Articles about Cloud

As businesses rely more on mobile and cloud systems, greater emphasis is placed on protecting their information while retaining the productivity benefits.

Microsoft is launching a new service to help businesses guard their data as it travels between devices and servers. Azure Information Protection builds on both the existing Microsoft Azure Rights Management (Azure RMS) and the company's acquisition last year of information protection business Secure Islands.

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With the growth of the cloud, data centers have become big business. In fact, it's estimated that they now use around 10 percent of the world's energy.

It's not surprising then that companies are looking to increase the efficiency of their IT operations, cut their energy use and reduce their carbon footprints. However, the solution to finding more efficiency may be closer than they think. Jeff Klaus, general manager of Data Center Solutions at Intel argues that enterprises need to look to home grown solutions before turning elsewhere. We spoke to him to find out more.

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While many companies have been hesitant to adopt the cryptocurrency Bitcoin, the blockchain technology that made it possible is now being sought after by a number of companies due to the way it acts as a decentralized ledger that can be used to store data and keep track of how assets are exchanged.

Microsoft has just released the first details into how it will use blockchain in its upcoming Project Bletchley, which will add the technology into Azure services through some new middleware.

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In a continued effort to strengthen the software and services behind its mobile division, Samsung Electronics has decided to purchase US cloud services company Joyent for an undisclosed sum.

The company plans on integrating Joyent into its own mobile business, but it will continue to operate independently with its top management remaining in charge of its day to day business. This is Samsung’s third major acquisition of a US-based startup over the last two years after acquiring SmartThings for its connected home technology and LoopPay for its contactless payment service.

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Cloud storage has become a prominent part of everyone's life these days, with services abounding. But what happens when one either goes out of business or sets an end-of-life date for support for one of its apps?

Amazon is encountering that very situation right now, with older versions of its Cloud Drive app. The company is now sending notifications to customers explaining the situation.

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Rumors are flying within IBM this week that the z Systems (mainframe) division is up for sale with the most likely buyer being Hitachi. It’s all a big secret, of course, because IBM management doesn’t tell IBM workers anything, but the idea is certainly consistent with Big Blue’s determination to cut costs and raise cash for more share buybacks. And the murmurs are simply too loud to be meaningless. Think of this news in terms of a statement made last week by an IBM senior executive: "In a world of Cloud Computing, it does not matter what equipment or whose hardware the cloud runs on. We are a Cloud company…"

This move by IBM would not surprise me in a bit. It is my guess IBM wants someone else to make and support the hardware. They’ll be happy to sell time sharing services, AKA cloud services. They’ll be happy to let someone else sell and maintain systems.

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Major tech companies rarely manage to surprise us, but Microsoft did it earlier this week when it announced the acquisition of LinkedIn. The software giant is spending an enormous sum -- $26.2 billion, to be exact -- to get its hands on the popular business-focused social network. The new Microsoft likes to take chances, and this high-profile purchase is certainly proof of that.

CEO Satya Nadella says that buying LinkedIn will allow Microsoft to "change the way the world works", but what is its motivation behind the purchase, how does it tie into its current strategy, and what do the two companies stand to gain from it?

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Business IT is undergoing a major shift as many organizations get closer to adopting a fully cloud-based approach. But this means that IT departments inevitably give up some degree of control over data governance, security and overall data management.

Security automation specialist BetterCloud is launching a new automation engine called Workflows that orchestrates critical, complex processes to ensure accuracy, precision, and compliance across SaaS applications.

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For the first time ever, the majority of cybersecurity professionals believe cloud-based apps are as secure as on-premise apps. Those are the results of a new survey conducted by Bitglass, among 2,200 cybersecurity experts.

According to the report, entitled The Rise of Purpose-Built Cloud Security, 52 percent of those surveyed said they found cloud-based apps as secure as their on-premise counterparts. The most interesting thing is that this percentage has jumped from 40 percent same time last year.

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Timing is everything, particularly in business marketing tactics. Surely it's no coincidence that hours before Apple's big developer conference, where questions about iPhone's future and product innovation loom large, that Microsoft announces plans to buy social network LinkedIn. Hehe, how do you like them apples?

The merger will split tech news and analysis coverage this fine Monday and spill over to tomorrow, robbing Apple of the attention it needs now to subdue rising negative perceptions about the future. Global smartphone sales are slowing and iPhone accounts for 65 percent of total revenues. Meanwhile, the fruit-logo company hasn't perceptually lifted the innovation meter since before cofounder Steve Jobs died nearly five years ago. Apple needs to deliver wow and have bloggers and reporters giggle with glee all over the InterWebs.

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As organizations move more of their data to the cloud the risk from shadow IT in the form of connected third-party apps grows greater.

New research from CloudLock CyberLab, the security intelligence part of the CloudLock security platform, finds that 27 percent of third-party apps are classified as high risk. This means cyber criminals could gain programmatic access to corporate platforms and impersonate end users.

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Over the past few years the cloud has significantly changed the way all of us store data, and in many cases how we run software too.

But from an enterprise perspective what impact has the cloud had on traditional data centers, and how is it continuing to evolve? We spoke to Saviz Izadpanah, chief technology officer of HighQ -- which provides cloud collaboration and content publishing services to the world's leading law firms, corporate legal teams and banks -- to find out.

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Wait until you hear what employees in Europe are using cloud services for. Oh, boy.

Blue Coat Systems has polled more than 3,000 workers in France, Germany and the UK, asking them about their cloud usage habits, and, as it turns out, some employees use such services (Dropbox, Box, Office 365, Slack, LinkedIn, Facebook, Gmail, etc.) to store data before starting a new job, for corporate espionage, whistle-blowing and even "personal protection".

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With virtualized environments performance issues can be hard to pinpoint. IT departments can find it difficult to spot whether the cause is in the application, network, storage, or virtualization layer of the infrastructure.

Software optimization specialist SIOS is bringing machine learning to bear on this problem with the latest release of SIOS iQ, its analytics software for VM environments.

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In the past there's tended to be a perception that running applications in the cloud is less secure than keeping them in-house.

However, a new study by data protection company Bitglass suggests that this view is changing as cloud apps mature. 52 percent of organizations are now confident that cloud apps are as secure as premises-based apps, up from 40 percent a year ago.

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