Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Julie Bort.

IBM is trying to block the massive 10-year, $600 million cloud computing deal Amazon won from the CIA in January. Big Blue had also bid on the CIA cloud but didn't win. Now it has filed a protest, reports Federal Computer Week's Frank Konkel.

It's actually pretty common for the losing bidders to file protests when huge government contracts are at stake. For instance, last year IBM won a protest over a $543 million contract for wireless tracking sensors awarded to HP. But after a review of the bids, the government decided to stick with HP...

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

iSoftStone Holdings Limited ("iSoftStone," NYSE: ISS), a leading China-based IT services and solutions provider, and International Business Machines ("IBM"), the largest IT and business solutions provider today announced a collaboration to build www.xb-cloud.cn ("XB-CLOUD"), a Cloud Service Platform for Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises ("SMEs") in Northwest China. The two companies, together with Industry and IT Committee of Gansu Province, Lanzhou Municipal Government, and China Mobile Gansu also recently officially established the Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province. These initiatives aim at facilitating SMEs' daily operations through efficient use of cloud computing and promote Lanzhou as a model of the Northwest China in using advance technology to drive industries' growth.

The establishment of XB-CLOUD and Cloud Service Association for SMEs of Gansu Province is an extension of the Cloud Computing Service Center for SMEs in Northwest China co-launched by Lanzhou Municipal Government, China Mobile Gansu and IBM last year. The Cloud Computing Service Center has been built in China Mobile Gansu's Xigu premises, and the initial phase of cloud computing services platform and application development are completed...

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

BlueKai, the only end-to-end SaaS solution for data management, analysis and activation, today announced a partnership with IBM, in which BlueKai will integrate with IBM Digital Data Exchange (DDX), part of the company's Digital Analytics suite. Effective immediately, the partnership connects customers using IBM's tag management solution with BlueKai's DMP data intelligence across offline, online and mobile channels. IBM DDX is a tag management solution that simplifies the management of IBM and third-party page tags, enabling clients to deploy and maintain website pages with minimal support from IT.

As data-driven marketing transforms the way brands reach and connect with audiences, IBM's partnership with BlueKai marks a watershed moment in the industry as it underscores how traditional marketing-related technology vendors are turning to innovative upstarts to help drive better engagement and ROI in a highly digital and fragmented media landscape...

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Antony Savvas.

Telefónica Digital and Push Technology are to offer fast and scalable mobile and web data distribution from the cloud to any device through a strategic partnership. Push Technology’s smart data distribution technology Diffusion, combined with Telefónica Digital’s infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) offering, allows customers to "address the challenges of bandwidth, infrastructure and redundant data to reduce costs and increase revenue", said the partners.

Sean Bowen, CEO of Push Technology, said: “Cloud service providers are operating a utility model to promote the benefits of lower CAPEX and scale. The problem is these cloud service providers are not addressing the challenges of the internet - bandwidth and network availability - so regardless of the services in-house, the delivery can become a quality of service nightmare."...

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Global Micro Solutions has partnered with Apprenda to introduce a new platform as a service (PaaS) cloud offering, intended to help businesses build, manage and deploy next-generation cloud applications. The public PaaS provides a way for customers to scale their massive custom application portfolios, quickly and in a secure cloud environment, says JJ Milner, MD and chief cloud architect for Global Micro.

“Global Micro is the first hosting provider in South Africa to offer Azure Services for Windows,” says Milner. “The Apprenda Platform extends this infrastructure as a service (IaaS) capability with platform as a service. Global Micro is Apprenda’s exclusive delivery partner in Africa and will support the partner and customer community. Apprenda will, in turn, support Global Micro.” The service will help to maximise the productivity of development teams and increase the speed with which updates and new products can be launched...

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: James Stirling.

Infor and IBM have announced an agreement which will see Infor offering its enterprise application software on IBM's public, private and hybrid SmartCloud infrastructure. Infor offers enterprise CRM, ERP, financial management, human resources and business intelligence software. The deal means that Infor's popular applications such as Infor LN, Infor M3, Infor Lawson, and Infor HCM will be available through IBM's cloud.

Infor said that many organisations are keen to take advantage of cloud computing to run business critical applications on the cloud, but may require around-the-clock customer service, security and high availability, as well as greater resiliency for mission-critical operations...

Grazed from Technorati. Author: Rahul Manekari.

The latest news in the cloud computing sector comes from none other than Microsoft. It has been reported that Microsoft has tied up with Cloud Cruiser, maker of the chargeback and billing analytic system, to give Windows Server 2012 and the System Center Management system its own billing and chargeback capabilities which will enable it to be used on Microsoft Azure’s Cloud services.

This will enable enterprises and hosting service providers to gain greater cost efficiencies by delivering holistic cost visibility, cost analytics, chargeback, and billing across Microsoft hybrid cloud environments...

Grazed from IBM. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that Avnet Technology Solutions, the global IT solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (NYSE: AVT), has selected IBM SmartCloud as the foundation for Avnet Cloud Solutions, a portfolio of cloud offerings for small and midsize businesses in India. With IBM SmartCloud, Avnet offers compute and storage capabilities in a utility model and structures customized solutions such as disaster recovery and managed services.

Avnet has a strong presence in India, where it is expanding its portfolio of services to include customized cloud solutions for small and midsize businesses across various industries, including retail, logistics, manufacturing, banking and financial services, public sector and education, among others. Cloud computing holds tremendous potential for a significant number of small and midsize Indian enterprises with limited IT resources. IBM SmartCloud will enable Avnet partners to offer their customers access to enterprise-level IT at affordable price points without additional investment in infrastructure, security, back-up, upgrades and maintenance. This partnership will help those customers derive benefits by adopting a robust cloud architecture and service model, leapfrogging the traditional investment in enterprise IT...

Grazed from ArabNews. Author: RD Rasooldeen.

Mobily’s new cloud computing service will offer its customers enhanced security and efficiency at an attractive price, Marwan Al-Ahmadi, Mobily’s chief business officer (CBO), said in Riyadh.
Al-Ahmadi was speaking at a press conference held in Riyadh following the launch of advanced public and hybrid cloud computing services for the business sector in the Kingdom, in cooperation with Virtustream.

Rodney J. Rogers, Virtustream chairman and CEO, was also present at the event. The conference comes following the strategic alliance agreement signed by both companies earlier this year in which public and hybrid cloud computing services were jointly built and provided by Mobily and Virtustream...

Grazed from Business Insider.  Author: Julie Bort.

A bunch of big enterprise companies are lining up to buy a cloud computing company called SoftLayer Technologies, Reuters' Nadia Damouni reports.  IBM and EMC are reportedly in talks right now to buy the company in a deal that could be worth more than $2 billion. The sales process is being handled by Morgan Stanley and Credit Suisse.

Dallas, Texas-based SoftLayer is privately held, with the majority of shares owned by GI Partners. It has reportedly turned down other suitors before, like AT&T.  SoftLayer is a cloud-computing and Web-hosting provider with about 25,000 customers, mostly small and mid-sized customers, making it the world's largest privately held website hoster, Damouni reports...