cloud

A new report by a non-aligned United States think tank warns the American cloud computing industry could take a major earnings hit, thanks to former NSA employee Edward Snowden's revelations of indiscriminate government mass surveillance.

In the report [PDF], the Information Technology and Innovation foundation (ITIF) said if non-American companies decided the risks of storing data with US firms outweighed the benfits, the collection of electronic data from third-paties "will likely have immediate and lasting impact on the competitiveness on the US cloud computing industry".

Eight out of 10 enterprise Software-as-a-Service buyers will not be happy with the contracts they sign. And there's good reason for that.

That's the prediction from Gartner analyst Alexa Bona, who chides the current state of contracts, which all too often "have ambiguous terms regarding the maintenance of data confidentiality, data integrity and recovery after a data loss incident."

Bona outlines three options enterprise cloud buyers need to exercise every time they cut a cloud agreement.

Like a lot of organizations, NASA's doing its best to keep up with the times and move its computer systems onto the cloud. Like only a government agency can do, it's failing fantastically at doing so securely.

Non-U.S. clients of American cloud hosting companies are clearly rattled by revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency collects huge amounts of customer data from Internet Service Providers and telecommunication companies.

IT security teams should be on the lookout for business units that may be spinning up servers using a public cloud provider for big data analytics projects because it introduces a variety of security risks, according to a security auditor who frequently reviews the software and infrastructure supporting such projects.

Certain elements of cloud computing are inarguably beneficial. The ability to quickly provision, clone, and deploy servers to address capacity issues is a definite plus, and the fact that you can effortlessly add elements such as load balancers, big storage, and databases is equally compelling. However, there is a downside that needs to be understood: the fact that, in many cases, cloud server instances can exhibit wildly different performance metrics, measured from second to second.

Apple revealed at its Worldwide Developers Conference on Monday that it will be releasing a new version of iWork for iCloud, enabling remote access to the productivity suite with nearly full functionality offered in a Web client.

In an exploration of the beta, AppleInsider found that its overall function was very smooth, with quick loading times and no hiccups or bumps in its animation or responsiveness.

There are only three major cloud companies, and try as it might, IBM isn't going to change that in the near-term with its acquisition of SoftLayer.

This is because the three major public clouds – Amazon Web Services, Windows Azure, and Google Compute Engine – are each supported by a consumer internet giant.

It took three years from when it was first announced, but Microsoft may have found a way to deliver a private cloud in a box.

The company's vision and strategy for doing this has gone through many twists and turns.

As more employees continue to access consumer cloud accounts at work (regardless of IT rules), the enterprise world is about to reach a breaking point, based on a new report.

Quite simply, U.K. cloud collaboration company Huddle described the trend as a "security time-bomb."