Cloud Apps of the Week The New York Times has proclaimed Google Music as one of the best cloud applications released for Android phone devices last year. That the music service is offered free of charge helps explain its selection, and also locates Google Music right at home among the other applications in the Google family, all available gratis (GMail, Google Docs, et cetera). But like those other apps, comprehensive features also distinguish Google Music: users can transfer 20,000 of their tracks to the cloud via the app, which also immediately and wirelessly synchronizes what they upload to their Android.
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Put A Clamp on Cloud Music? Village Voice Insists Yes Music writers have rung in the New Year with cloud complaints. A recent edition of New York City’s “Village Voice,” America’s largest weekly newspaper, finds head music columnist Maura Johnston picking away at premium music-listening services for the dearth in their artistic content. Her article, “New Year, New Rules,” advises readers on several cogent ways to improve their appreciation of fine music in 2012. Among her recommendations is to refrain from the cloud as a source of comprehensive music listening. Johnston specifically maligns Spotify, one of the most popular streaming
How to Build a Private Cloud Despite it being so easy to just hook into the public cloud by going to Google, Amazon, Microsoft and other public cloud vendors, a private cloud offers a bit more control to your virtualization and automation efforts. Many people have already tried it and posted up how they did it and all of them have mentioned the headaches and migraines that are in store for you. The main reason this is so, is because there is no one set way to build a private cloud, although there are some attempts currently underway to do
Security concerns related to cloud computing Preventing data loss was stated as the main security concern overall, with 71% of respondents identifying it as one of their top three security concerns. However, preventing outages, rated second with 64%, was cited most often as the top issue, bearing out the fundamental role that ICT plays in business processes today. Large companies were much more concerned about keeping security up to date (69%) and meeting regulatory requirements (67%) than small and medium-sized companies. To help reduce security concerns overall, cloud providers need to clearly communicate their practices for maintaining a secure cloud.
Most Commonly Used Cloud Applications Websites, backup and recovery, email and calendars were rated as the most commonly used cloud applications. The high ranking (fourth) position for testing and development is explained by the way in which cloud delivery simplifies setup and dismantling of test and development environments. Here’s plenty of growth potential for backup and recovery, document management and customer relationship management (CRM) as cloud applications. However, perceived concerns about data security and regulatory compliance mean that most organisations don’t currently have firm plans to move applications like billing and HR management to the cloud. Click to Zoom Source:
Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money: UPDATE 5 This is the fifth in a continuing series on startups raising funding. Today, there are two startups in focus – Xeround and SurDoc. Xeround (http://xeround.com/) Xeround, a California-based startup that describes itself as “The Cloud Database”, announced the successful completion of its Series C round of funding in which it raised $9 million. Previous investors that included Menlo Park-based Benchmark Capital, Israel’s Giza Venture Capital, Ignition Partners and Trilogy Partnership, put in money in this round as well. According to a press release, Xeround “offers a database-as-a-service for MySQL-based applications that’s elastic,
The Apache Software Foundation Announces Apache Hadoop™ v1.0 Open Source “Big Data” Cloud computing platform powers millions of compute-hours to process exabytes of data for Amazon.com, AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, foursquare, HP, IBM, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Netflix, The New York Times, Rackspace, Twitter, Yahoo!, and more. 4 January 2012 —FOREST HILL, MD— The Apache Software Foundation (ASF), the all-volunteer developers, stewards, and incubators of nearly 150 Open Source projects and initiatives, today announced Apache™ Hadoop™ v1.0, the Open Source software framework for reliable, scalable, distributed computing. The project’s latest release marks a major milestone six years in the making, and has achieved
