Grazed from NetworkWorld.  Author: Robert Scheier.

Many enterprises are reluctant to move critical cloud applications out of their own data centers and into the public cloud due to security concerns. Yet the same automated, consistent provisioning that is essential to managing either public or private clouds (as well as to the process of thinking through a cloud deployment) can also offer the fringe benefit of improving security.

Of course, not all cloud management tools work equally well with all cloud providers, nor do they all allow customers to manage their internal and external clouds as a single unit. Infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) providers such as Amazon, for example, typically don't allow customers to tweak the network and storage infrastructure beneath the operating system, forcing customers to trust that level of security to the vendor.

And while some customers will trust outside certifications, such as Amazon Web Services' Level 1 compliance with PCI DSS, others will choose to stick with a private cloud within their own firewalls, or create cloud environments at an external site using their own networks and keeping storage under their control...

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

Evolven (www.evolven.com) today announced that the company's change and configuration management solution was recognized in a new Ovum analyst report, calling Evolven "a revolutionary change and configuration management vendor."

In this report, Ovum VP and Principal analyst, Roy Illsley explores how Cloud computing creates a change twilight zone where critical questions remain unanswered.
The report recognizes that over the last decade, IT service management (ITSM) has matured as a discipline, but new and popular disruptive technologies are now incompatible with some of the practices and procedures that have been established. The complexity of change and configuration in today's increasingly dynamic and virtualized environments requires a cross-domain approach to change and configuration management, optimized for performance, risk, and service assurance...

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

V3 Systems, the industry leader in Desktop Cloud Computing (DCC), announced today availability of the V3 Desktop Cloud Orchestrator(TM), a powerful new management addition to its industry-leading V3 Desktop Cloud Computing appliance. V3 Desktop Orchestrator empowers organizations to deliver and manage a dedicated pool with local storage virtual desktops with guaranteed performance, availability and high-density utilization across their entire enterprise.

V3 Desktop Cloud Orchestrator (V3 DCO) is the first management system specifically designed to simplify and improve the management of a virtual desktop environment and reduce the need for multiple management consoles. A key component of the V3 DCO is V3 Optimized Desktop Allocation(TM) (V3 ODA), a technology that delivers seamless virtual desktop recovery in the event of a failed virtual desktop appliance...

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: Charles Babcock.

Microsoft System Center 2012 is now generally available as a reorganized systems management system with separate provider and consumer management consoles. The addition of a consumer console allows a company's employees to provision themselves with virtual machines.

Systems Center 2012 has been restructured, not only to help IT and operations managers handle large sets of Windows Server systems, but also to give System Center a more private-cloud-like approach to data center management, said Brad Anderson, Microsoft corporate VP of security and management...

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

ScienceLogic Inc., a provider of IT operations and cloud management software, has secured $15 million in Series B funding led by Intel Capital and appointed John Becker as CEO to fuel the next stage in the company's growth. Previous CEO and company co-founder David Link will remain as chairman of the board. With the most comprehensive and flexible IT management software platform on the market, ScienceLogic is used by service providers, corporations and government entities to improve IT operations efficiency and add new services across data center and cloud computing infrastructures.

Intel Capital is joined by previous investor New Enterprise Associates (NEA). ScienceLogic will use the capital to fund global sales expansion, marketing and development of its technology. The investment from Intel Capital and NEA brings ScienceLogic's total financing to $30 million...

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Rick Blaisdell.

Cloud computing has definitely revolutionised the IT industry and transformed the way in which IT Services are delivered. But finding the best way for an organization to perform common management tasks using remote services on the Internet is not that easy.

Cloud management incorporates the task of providing, managing, and monitoring applications into cloud infrastructures that do not require end-user knowledge of the physical location or of the system that delivers the services. Monitoring cloud computing applications and activity into requires cloud management tools to ensure that resources are meeting SLA’s, working optimally and also not effecting systems and users that are leveraging these services...

Grazed from Digital ID News.  Author: Editorial Staff.

In addition to convenience, cloud computing is touted for its money saving capabilities as companies reduce software licensing costs and hardware requirements.

Identity management in the cloud isn’t as cut and dry. Standards are emerging to manage identities in the cloud but, until now, it hasn’t been a priority. The auditing and provisioning capabilities that are typical with enterprise-based ID management systems are tough to come by with cloud-based systems. “ID management is the biggest weakness we have right now,” says Tony Busseri, CEO at Route1, a digital security and ID management provider. “People have rushed to embrace a technology that’s great in concept, but they have ignored the ID management.”.

These issues exist more in the public cloud than the private cloud, Busseri explains. “The public cloud is great in terms of functionality but from a privacy standpoint you don’t know where the information is going,” he says...

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

ServiceMesh, provider of the market-leading enterprise-class cloud application management platform for Global 2000 companies, today announced it has been named a 2012 Gartner Cool Vendor in Cloud Management. Published April 11, 2012, the Gartner, Inc. survey of global CIOs identified cloud computing as one of the top-three strategic technology investments and recommended that IT executives take advantage of cloud computing innovations in self-service provisioning, software tool chain automation, and policy-driven governance to improve the agility and efficiency of their infrastructures, platforms, and applications.

ServiceMesh's cloud management platform enables enterprise IT organizations to maximize the strategic competitive advantage of these investments by managing the plan, build and run lifecycle of cloud resources leveraging a sophisticated, policy-based framework...

Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Doug Bonderud.

The IT landscape is currently dominated by a single albeit misunderstood revolutionary force--cloud computing. Experts agree that cloud solutions are the likely future of the market and that the function of IT professionals will be altered at a fundamental level and their role in crucial business decisions increased as cloud technology becomes more robust. But along with the potential for significant games comes the specter of what is known as "cloud sprawl"--unrestrained growth of a public or private cloud without clear direction or control by the company that owns the data. Now, midsized businesses are looking for ways to stay in charge without sacrificing the agility of cloud solutions.

On the Way Up 

According to a recent Techworld article, the number of enterprise and midmarket companies using public cloud infrastructe-as-a-service (IaaS)--to cite just one example of cloud adoption--is on the rise. In a 2011 survey, only 17 percent of respondents said that they were using these services, but that number has now jumped to 27 percent. Twenty-four percent of those asked said they had plans to implement a cloud solution at some point during 2012, but the numbers aren't all on the upside; while Gartner's Lydia Leong says, "Public cloud IaaS is rapidly becoming an accepted technology approach to doing business," 28 percent of midsized and enterprise businesses have no plans to head skyward just yet...

Grazed from PR NewsWire.  Author:  PR Announcement

ConnectWise, developer of the leading service management software designed exclusively for IT service providers, VARS, ISVs and MSPs, announced today that Veddio Cloud Solutions has completed integration of its Cloud Dashboard (C.H.O.M.P.S. – Cloud-Hosting Ordering, Management and Provisioning System) with ConnectWise for more profitable provisioning and management of cloud computing for SMB clients.

Veddio's C.H.O.M.P.S. platform provides Veddio channel partners with a unified system that allows for multi-product single location management and automatic services provisioning. The integration simplifies the quoting, provisioning and management of cloud and hosted services while giving MSPs a single, web-based interface. In addition, it makes it easier for MSPs to offer their clients a complete suite of white-labeled cloud services from a single source...