computing platform.

SAP HANA 2 builds on the proven HANA technology to add new and enhanced functions that can enhance data management and accelerate application development.

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Organizations are rapidly migrating to the cloud. According to the 2016 Cloud Migration Survey, the top reasons for the cloud rush are the promise of high availability, reliability and potential cost savings. Companies, however, are not taking a one-size fits all approach. They are recognizing the pros and cons of private versus public cloud and tailoring their migration strategies to meet their needs.

The RightScale 2016 State of the Cloud Report, which includes responses from over one thousand technical professionals, notes that private cloud adoption by organizations will rise from 63 percent in 2015 to 77 percent in 2016. Because more companies are adding private cloud to their environments, it opens up the possibilities for hybrid cloud. Seventy-one percent of them now operate in a hybrid cloud environment which enables them to combine the benefits of both public and private platforms.

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