News

• Overcome FUD with a clear cloud services policy: Ovum

  Australian policy makers need to explain the benefits of cloud services clearly if state and federal government adoption is to improve, according to Ovum Australia's research director, Steve Hodgkinson.

• Cloud fight keeps Amazon, Microsoft, Google and Rackspace clamouring for enterprise customers

  Amazon Web Services is attempting to distance itself from other cloud providers by enhancing its services to incorporate the differentiating features of its competitors.

• Dell announces Aussie datacentre footprint, to move Cloud services to region

  IT giant, Dell, has unveiled its local datacentre play by announcing two “significant investments in the millions of dollars” to settle into two sites along the Australian Eastern seaboard.

• DIY Cloud: Choosing your own virtual machine image sizes

  Amazon Web Services, seen by many as the market-leading infrastructure cloud computing provider, has a pretty full shelf of virtual machine (VM) image sizes for customers to spin up in its Cloud -- 17 separate instance VM sizes are listed on the company's website, in fact.

• SDN switch company takes aim at the cloud

  SDN switch vendor Pica8 this week unveiled a reference architecture intended to help cloud providers develop their programmable networks using Pica8 products.

• Australian government agencies still reaching for the cloud: Ovum

  Federal and state government agencies in Australia have yet to realise cloud computing’s role in the digital economy and should look to the example set by service providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), according to an Australian analyst.

• AAPT, NetApp extend partnership to cloud services

  Telecommunications service provider AAPT is now offering medium to large enterprise customers cloud services following the expansion of its 10-year partnership with NetApp.

• 98 IT jobs to be created in Illawarra, NSW

  Up to 98 new IT jobs could be created in the Illawarra region of New South Wales following CSC Australia’s $2.76 million government funding grant to create two centres of excellence within its Illawarra Technology Park campus.

• Top 10 Influential: Australian data centres, Cloud expansion

  While data centres and Cloud computing are not new kinds of technology, they did generate plenty of stories during 2011 as operators began to turn fresh ground for new data centre sites while faced with the Gillard Government’s incoming Carbon Tax.

• Revera, Datacom awarded NZ government data centre contracts

  New Zealand data centre providers Revera and Datacom are set to build new tier-three facilities after being awarded infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) contracts by the NZ government as part of a bid to reduce IT costs.

• Telstra to build new Melbourne DC as part of Cloud services push

  Telstra (ASX:TLS) is set to build a new 2000-square metre data centre in Melbourne as part of its $800 million, five-year Cloud services agenda announced this week.

• Local server market will not bow to Cloud: IDC

  The growing popularity of Cloud services has not hindered the local server industry, with enterprise investment in servers forecast to continue over the next five years, according to IDC.

• Mitigating the risk of cloud services failure

  One of CIOs' biggest concerns about the infrastructure-as-a-service model has been the loss of control over assets and management that enterprises might experience upon moving into a multi-tenant environment. While analysts and early adopters of infrastructure-as-a-service offerings have argued that such apprehension is rooted more in fear than fact, Amazon's recent public data center debacle has given everyone good reason to question the reliability of the public cloud.

• Wilson HTM to float on the cloud

  Wilson HTM Investment Group (ASX:WIG) will move its entire IT infrastructure to IntraPower’s cloud computing platform in a $16 million deal.