Whitehall IT chiefs have been warned by the intelligence agency GCHQ that security problems with cloud computing could foil their plans to use the technology to slash the cost of public services. The assessment forms part of the first report of the Cyber Security Operations Centre (CSOC), seen by The Register. The new internet intelligence gathering unit, located at GCHQ's "concrete doughnut" in Cheltenham, will begin operations next month.

A start-up that moves VMware-based applications to the Amazon cloud and creates a secure tunnel between a customer's data centre and the cloud service is launching a public beta trial. CloudSwitch moves existing applications from internal data centres to the cloud without rewriting the app or requiring changes in management tools.

Fears over security are hampering adoption of the cloud computing and the industry needs to do something to address those worries, according to Harriet Pearson, VP security counsel and chief privacy officer at IBM.

Businesses in Ireland and the UK are still not convinced of cloud computing’s benefits, a survey released by independent IT management software company CA, suggests. Some 8% of respondents of the survey, Unleashing the Power of Virtualisation - Cloud Computing and the Perceptions of European Business, said they think of cloud as a short-term fad, whereas an additional 82% said they need more convincing of the benefits of cloud computing.

Mayor Boris Johnson has faced Green Party criticism of his open source commitment - but activists say the real problem is with central government. A Green Party representative has accused the London government of failing to fully exploit open source software, but activists say the Greater London Authority is doing well… at least compared to central government.

These complex hosting contracts, with both public and private sector organisations, reflect the emerging and fast growing trend among companies to outsource all or part of their IT services to the cloud. Examples of cloud managed service contracts won recently include a three year deal to host and manage the web and email platforms for Doctors.net.uk. This is the largest, most active online medical network in the U.K., currently supporting 160,000 registered doctors,

Microsoft has revealed plans to lower its data centre budget from US$500 million per project to US$250 million or less. Kevin Timmons, head of Microsoft's data centre operations team, says the company is currently on track to "reduce costs by 50% or more in the next-generation builds".

Data centre demand in Asia has held up in the face of the economic slowdown, with cloud computing a strategic driver for data centre development over the next few years, according to industry observers. Adrian Dominic Ho, program manager for telecom, managed services, networking and outsourcing at IDC Asia-Pacific, said that demand for hosting services has remained fairly strong even during the downturn. "Here in Singapore, almost all the data centres are full and operating close to full capacity," he noted.

LAMDA Hellix has been appointed to develop and operate for the next 7 years, the new green high-density data centre of the Greek Research and Education Network (GRNET). The data centre is the most advanced centre in the Public Sector and the only green high-density data centre (16 kW/rack), with a total installed power capacity of 1600 kVA for supporting critical infrastructure equipment and Power Usage Effectiveness <1.8.

UK firms are not investing enough in their network, risking downtime and performance issues, Computacenter has claimed. The corporate VAR giant surveyed more than 150 IT decision makers across UK enterprises, and discovered that 74% of respondents felt the network was central to their IT strategy, but 33% did not consider it before making a technology purchase, thus compromising performance and security.Despite this, 76% believed taking no action with their network will impact business performance.

Insurance market Lloyd’s of London will be relying on virtualisation technology and grid computing to deal with new regulatory requirements for the sector and the resulting increase in data processing. The requirements, dubbed Solvency II, are due imminently and will introduce comprehensive risk management procedures that set capital levels and implement ways of identifying, measuring and managing risk. This is a major event from an IT standpoint, and it has prompted a new set of technical requirements for insurance firms such as Lloyd’s.

TPI, the largest sourcing data and advisory firm in the world, has released research predicting that the number of outsourcing contracts awarded globally will rise in 2010 as organisations look for new ways to optimize critical business operations in an improving economy.

Apparent Networks has issued a new Performance Advisory detailing an outage in Terremark's vCloud Express services. Apparent Networks' Cloud Performance Center confirmed that a connectivity loss caused the outage, which took place in Terremark's Miami data centre. Businesses utilising Terremark's vCloud Express services from this data centre were affected.

Toyota Australia is placing all its bets on the cloud computing model, and is on a mission to rid itself of any enterprise IT infrastructure within five years. Michael Jenkins, manager of enterprise architecture and strategy at Toyota Australia, boldy told the CeBIT data centre conference in Sydney that he is looking forward to a future in which all applications are delivered via the cloud from data centres that are completely "transparent" and "invisible".

NEC India, a retail specialty technology provider, is setting up a cloud computing infrastructure in its Bangalore office. Confirming the development, David Arambhan, head retail solutions, India and Middle East said, “Our upcoming cloud computing initiative will help retailers, in both organised and unorganised sector, to adapt technologies for conducting their business operations through our cloud computing offerings.” The service will be available from April, 2010.

VISI, the Eden Prairie-based managed hosting and cloud infrastructure provider, has been acquired by a Chicago-based public corporation for US$17.8 million. Telephone and Data Systems acquired VISI through its Wisconsin subsidiary TDS Telecommunications Corp. It was an all-cash transaction, said VISI CEO Mike Sowada.

SunGard Availability Services has announced expansion of its enterprise-grade cloud computing platform to deliver application availability and ultimately recovery in the cloud. Customer demand for the SunGard cloud solutions is strong.

SunGard cloud solutions in North America will take advantage of a Vblock Infrastructure Package, recently announced by the Virtual Computing Environment coalition, which was formed by Cisco and EMC together with VMware.

In what is being described by Dell as a timely attempt to benefit from the customers’ inclination towards development of private cloud computing platforms inside their corporate data centres, the company, has, introduced a collection of hardware software and services that support cloud computing infrastructures.

Business Connexion, in conjunction with Cisco, EMC² and VMware, has launched Virtual Computing Environment in South Africa. “There is enormous potential for our customers with the VCE coalition becoming a local reality. As we have said for several years, this is the future – and now it is here”, said Andy Brauer, CTO at Business Connexion.

NEC will invest around 15 billion yen to enhance data centres for cloud computing over a three-year period as it embarks on an ambitious goal for a tenfold increase in net profit by fiscal 2012, its incoming president said. NEC Senior Vice President Nobuhiro Endo, who will be appointed president, also said the company may consider expanding production lines for its auto battery business to meet increasing demand.