Research confirms that Facebook, Twitter and Google are spying on users

big brother (Photo credit: Vince_Lamb)

Social networks: can robots violate user privacy?

ECM Plus +++ Recent news in the international media has revealed numerous Internet privacy concerns that definitely deserve attention and further investigation, which is why Geneva-based High-Tech Bridge  decided to conduct a simple technical experiment to verify how the 50 largest social networks, web services and free emails systems respect – or indeed abuse – the privacy of their users.

According to High-Tech Bridge, the experiment and its results can be reproduced by anyone, as we tried to be as neutral and objective as possible.

Half of firms suffering from cloudphobia – survey

Snoopers (sic) Paradise (Photo credit: the justified sinner)

Fear of governments snooping deters companies from using the cloud

ECM Plus +++ Almost half of IT experts are deterred from keeping sensitive data in the cloud because of fear of government intervention and possible legal action, according to a new survey from Lieberman Software which was released today.

Massive 65% rise in data centre power consumption – survey

Power requirements surging across globalised data centres – survey

Exponential gigawatts more energy being siphoned into globalised corporate data centres

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ In a sharp rise in expected power consumption by data centres used for cloud computing as a result of globalisation of the IT and corporatist sectors, research firm DCD Intelligence has just taken the wrsps off stark findings from its DatacenterDynamics 2012 Global Census report.

Rackspace to acquire Mailgun for cloud email integration

Rackspace to acquire Mailgun

Rackspace takes aim at Mailgun in ‘open cloud’ platform expansion

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus /London/ +++ Rackspace Hosting, the open cloud company, has just entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Mailgun, Inc., a Y Combinator startup.

According to Rackspace, their Mailgun acquisition will further enhance its product portfolio, making it easy to integrate cloud-based email services into applications and websites within minutes.

Judicial hearing in Megaupload user data case

Former federal judge Abraham Sofaer joins with EFF in fight for return of property

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ The Electronic Frontier Foundation, ssisted by retired federal judge and former State Department legal adviser Abraham D. Sofaer, asked a federal judge Friday to order the return of data to Kyle Goodwin, a Megaupload user who lost all access to his files when the cloud storage service was shut down by the U.S. government.

System of a Double Down: First 10 hour DDoS attack crashes SoundCloud

DDoS attacks. Image: kryptyk

On-line cloud firm decked by double major outages in weekday Distributed Denial of Service meltdown

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ On Tuesday October 4 at approximately 8:40pm CET, SoundCloud’s Operations team were alerted to an unusually high amount of unidentified traffic leading to a complete network outage. Within minutes, the company’s Chief Technology Officer and Vice President of Engineering and Head of Operations and all available operations engineering resources were deployed to investigate the issue and the company said it “worked around the clock” to locate and resolve it.

Amazon and Microsoft outages clatter cloud integrity

Cloud chaos in blitzkrieg strike

Catastrophic corporatist cloud outages destroying credibility of cloud as a serious business model?

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ In the wake of the dramatic outages at behemoths Amazon and Microsoft’s cloud services, industry heavyweights were quick to weigh in with their take on the ongoing data debacles.

Riccardo Degli Effetti, data centre manager at Rackspace said: “The recent lightning strike in Ireland that has taken down Amazon’s cloud hosting service in the region is a timely reminder that outages occur, no matter how well a technology or technology provider is prepared to prevent it.” 

Cloud threat as ‘zombie VMs’ sprawl

Virtual sprawl goes Zombie in cloud threat

Tens of millions of pounds tied up in petabytes of wasted storage as Zombie Virtual Machines continue to be a problem

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Real-Status CTO, Stace Hipperson, has warned that Virtual Machine administrators still need to be extra-vigilant against VM sprawl as more and more users ‘self-provision’ to set up their own virtual machines.

VMs, software implementations of computers that execute programs like physical machines, are the enabling technology behind cloud computing.

WEEKEND PLUS: Germans go kloud kontent krazy

Donner und Blitzen! Germans going Kloud Kontent Krazy!

Germans go cloud-based content management for mobile applications in CMS blitz

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ Looks like the Germans are about to go kompletely knuts over kloud kontent management these days.

According to the Germanic corporation, dubbed ‘StorageRoom’ is a new cloud-based CMS that serves content which is, they claim, a mobile applications on multiple platforms.

Cloud migration held back by ‘lack of visibility’

Cloud migration concerns mount

Are organisations holding back from making use of cloud services due to lack of understanding and reassurance?

By ECM Plus staff

ECM Plus +++ New research by IT firm Intergence Systems has found that companies are often reluctant to migrate to the cloud when there are still on-going security and management concerns around data management.

According to Intergence, cloud-based services are expanding but are also frequently viewed with suspicion, particularly for reasons such as data governance and security.

Cloud strategy survey shows wide range of corporatist plans

Cloud computing infrastructure

68 percent of world’s companies claim to be planning to implement a cloud strategy

By ECM Plus

ECM Plus +++ Axios Systems has just revealed results of its latest worldwide research survey that shows over 50 percent of IT professionals do not think their ITSM processes are mature enough to effectively manage cloud-based services.

According to the research, twenty-six percent of the IT professionals did think their firms were ready, whilst the other 23% said that they felt ‘unsure’.

Pay Now Or I’ll Cut Off Your Cloud

Hi-Ho Silver Lining? EpiServer goes glam with platform reboot

Rise of the Cloud: Even Wilhelm Reich would be proud...

New ‘Platform-as-a-service’ PaaS model shortens time to ‘cicks;for online marketers, digital agencies and developers

By ECM Plus

ECM Plus +++ EPiServer has launched a cloud version of its CMS.

The company now claims tjat its content management software is packaged and hosted on EPiServer’s Everweb service, a web-based combination of EPiServer CMS and EPiServer Composer.

