cloud

Networking component major Juniper Network (JNPR) is gradually tightening its grip on the cloud computing market. The company recently made significant additions to the Juniper Networks vGW Virtual Gateway solution for customers looking for a comprehensive virtualization security platform.

These newly added functions with virtualization-specific antivirus (AV) will secure and continuously monitor malware and hackers, as well as ensure that security does not impede virtualized workload performance or present a barrier to implementing large-scale virtualized environments.

A New York Times article does a great job defining the issues around cloud adoption within the U.S. government -- or, I should say, the glaring lack thereof. As the Times reports, "Such high praise for new Internet technologies may be common in Silicon Valley, but it is rare in the federal government."

Verizon Communications Inc. announced Thursday that it acquired CloudSwitch Inc., a supplier of software designed to make it easier for companies to move their applications securely to the cloud.

New York-based Verizon said it will combine privately held CloudSwitch with its Terremark IT services subsidiary. Burlington, Mass.-based CloudSwitch makes software that allows companies to move applications from the enterprise data center to cloud environments while keeping the applications integrated with existing enterprise management and security policies.

Before cost-cutting became fashionable in Washington, Vivek Kundra, the White House’s chief information officer, was working to shrink the federal government’s enormous budget for information technology.

But even as Kundra returns to academia after a two-and-a-half-year run, his vision for a leaner and more internet-centric future for government is being met with caution by at least a few of the technology chiefs at the federal agencies that now have to carry it out.

QUESTIONS need to be asked over whether the cloud is really up to the job of hosting critical services, according to resilience firm Neverfail.

Neverfail CTO Paddy Falls told The INQUIRER that following Amazon's recent outage firms need to ask "can you trust the cloud to give you sufficient resilience" in services? Amazon's most recent outage occurred last week, with initial reports suggesting that one of the firm's datacentres had succumbed to a lightning strike, only for that story to be changed to blame a dodgy electrical transformer.

Microsoft is continuing to make adjustments to its pricing for Windows Azure cloud-computing platform in an attempt to win over smaller developers.

IT must deal with an increasing number of regulations, many of which come with stiff legal and financial penalties for noncompliance. As cloud computing comes on the scene, it's no wonder that many in IT push back on its use, which in many instances forces you to give up direct control of systems that have to be maintained with these regulations in mind. As one client put it, "Why would I let somebody who does not work here get me arrested?"

Amazon and Microsoft lost some of their hosted services after a power utility was struck by lightning in Ireland.

Perhaps one particularly important web site operator had been ticked off by his service, or maybe there are just too many metal rods pointing out of facilities over there, we can't say, but what we can say is that the hammer of Thor hit the premises and it took them down.

Newline Software announced the release of OPTIC, Online Privacy Technology In the Cloud. The solution allows developers to securely query, write, and read encrypted data to and from any cloud data store (e.g. Amazon S3, Windows Azure) without the cloud having any knowledge of that data.

Encrypted data stored in the cloud can only be decrypted by applications on the client device. With OPTIC developers can create solutions with 100% data privacy in the cloud.

Apple on Saturday evening tapped developers to begin testing a fifth pre-release version of its iCloud cloud computing service software for the company's new Mac OS X 10.7 Lion operating system alongside the first external beta of Mac OS X 10.7.2.

The move is somewhat unusual given that Apple is requiring developers to install Mac OS X 10.7.2 build 11C26 in order to use iCloud beta 5 but has yet to provide developers with any information of test builds of Mac OS X 10.7.1.