The European Commission thinks the European bloc has been slow to adopt cloud computing in part because of security fears over data loss and privacy, particularly in view of America’s Patriot Act.

So it’s proposing to get involved in standards setting, contract condiitions and SLA terms on the happy theory – provided by IDC – that its intervention in cloud adoption will expand the European Union’s overall GDP by close to €1 trillion by 2020 – that’s €160 billion or $206 billion a year – and create 2.5 million jobs.

The scheme, called “Unleashing the Potential of Cloud Computing in Europe,” is laid out in couple of position papers released Thursday.

Neelie Kroes, who used to be antitrust commissioner and is now digital agenda commissioner, claimed that “Cloud computing is a game changer for our economy. Without EU action, we will stay stuck in national fortresses and miss out on billions in economic gains. We must achieve critical mass and a single set of rules across Europe. We must tackle the perceived risks of cloud computing head on.”

Among the initiatives on the agenda is the idea – already underway – of creating a so-called European Cloud Partnership consisting of the procurement officers in all the EU’s public agencies, which are responsible for 20% of the region’s IT spend, and have them set common requirements – like demanding interoperability – and pool their buying power.

Cloud-based e-government service would set an example and local providers would be favored with a leg up in the hope Europe can keep up with the US.

Anyway, the EC is proposing to sort out the jumble of security standards, develop a global data privacy standard, legislate a data-sensitive model contract and clarify knotty cross-border legal questions on data protection and liability by next year.

“You shouldn’t have to have a law degree to use the cloud,” Kroes cracked. “But today, many potential users think it’s too complicated, too risky, or too untrustworthy.”

According to Reuters, poor debt-ridden Greece “shows a bigger cloud appetite than its biggest European creditor, Germany,” allowing that maybe it’s because its hardware is coming up for renewal.

However, the Commission’s data suggests that EU companies could cut their costs by up to 20% by using the cloud.

The plan is to get an EU-wide certification scheme in place for “trustworthy cloud providers” as well as establish “safe and fair” contract terms and SLAs by next year.

The current contracts, the EC complains, may “impose the choice of applicable law or inhibit data recovery. Even larger companies have little negotiation power, and contracts often do not provide for liability for data integrity, confidentiality or service continuity.”

It will review the standard clauses governing the transfer of personal data to third countries. There will have to be “binding corporate rules” for cloud providers and the industry will be asked to endorse a data-protection code of conduct.

The EC means to get the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) coordinating with stakeholders so a “detailed map of the necessary standards (inter alia for security, interoperability, data portability and reversibility)” can be drawn by 2013. It’s also pushing for standards around the cloud’s environmental impact, including energy consumption, water consumption and carbon emissions, to be in place by 2014.

See the 16-page http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/cloudcomputing/docs/c… and the longer 32-page http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/cloudcomputing/docs/c….

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My how time flies, seems like just yesterday (back in 2008) that I did a piece titled Politics and Storage, or, storage in an election year V2.008 and if you are not aware, it is 2012 and thus an election year in the U.S. as well as in many other parts of the world. Being an election year it’s not just about politicians, their supporters, pundits, surrogates, donors and voters, it’s also a technology decision-making and acquisition year (as are most years) for many environments.
Similar to politics, some technology decisions will be major while others will be minor or renewals so to speak. Major decisions will evolve around strategies, architectures, visions, implementation plans and technology selections including products, protocols, processes, people, vendors or suppliers and services for traditional, virtual and cloud data infrastructure environments.

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The explosion of mobile devices in recent times has forced enterprises to tackle security issues as more employees are taking to accessing privileged company resources such as email, file servers and databases with their personal phones and tablets. An earlier report by research firm Gartner indicated that the security concern is increasing with this rapid proliferation with 90% of enterprises having already deployed mobile devices, mainly smart phones and with 86% of enterprises surveyed planning to deploy media tablets this year. These devices are now mature enough to replace many of the roles played by laptops or even traditional workstations. Considering the popularity of personal use tablets and the increasing time that employees spend on these units, it makes sense for enterprises to integrate them under a centralized IT network to save employee time and company resources.

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Information and identities are the lifeblood of your enterprise, yet the use of public cloud services challenge many legacy approaches to protecting what’s important. The move to the cloud requires a new control point that provides visibility and protection of your critical information and identity assets.
In his session at the 11th International Cloud Expo, Nico Popp, Vice President of Product Management and Development for Symantec O3, learn how Symantec O3 can help you realize the vision of a protected cloud, and hear the CISO from a major business bank discuss information security in the new world of cloud computing.

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It used to be so easy. The company needed more IT infrastructure, so you bought more components, built more technology, and scrambled to keep it all well oiled. Then along came the cloud and the world shifted under your feet – or perhaps more accurately, over your head. Suddenly they wanted you out of the server room and (instead) in the boardroom, assessing the services of cloud vendors and discussing the cost benefits of the new technology. And then it’s all “strategy this, planning that.” But you keep thinking to yourself: What was wrong with the old stuff? And do things really have to change?
If “Internal Trembling” is all that comes to mind at the mention of “IT” nowadays, you’re not alone. For the past few years, CIOs have developed an inferiority complex, questioning the very skills that got them where they are now and assessing how they can be useful moving forward. In the worst cases, cloud computing has made flying blind at work a reality, and that can shatter CIOs’ confidence. Server rooms, with their friendly racks of IT infrastructure were once so warm, cozy, and inviting. Now everything’s cloudy. Adding cloud computing – with its associated outsourcing management responsibility – to the mix when your roster already includes responsibility for managing legacy systems, maintaining uptime, delivering customer service, securing data, ensuring compliance, making mission-critical decisions, and sometimes even getting coffee for the CEO, can be overwhelming.

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Not yet included in the NIST taxonomy of Cloud Computing models is ‘BPaaS’ – Business Process as a Service.

Hopefully it soon will be, as although it is the lesser known and discussed of the Cloud categories, it’s the most powerful in it’s ability to directly impact short-term business transformation and perceivable business value to end-users.
Where IaaS provides virtual servers, PaaS the databases and other middleware and then SaaS for a category of software like CRM, as the name suggests BPaaS is the next layer up again, where the software is then tailored for a specific workflow and this is delivered as-a-Service.

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Many firms still dismiss the importance of social networking and some of them even ban employees from using these services while in the workplace. They think that “social” starts and ends with Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and other networks that might be best described as informal, consumer level and perhaps even fun.
It would be unfair to blame these old traditionalists who have dug their heels in and insisted that their traditional trading systems don’t need fixing, let alone reinventing. It has been a so-called ‘paradigm shift’ and a change in mindset toward social is sometimes a lot to ask for.

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OpenStack Folsom, the sixth release of the open source cloud computing platform, saw a 65 percent increase in contributors, as well as the addition of Networking and Block Storage services, architected in line with the OpenStack philosophy of pluggability and extensibility. While work was underway to establish the new OpenStack Foundation, the thriving community once again delivered the release on-time and with all planned essential features.

OpenStack Folsom automates pools of compute, storage and networking resources, now including emerging Software Defined Networking (SDN) solutions via OpenStack Networking plug-ins, to build private and public cloud infrastructures without vendor lock-in. OpenStack Networking currently includes plug-in support for Open vSwitch, the Ryu open source network operating system, standard Linux bridge networking and commercial solutions from Cisco, Nicira, and NEC, with others in development. Written by more than 330 contributors, the Folsom release features a continued focus on stability and extensibility, while adding considerable new features like Networking, Block Storage and Hyper-V support. The community also made significant progress with localization efforts, introducing a new translation framework for the software, user-facing guides and documentation.

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