According to the company, this new method is an interactive version with a new focus for marketers and for web developers. 

OBITER DICTA: Cloud data center chaos set for earthquake catastrophes?

With a cloud security standards void to bring enterprise disasters closer?

The ostensible absence of universally-agreed cloud security standards and SLAs for enterprises who venture forth into the sexy and hip cloud outsourcing trend, without implementing an adequate risk assesment profile, is a recipe for digital data centre disaster.

FEATURE: Cloud Computing Standards: The Great Debate

Cloud confusion debate continues

Justin Pine takes a look at the ongoing debate around cloud standards.

Recent research conducted by Mimecast has found that a large proportion of businesses are now using some form of cloud service, with a further 30 percent planning on adopting more cloud services in the future.

Fashionable new architectures within the technology industry are not unusual. However, even allowing for a certain amount of bandwagon jumping, this rate of cloud adoption has been considerable.

OBITER DICTA: Cloud – A Substantive Choice Or Vapid Vaporware?

Game-changing cloud computing hype confuses more than illuminates

Reading through the lamestream media Sunday papers of IT and business news it strikes one how little the sheeple really understand about the cloud.

The total and utter confusion of content, telecommunications, middleware, hosting, outsourcing, ROI, media and IT highlight that the whole shooting-match is a mess of terms that everyone is molding to their own terms of reference and that there is, clearly, no standard, no best-practice for cloud decisions.

Kroll Ontrack avows varied virtualisation systems

Kroll Ontrack now supports range of virtualised systems for data recovery

Media that has suffered a catastrophic electronic malfunction

ECM Plus – Kroll Ontrack has just confirmed it can now support virtualisation products from a range of other vendors, including Hyper-V, Oracle VM VirtualBox and Citrix XenServer, as well as VMware vSphere virtual systems.

The support will be via its in-lab and remote Ontrack Data Recovery services, the comany said.

GXS touts GridConnect for cloud SaaS collaborators

GXS on the grid in cloud collaborator for SaaS and ISVs

Embedded integration partner programme for ISVs and SaaS providers for B2B cloud

ECM Plus +++ GXS has just taken the wraps off a new programme for collaborators in the independent software vendor community and SaaS players to embed GXS’s Trading Grid integration cloud platform into cloud services and software apps.

GXS said that their collaborators can now connect banking, manufacturing and retailer customers to make the most of their six million trading partner relationships already in GXS Trading Grid.

FEATURE: Got a copy in the Cloud?

Copy protection in the cloud

BY CLAIRE GALBOIS-ALCAIX

Ten years ago, if you’d asked a small businesses owner what they did to back up their data, the majority would have pulled a tape from their bag and told you how they swapped out a cassette each night and took them home for safe keeping.

But times have changed and, today, everyone is talking about ‘the Cloud’. So what does that mean? Are all Cloud services the same? And is all Cloud data protected?

Wunderbar! Free ‘Cloud-In-A-Box’ offer from Onapp at German fest

US$25 million “Cloud-In-A-Box” giveaway to dispel cloud hosting cost and complexity myths

BY PAUL QUIGLEY

ECM Plus – OnApp is offering hosting providers at the WorldHostingDays 2011 exhibition today, in a campaign they hope will dispel the myth that the cost and complexity of setting up a cloud hosting operation is a big deal. 

In a moment of marketing madness, OnApp will give away 500 “Cloud-In-A-Box” packages that give recipients the opportunity to get cloud hosting software and services, worth well over US$50,000 – free of charge.

FEATURE: The Challenges and Business Benefits of Cloud Computing

A row of racks in a server farm

BY JULIAN BOX
The current economic climate has seen the need for organisations across all sectors to identify cost savings strategies. The term ‘virtualisation’ and the concept of ‘cloud computing’ have been long discussed as cost-saving and business continuity solutions. However, before an organisation considers deploying a virtual environment and eventually utilising the cloud, it is important for companies to understand how this will fit into their overall business objectives.

Improving operational efficiency will yield cost savings as many organisations are still stuck with the inefficient model of utilising both physical only or a hybrid of physical and virtual infrastructure. These types of environments are expensive to purchase and maintain, especially when adding on power and cooling costs in server rooms or data centres. While virtual infrastructure brings about significant cost and resource savings, it also brings challenges and a shift in operations to deliver the ultimate benefits.    

FEATURE: Cloud – Your Servers Are Virtualised – Is Your Security?

All Your Servers Are Belong To Us

BY ADAM POWERS

From IT consumerisation to user mobility, corporate network and security teams have had their fair share of challenges to deal with over the past few years. These trends have created what is often referred to as the ‘vanishing perimeter’. reducing the efficiency of traditional defences, such as proxy servers, firewalls and IDS/IPS.

Galileo pontificates cloud payments for banks

Safety in numbers?: Cloud payment plans from Galileo

Cloud processing for regional and smaller banks and financial firms

ECM Plus – Galileo Processing has just taken the wraps off its new suite of solutions that enable payment card issuing banks and payment card programme managers to use cloud computing while ensuring levels of security, availability and regulatory compliance.

According to Galileo, their cloud processing offers clients a dedicated virtual environment where clients can preserve intellectual property. Users can develop their own app and functionality to support their card programmes.

FEATURE: Embrace the cloud for your ECM strategy

BY BALA SUBRAMANIAN

ECM solution providers are keen to jump into the bandwagon and take advantage of what the cloud technologies can offer.

There are three options available for ECM solution providers in the cloud namely Software-as-a-Service (Saas), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) models. Each of these models has distinct advantages and disadvantages that ECM solution providers should be aware.

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model has lower investment costs and typically based on usage based payment. The challenges for ECM solution providers can vary from doing heavy customisation, data security, integration issues, data portability and vendor lock-in.