The latest cloud computing survey, this time from NaviSite, has examined enterprise IT’s strategies, in particular for coping with an increasingly data-heavy ecosystem, and found that cloud is at the forefront of the data strategy for IT execs.

The report interviewed more than 500 IT professionals from companies with more than 200 employees, and found intriguing trends in the enterprise space.

Cloud computing is one of the biggest trends facing enterprise IT departments today, according to a quarter of respondents. Slashed budgets was the top trend according to 31% of those surveyed, with data explosion (25%) rounding off the top three.

There have been plenty of recent surveys dissecting trends in the enterprise space. Interestingly, one of the most recent of these, a report from Ernst & Young and India’s CIO Klub, also focused on how to cut budgets. Previous iterations of the report did similarly – 2009 advocated wide …

We often discuss the virtues of private and hybrid clouds, since so many companies utilize more complex clouds as they scale. But where public cloud is concerned, we thought we’d share some ideas for how to frame a smart approach to ensure that your public cloud is serving the needs of your business best.
Multiple availability zone: An important first step to achieve a smart public cloud set up, ensuring your cloud is in multiple availability zones (AZs) sets the stage for a number of other important aspects of cloud functionality, be it performance or disaster recovery: being in multiple AZs can improve product delivery to end users as much as it can form the foundation of a highly redundant cloud architecture.

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Racemi, a provider of automated server migration software that streamlines the process of migrating workloads to public clouds, has announced that it has been selected by cloud hosting provider HOSTING to expedite customer onboarding to its enterprise-class managed cloud hosting infrastructure.
Racemi’s DynaCenter server imaging technology quickly migrates data even between dissimilar physical, virtual or private cloud platforms, reducing the onboarding process from days to minutes.
HOSTING has implemented Racemi’s migration technology at its six data centers across the United States, from which it serves over 4,000 customers. The faster ramp up will accelerate the return on investment for HOSTING customers.
“Manually migrating data takes time and can be expensive. Racemi’s technology in combination with HOSTING services will make moving business-critical applications quicker and more cost-effective than ever before for our customers,” said John Vernazza, vice president, Enterprise Solutions at HOSTING.

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Enterprises should have a clear understanding of potential security benefits and risks associated with cloud computing to set realistic expectations with their cloud provider. With this baseline knowledge, enterprises can effect changes in security and privacy that are in the best interest of the organization.
In his session at the 12th International Cloud Expo, Todd M. Moore, IBM Director – Interoperability and Partnerships, Director – OpenStack Foundation, share his experience on how to analyze and respond to the security implications for cloud computing.
Learn about the “Security for Cloud Computing: 10 Steps to Ensure Success” white paper from the Cloud Standards Customer Council and understand the strategies designed to help decision makers evaluate and compare security offerings.

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This simple phrase encapsulates so much more than just the notion of platforms capable of supporting multiple development languages. It comprises the notion of an operationalized polyglot platform, one that brings standardization to operations while providing flexibility for developers to choose the right tool (language) for the job (application).
To understand why this is so important (and game-changing) you have to understand traditional enterprise application platforms. They are largely single-language platforms (think .NET and Java EE) that are operationalized only in the sense that scripting languages are capable of remotely modifying platform configurations and restarting the daemon. Enterprise organizations have long standardized on a few key platforms as a means to constrain the costs associated with licensing (OSS gained traction this way) and more importantly, administrative overhead.

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Bain Capital and Golden Gate Capital are the leading contenders to buy BMC Software for more than $6.5 billion, according to Reuters, which says they made a binding offer on April 22.
The price the pair offered was more than that of a rival consortium consisting of KKR, TPG Capital and Thoma Bravo.
The wire service couldn’t learn the exact bid but it appears to be in the range of $45-$50 a share. Expecting a deal the stock is currently trading at $45 and change for a market cap of $6.51 billion.
The rival consortium could sweeten the pot or BMC could decide not to sell. But it appears it will try to finalize a deal in the coming days.

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My fellow Technical Evangelists and I have authored a content series that steps through building your very own Private Cloud by leveraging Windows Server 2012, our FREE Hyper-V Server 2012, Windows Azure Infrastructure Services ( IaaS ) and System Center 2012 Service Pack 1.
Week-by-week, we walk through the steps to envision, plan and implement your very own Private Cloud to take your existing data center to the next level and give you the tools and time back in your day for improving IT services and being able to change and shift with your business / IT needs.

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In a recent blog post, we discussed the emergence of Cloud Protection Gateways as a solution for enterprises looking to protect sensitive cloud data by keeping that data under their complete control. We started looking at the vetting process enterprises undertake when they are selecting a Cloud Protection Gateway Provider.
Since it is a decision with implications across the enterprise, we recognize that there are a variety of teams within the organization that should be included in the selection process. We began last time by looking at the information the Security Team needs to make an informed decision about a provider. Other groups to involve include the Governance & Risk team, Information Technology team and End User team.

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