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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Amazon Web Services is the undisputed leader in the public cloud market, with a market share larger than the next three competitors -- Microsoft, Google and IBM -- combined, according to a new report from Synergy Research Group.

In Q3 2016, AWS had a share of around 45 percent in the public IaaS (infrastructure as a service) market, while Microsoft's Azure, Google's Cloud and IBM's cloud did not even get past the 20 percent mark.

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The growth of cloud usage, increasing volumes of information and a switch towards software defined systems based on commodity hardware have all had an impact on the storage market.

About a year ago we spoke to Mark Lewis, Chairman and CEO of storage specialist Formation Data Systems  to get his views on the future of enterprise storage. This week we caught up with Mark again to find out how much the market has changed in just a short time.

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Sandboxes provide environments for developers and testers to reproduce even the most complex infrastructures, from data centers to public and hybrid clouds.

Sandboxes allow ITOps and dev/test teams to create personalized replicas of production environments with self-service, on-demand environments that can quickly allow even the most complex environments to be created, modeled, orchestrated and deployed -- from physical patch panels to distributed applications. This can rapidly speed up release cycles while drastically lowering cost and reducing risk.

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New research from cloud business management specialist ServiceNow indicates that enterprise cloud services have reached a tipping point, with 52 percent of respondents saying they would select cloud as the platform of choice for new business applications.

In addition 85 percent say they now are headed towards a cloud-first footing, with almost nine out of 10 saying they will complete the shift within two years.

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A new report finds that there's a disconnect between IT executives and their staff on critical issues, including control over SaaS applications.

The report from cloud specialist BetterCloud shows that non-executive IT staff, when compared to IT executives, are 29 percent more likely to say their team lacks complete control over their SaaS applications and 56 percent more likely to feel like their IT team lacks complete visibility into them.

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In terms of industry buzz and discussion, it is unlikely you’ll find a technological concept that’s more popular at the moment than cloud computing. Since it burst on to the scene a few years ago, cloud computing has proven its utility within a huge range of business and consumer markets.

With the flexibility, productivity and cost advantages being delivered by the cloud, it can truly claim to have had a profound impact on the way that we live our lives. However, although "cloud computing" is often spoken about in relatively generalized terminology, it is far from a homogeneous resource.

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Businesses are looking to transform their IT services by moving to the cloud, but a new report reveals that they’re increasingly struggling to manage its complexity.

The study from cloud automation company Embotics and 451 Research surveyed 166 US-based enterprise IT organizations regarding their use of cloud infrastructure and the management and automation of the associated processes.

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The post-Brexit fallout continues. The UK has already seen price hikes from a number of countries across a range of sectors, and the latest announcement comes from Microsoft.

The technology giant warns that starting in January 2017, prices of enterprise software and cloud services will rise for anyone paying in pounds sterling. The UK's decision to leave the EU has seen the value of the pound plummet, and Microsoft is going to increase prices by up to 22 percent to make up for this.

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Microsoft has posted its earnings for Q1 FY2017 (Q3 CY2016), revealing revenue of $22.34 billion, operating income of $7.1 billion, net income of $5.98 billion, and earnings per share of $0.76 cents. The software giant beat analyst expectations of $21.71 billion in revenue and EPS of $0.68. The stock is up around 5.5 percent over yesterday, with shares trading at over $60 -- a record value for the company.

How do the latest numbers compare to Q1 FY2016? A year ago Microsoft reported revenue of $21.66 billion, operating income of $7.07 billion, net income of $5.66 billion and EPS of $0.70. So the revenue, operating income, net income, and EPS are up.

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Amazon Web Services (AWS) and VMware have announced a strategic partnership in the cloud computing business. It will create new technology allowing customers to use VMware's datacenter management software on Amazon’s cloud. Basically, VMware's infrastructure software (vSphere, NSX) will run on Amazon Web Services.

"Our customers continue to ask us to make it easier for them to run their existing data center investments alongside AWS", Andy Jassy, CEO, AWS, tells Tech Crunch.

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Amazon likes to chuck a few freebies (well... not free exactly...) at Prime subscribers, and today there is a new addition to the pile -- Family Vault. The new feature allows subscribers in the US to share their free photo storage space with up to five other people.

This makes it possible for a family to store all of their photos in one place. In addition to the unlimited shared photo storage, each person invited to the Family Vault is given an extra 5GB of storage which can be used to house other files.

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According to new research, a private cloud can be much cheaper than using a public cloud service, though only when it's running on a large scale.

The analyst firm 451 Research has released a new report exploring the costs of private, public and hybrid cloud services, revealing that when a private cloud is large enough, it can actually be cheaper than public cloud services. There are, however, upsides and downsides to both approaches.

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In an attempt to assuage concerns regarding how its cloud software and services designed for government agencies work, Microsoft has released new documentation for potential customers of Azure Government.

Microsoft Azure Government has already earned quite a few certifications acknowledging that it meets the strict requirements of the US federal government. However, for customers that believe this is not enough, the software giant has created its new Azure Blueprint program to help users use its cloud platform in a way that is compliant with government guidelines.

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Ransomware is increasingly big business and more than 43 percent of malware types are used to deliver it. It can also be unwittingly spread via the use of cloud services.

To protect against the threat, cloud security company Netskope is adding ransomware detection and recovery capabilities to its Netskope Threat Protection product.

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