The Lone Star College System, a network of community colleges based in Houston, Texas, recently switched its computing infrastructure to a private cloud built on VMware and EMC technologies. In this interview, vice chancellor of Technology for LSCS Link Alender talks about the transition to private cloud and the challenges and benefits that came with it. Alender describes how cloud has created immediate cost savings for the college system and has allowed them to implement new services in a few days, instead of a few months.

File storage provider Box.net today announced integration with Google Docs. The announcement comes after Box.net earlier this year announced integration with Microsoft Sharepoint and Documentum. The author here writes that Box.net seems to be moving away from an earlier focus on document editing capability and instead is trying to become a document management platform. The author cites a Box.net blog entry in which the CEO of the company explains the value of integration in the cloud.

Data management tools provider VoltDB today announced integration with Hadoop in its VoltDB Enterprise Edition. The system uses tools from Cloudera building around Apache Sqoop, a SQL to Hadoop integration technology.

Hadoop is a software framework from the Apache Foundation designed to allow for the distributed processing of large data sets. Hadoop is designed to be scalable and function primarily at the application layer, not the server layer, allowing for changes and fixess to be made easily and quickly.

Digital asset management company NetXposure last week announced integration with Amazon S3. The integration will allow NetXposure users to store document files remotely through Amazon S3′s cloud storage services. The integration allows NetXposure users to browse, search, and edit files stored on the cloud. The files are synchronized so that changes stored locally will be made on the cloud version of the file as well.

Cloud storage is often used for backing up on premise storage, but as cloud becomes both more affordable and secure, more businesses are using cloud for their primary storage needs. In this article, George Crump looks at what changes for a business and what stays the same when managing primary cloud storage. A lack of integration by storage service providers with different tiers of cloud storage, including tape, means that cloud storage options are not as diverse as some might expect.

Cloud storage provider NetApp today announced upgrades to its SnapProtect management software that includes expanded integration with CommVault Sipana backup technologies. SnapProtect is designed to improve storage efficiency for IT departments.

According to a Computer World article on the topic, the integration with CommVault Sipana enhances the ability of NetApp users to manage snap shots and data replication.

Quest Software today announced a partnership with StorSimple to provide a cloud backup, restore and disaster recovery tool to VMware vRanger users. The StorSimple Hybrid Cloud Storage Appliance is deployed as an appliance in a data center.

Three weeks after Amazon’s infamous EC2 outage, commentators continue to analyze how the outage affects perceptions of cloud computing and what lessons can be learned from it.

Peter Bright of Ars Technica parsed out the details of the outage from a lengthy report issued by Amazon. Bright described how the Elastic Block System Amazon uses to replicate data for virtual machine users essentially exacerbated its own problems during the outage. According to Bright, the complex security responses within the Amazon EBS system caused a control system backlog even after some initial problems were fixed. Writes Bright: “This resulted, effectively, in Amazon performing a denial-of-service attack against its own systems and services.”

There are a number of lessons the outage highlights for Amazon customers. Justin Warren of itnews.com writes that the Amazon cloud computing outage should demonstrate why critical applications should not rely on a single AWS (Amazon Web Services) region. He also says that the response issued by Amazon should be used for guidance as developers look to support their applications with AWS.

While the outage was a dark moment for Amazon, not every business that relies on AWS suffered from the outage. But that’s only true of those who prepared for such an eventuality. Charles Babcock of InformationWeek writes about how two companies, Bizo and Mashery, took precautionary measures even beyond those recommended by Amazon to maintain availability for their customers.

Jonathan Feldman of the same site followed up Babcock’s story with an editorial. He writes, “The Amazon outage is irrelevant. CIOs should be evaluating the cloud as just another service-delivery mechanism, planning for its failure.”

In a Forbes.com blog post, Eric Savitz echoes those sentiments. Savitz shares how the CSO of Rackspace said the outage at Amazon was nothing more that a blip that raises the profile of cloud computing.

EMC today announced EMC Atmos 2.0, a new version of its cloud storage platform. Atmos 2.0 is designed to store object segments, rather than entire objects, across a distributed storage network for increased security. It also is designed to simplify the integration of applications with a new software development kit (SDK). Atmos also includes additional support for Apple iOS and Centera integrated applications via Centera/XAM.

EMC today announced at application networking provider F5 networks added support for EMC’s Atmos cloud storage platform. The integration is designed to help users connect on-premise storage platforms with data stored on the cloud.

EMC also announced Atmos integration with cloud storage service Oxygen Cloud. The integration is designed to provide Oxygen Cloud users with remote access from mobile devices through file synchronization.

According to the authors, cloud-enabled disaster recovery (DR) takes advantage of the scalability and multi-tenancy in ways that remote backup does not. This leads to more flexible and cost-effective DR options. Cloud-enabled DR, though, introduces data quality, support, and integration challenges. Emerging cloud-enabled DR vendors are looking to solve those problems.

Oracle releases Oracle Cloud File System (Press Release)

Oracle Cloud File System is designed to help organizations deploy their applications, databases, and storage in private clouds. It includes a storage management cluster file system or managing file data that is not stored in an Oracle database and provides volume management support as well. Read the full press release.

Gladinet introduces file synchronization tool (Press Release)

Gladinet today added file synchronization to its Cloud Desktop 3.0 tool. The file synchronization tool is designed to allow a user to access and manage files on Amazon S3, Google Docs, Windows Azure, OpenStack, Mezeo, and other storage providers across multiple PCs.