“German business software maker SAP said it was revamping its management to sharpen its focus on cloud computing as demand for the service which saves clients money grows.

SAP and rivals such as IBM and Oracle are dashing to meet surging demand for cloud computing, which allows clients to ditch bulky and costly servers for network-based software and storage in remote data centers.

The company said it was now grouping all of its development activities and putting executive board member Vishal Sikka in charge of them from June 1. It also named board member Gerhard Oswald to oversee its new HANA Enterprise Cloud product.

“In record time, we went from being a startup in the cloud to being one of the largest companies in the cloud,” Co-Chief Executive Jim Hagemann Snabe said during a conference call.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“Last November a small startup called CloudCheckr launched the beta of its performance-monitoring system for Amazon Web Services. Now, it’s bringing out a specialized version, CloudCheckr Gov, suitable for monitoring performance on AWS GovCloud, no mean trick because security requirements keep most independent monitors out.

CloudCheckr is part of a small but thriving third-party market consisting of companies that shed more light on what’s going on inside the AWS cloud. Cloudability, Cloudyn, Cloud Cruiser, Newvem, ExtraHop Networks and Uptime Software occupy this space and compete for AWS users.

CloudCheckr is an online service that provides basic AWS monitoring for free, and advanced, CloudCheckr Pro for $179 a month. CloudCheckr Gov is also priced at $179 a month. It’s more than a passive monitor. It checks for up to 150 best practices in cloud workload configurations and security alignments. It can advise what should be done when it spots an exposure or shortcoming. With evident foreign interest in hacking U.S. government agencies, expertise in security and the ability to monitor GovCloud help set CloudCheckr apart.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“With the debut of the new Xbox One gaming system, we could focus on many things: hardware, flashy games, and entertainment options. But one aspect really gets me fired up: Developers should now be able to use Microsoft Azure’s cloud computing platform to make games more powerful than ever.

Wired reports that the game developers and studios can tap Azure for all kinds of things. Microsoft isn’t going to force developers to use the cloud platform, but it will certainly push them to do so.

The Xbox One will not have to be always connected to the Internet to play games, but it does generally require an online connection. And if developers do decide to tap Azure’s cloud computing platform to boost a game’s power, a web connection will be necessary to play that game.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“In November, Microsoft and 21Vianet announced that they were working together to bring Azure, a infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service product, to China. Today the firms stated that the service will go live on June 6th.

21Vianet, a Chinese company, claims that it is the “largest carrier-neutral Internet data center services provider” in the country, making it a sensical fit for Microsoft.

21Vianet has 81 data centers in 42 cities in China, meaning that it can serve Azure effectively in the country. Microsoft previously estimated that the number of firms that could use Azure in China is in the “millions.”

And, a key point: It is something of an early mover in the country. Amazon’s AWS suite of cloud products that compete with Azure have a data center in Singapore, and has a minor presence in Hong Kong.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“Google has been using its own custom version of Linux, Google Compute Engine Linux, as it loads its customers’ applications into its infrastructure as a service. It announced Thursday that it’s dropping that approach in favor of using the Debian Linux distribution.

Debian Linux is the output of the Debian open source code project. All Linuxes use a kernel produced by the Linux kernel development process, led by Linus Torvalds. But Linux distributors surround the kernel with features that may match other Linux distributions or may differentiate that particular distribution. For example, Ubuntu was an early cloud supporter when it included Eucalyptus modules; then it switched to OpenStack as its primary cloud offering.

Red Hat Enterprise Linux is frequently the standard Linux for corporate production systems. Debian is as close as any version comes to being an independent developer’s favorite and a code base for other Linux products. It’s also frequently found running Internet servers, as a free and stable operating system. Canonical’s popular Ubuntu starts out with Debian as its base.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“Brick-and-mortar retailers have long favored highly visible investments, such as advertising or store design over spending hard-earned income on back-office information technology. In fact, the retail industry devotes only about 1.7% of revenue to IT. Compare that with banking, which spends about 6%.

Big-box and boutique retailers alike see that e-commerce competitors continue to use technology as a means to win on price and selection, and know their customers increasingly use smartphones in-store to compare prices or search for deals.

IBM’s latest Big Data-based retail forecast suggests that some brick-and-mortar retailers are turning the tide against showrooming, a trend in which consumers look at items in a store before ultimately buying them online, usually at lower prices. In order to remain competitive and press their advantage further, brick-and-mortar stores must look to the cloud computing revolution as a way to upgrade their technology without busting their budgets.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“Software-defined networking (SDN) has been in the “coming soon” category for many years, but an Interop keynote panel discussion on the topic showed room for debate over what it ought to look like when it finally gets here.

SDN is too often spoken of as a single event that will wipe away all current networking technologies, when in fact “the underpinnings are already in place,” said moderator Eric Hanselman, chief analyst at 451 Research.

The point of SDN is to make networks easy to configure and reconfigure in software rather than hardware, with many more networking functions migrating from being embedded capabilities of a network appliance to being defined in software. Network systems are migrating incrementally in that direction as networks follow the same path toward virtualization as servers and storage, he said. Ultimately, the goal is to provide every data center with the flexibility associated with cloud computing.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“The U.S. agency responsible for the management and security of the nation’s nuclear weapons, nuclear proliferation and naval nuclear reactor programs is racing to put unclassified data on the cloud this year. Cloud computing is expected to provide a wide range of benefits, including greater cybersecurity, lower costs and networking at any time and from anywhere.

Officials at the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), an agency within the Department of Energy, expect to have a cloud computing capability this year. The solution, known as Yourcloud, will provide the NNSA with its own cloud computing environment to manage data more securely, efficiently and effectively. It is part of an overall effort to modernize the agency’s information infrastructure. Yourcloud replaces an aging infrastructure that resulted in too many data centers and an inability to refresh equipment as often as necessary.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“Dell Inc. has acquired a small Minnesota software company that manages cloud computing services.

Round Rock-based Dell did not disclose the price for Enstratius, which was formed in 2008 and had fewer than 50 employees.

The company, based in Minneapolis, helps businesses and organizations manage software applications across private, public and hybrid computing clouds. It handles automated applications provisioning and scaling, management of applications configuration, usage governance and cloud utilization monitoring.

The company was recognized by CRN, an industry publication, for having one of the Top 20 Coolest Cloud Platforms.

Its software is regarded as complementary to Dell’s Active System Manager, which was acquired from Gale Technologies last year.

“As enterprises increase their use of public, private and hybrid clouds, the need for controls, security, governance and automation becomes more critical,” said Tom Kendra, a systems management vice president in Dell Software.”

The rest of this article may be found here.

“I’ve been using Chrome OS since the Chromium project was in beta, when I tested out the CR-48 for the Chromebook pilot testing program. This time, I took about two months to completely road test the Chromebook Pixel, Google’s latest hardware for Chrome OS. I tested the ‘cloud laptop’, with the help of my son in two natural computing environments: work and school. For this review, my testing focused on what you can do on the Chromebook Pixel, using apps on Chrome OS to complete everyday computing (and not so everyday development) tasks. During two months of testing, I used the Chromebook Pixel for my writing work, and my son used the unit for his school work.”

The rest of this article may be found here.