Grazed from TechTimes.  Author: Mark Hawver.

Cloud computing is here to stay. But the concept is still new enough that many businesses and consumers have only a hazy notion of what it means, and, even more frustrating, cannot figure out how to get the most advantage given investment.

Meanwhile cloud service providers are stumbling about as start-ups come and go, technology and competitive environments rapidly change rapidly with it all leading to a bit of a circus-like atmosphere. If you’re a business that fears for the safety of your cloud data or cannot decide if you want to invest in building your own cloud platform, your concerns are well-founded. The sands are still shifting…

Grazed from BusinessCloudNews.  Author: Jonathan Brandon.

Genesys, a contact centre infrastructure specialist and IBM announced a partnership this week that will see the two firms partner to develop a learning system geared towards improving customer experience with IBM’s Watson cognitive computing as a service at its foundation.

The IBM Watson and Genesys solution will aid brands’ customer service agents to provide fast, data-driven answers, according to the companies; the solution’s “Ask Watson” feature will help address customers’ questions, offer feedback to guide their purchase decisions, and troubleshoot their problems…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Tim Hornyak.

Fujitsu has developed a circuit that could double data rates between CPUs in servers and supercomputers.  The receiver circuit can attain speeds of 56 Gbps, Fujitsu Laboratories said Friday, claiming the circuit was the fastest of its kind in the world.  The technology could greatly boost performance in servers, cloud computing and supercomputers, the company said. Research presented by Fujitsu Labs on Friday at the 2014 Symposia on VLSI Technology and Circuits in Hawaii detailed the innovation.

It uses decision feedback equalizer circuits to compensate for degradation in incoming data signals. By using an anticipatory "look ahead" architecture in the circuit to correct for degradation problems, Fujitsu Labs was able to increase the operating frequency of the circuit and double its speed…

Grazed from EntperpriseTech.  Author: George Leopold.

Brace yourself for the Zettabyte Era.  That forecast comes from networking equipment giant Cisco Systems, which has released its latest Visual Networking Index that foresees global Internet Protocol traffic growing three-fold through 2018 to a hard-to-get-your-brain-around 1.6 zettabytes, or more than one and a half trillion gigabytes, per year.  (The concept of zettabytes is so new that automated spell checkers still don’t recognize the word.)

Driving IP traffic over the next five years will be high-definition streaming video and the emerging network of intelligent devices popularly known as the Internet of Things. Traffic demand will be augmented by faster broadband speeds…

Grazed from Virtual Bridges.  Author: PR Announcement.

Virtual Bridges, Inc. today announced that VERDE has received a 2014 Cloud Computing Desktop-as-a-Service Award from Cloud Computing magazine, a TMC sponsored cloud communications technology website. Winners will be featured in the third-quarter edition of Cloud Computing magazine.

VERDE is a highly flexible, enterprise-ready desktop management solution that delivers desktop-as-a service for enterprises and service providers alike. Key features include fast provisioning and deployment, support for Windows and Linux, optimized storage with cache I/O technology, stateless clustering for high availability and fast and flexible scaling, roles-based access controls, multi-tenancy and broad coverage of client devices…

Grazed from MSPMentor.  Author: Michael Brown.

Amidst the cloud computing revolution, peer-to-peer file sharing is beginning to gain momentum as well.  TechCrunch has recently cast the spotlight on a small company, Infinit, who is involved in this new trend.

“We see that a lot of our users share huge files,” said co-founder and COO Baptiste Fradin in the above article, “And a lot of people managed to digitize processes that were still physical. For example, in video post-production, you had to hire a delivery person to ship a hard drive — now you can use Infinit.”

While this may be a good fit for personal use, is it a good fit for a business and MSPs?

It is Fast and Easy

With peer-to-peer file sharing, sending files to someone else can be very simple.  Users are able to send a file directly to someone else, through the sharing application or by creating a direct link to download the file…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CliQr Technologies, the leader in hybrid cloud application migration and lifecycle management, today announced that CliQr’s CloudCenter(TM) solution has won the prestigious Grand Prix Best of Show Award in the Cloud Platform category at Interop Tokyo, 2014. CliQr’s co-founder and CEO Gaurav Manglik joined CliQr’s partner, Net One Systems, to showcase the CloudCenter platform at the event.

"We are both honored and excited to receive this prestigious award. We believe this recognition further validates the significance of our CloudCenter technology for the entire cloud industry," said Manglik. "As enterprises increasingly embrace cloud adoption, whether it is to a public, private or hybrid environment, they are demanding the flexibility to move and manage their applications easily and with far more flexibility than we see today. CloudCenter’s unique application-based technology combined with a suite of cloud-focused lifecycle management features such as price-performance benchmarking, multi-user governance along with full version control and release management makes it the answer enterprises are looking for to move to the cloud."…

Grazed from Mirantis. Author: PR Announcement.

Mirantis, the number one pure-play OpenStack company, today announced the general availability of Mirantis OpenStack Express, an on-demand private Cloud-as-a-Service for enterprises. The new web service enables companies to stand up private clouds and make them available to developers and end users in minutes.

“Mirantis OpenStack Express is extremely easy to use, straightforward to setup and the support team at Mirantis has been fantastic,” says Binh Phan, Senior Security Architect at McAfee. “This is a dramatically better way to build and run your private OpenStack cloud.”…

Grazed from Government Technology. Author: Penelope Lemov.

Some 50 years ago, states and localities missed the boat on keeping their sales taxes current. As the economy shifted from manufacturing to services, most governments failed to slap sales taxes on them. Now there’s a new wrinkle confronting states and localities: The migration of commerce — the sale of goods and services — to the cloud.

The shift poses a number of challenges for tax departments. Namely, if software is provided virtually and hosted by a worldwide network, has real property changed hands and can states tax it? With software sales on the cloud expected to generate $17 billion in revenue worldwide this year, states and localities are in a hurry to sort out these kinds of questions…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

TeraDiscoveries, Inc., a bio-therapeutics company focused on cloud-based drug design and development, announced today that effective immediately, it has changed its corporate name to Cloud Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Cloud Pharmaceuticals designs new drugs and drug candidates and accelerates the development process by implementing new, innovative cloud computing technology in place of traditional methods. The company manages the development of multiple drug candidates through an extensive network of partners.

"The worldwide pharmaceutical industry is in need of new drugs that target smaller market segments. They need to be developed faster, have novel IP, and offer greater drug safety, efficacy, and affordability," says Ed Addison, company president and CEO. "Our approach uses cloud technology and high-performance computing to efficiently calculate which of all possible molecules are the best drug candidates. This reduces cost, decreases development time, and creates novel molecules with therapeutic value. Our new name more aptly reflects our approach and value proposition."…