Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

According to Wikipedia, Amazon Web Services (AWS) is "a collection of remote computing services that together make up a cloud computing platform, offered over the internet" which in the simplest of terms is exactly what it is. However, another way to describe AWS is as one of the fastest growing parts of one of the fastest growing businesses around. Formed just eight years ago in 2006, AWS began as 24 separate entities – divisions or product-specific working groups.

Since 2004 the number and size of these separate entities has grown considerably and in 2013 Amazon added 280 separate units, making a grand total of 654. In the first two months of this year it has added another 57. Look at any org chart for AWS and it is complex – one from January this year shows 39 distinct divisions…

Grazed from SmartDataCollective. Author: Zach Taiji.

Over the past few years, cloud computing has become an increasingly popular technology for businesses around the world because of its ease of access from remote locations – removing the need for locally installed software. Cloud computing and SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) tools can be great solutions for local and state-level governments with limited resources, since most solutions are affordable, scale to specific needs and allow employees to access secure data from anywhere.

As governments get larger in size (federal), there are even custom-built and propietary solutions. Below are 5 SaaS tools for local and state governments that cover everything from managing citizen relationships to tracking government funds and finances…

To view infographic and read more from the source, visit http://smartdatacollective.com/zach-taiji/196361/5-top-tools-government-tech

Grazed from AlphaWired. Author: Ivan Ivanoff.

The free Panda Cloud Antivirus software has been initially released back in November, 2009. Even though most people at the time thought that a cloud computing antivirus service would only be slowing down your personal computer more and more people are switching to using the antivirus software. However, what exactly are the benefits of using a cloud antivirus protection software?

What is Cloud Computing?

In case you have been living on Mars or are just not that interested into the way things work, cloud computing is a rather new hosting technology that allows developers to provide people with more sophisticated web applications. In cloud computing, instead of reserving a limited amount of computing power for a certain web application or user, the hosting service shares its computing power with all applications and distributes it in a way to let every user enjoy their experience with the certain web application…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Julie Bort.

Last month, when three major cloud-computing vendors all cut their prices — Google, Microsoft, and Amazon — the news was great for their customers but hardly news at all. That’s because this was the 42nd time that Amazon has cut prices for its cloud-computing service since 2008.

Microsoft has vowed that it would never let Amazon be less expensive and would match every price cut with one of its own. Google, with its own massively huge data centers, is also willing and able to play the price-cutting game. But no one does price cutting like Amazon. Its ethic of being frugal is literally one of the company’s 14 "Leadership Principals," which it explains like this:..

Read from the source @ http://www.businessinsider.com/a-peek-at-amazons-culture-of-frugality-2014-4#ixzz2z34sHeJj

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Daniel Price.

As we’ve seen on this website, cloud computing has an untold number of virtues. From improved portability to increased green credentials of the IT sector and from revolutionising industries to helping the disabled, it is undeniable that the cloud has radically altered our daily lives. Nonetheless, to assume that cloud computing comes without security risks would be both short-sighted and naïve.

Heartbleed, the NSA, WikiLeaks, cybercriminals, and hackers – the list of people who want to exploit your personal information is endless. Sadly complete technological security is difficult to achieve and most users leave their data open to exploitation by making themselves an easy target for the aforementioned groups. Although governments are trying hard to improve the cloud’s security with use of data protection and in-country servers, the reality is that problems will still occur…

Grazed from CiteWorld. Author: Nancy Gohring.

With new Microsoft’s renewed focus on the cloud and support for non-Windows platforms, the company has one more reason to kill its Scroogled campaign — at least against Chromebooks. Yesterday, barely mentioned and buried at the very end of an announcement about some new features coming to Office Online, Microsoft said that most Office Online apps are now available in the Chrome App Launcher.

The Chrome App Launcher is a small app where Chrome OS and Chrome browser users can add icons for their favorite Chrome apps in order to easily launch them from one spot. Now, users can add Word Online, PowerPoint Online, and OneNote Online to the Chrome App Launcher. Excel Online is coming…

Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Rick Robinson.

The cloud storage market, including the fast-growing personal storage segment, is fiercely competitive. Cloud storage costs are being driven down, which is good news for all cloud users, especially IT professionals at midsize firms. At the same time, cloud storage providers are seeking to stem the downward price pressure put on them by broadening their offerings beyond pure storage.

Thus, they are offering a growing range of apps intended to give prospective customers a reason other than sheer price for selecting their services. For midsize IT, such apps could be yet another benefit of a hotly competitive cloud marketplace; but a possible complication is that the apps may be designed to appeal to individual employees rather than to benefit business customers…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Eileen Yu.

Organizations are moving to the mobile-cloud world and virtualization vendor, VMware, wants to provide the tools they need in this new era, spanning from the network and storage to the desktop. A "tectonic shift" is underway today with businesses are transitioning from a client-server computing realm to one delivered on virtualization and cloud computing, said VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, who has been evangelizing the company’s vision to become a leading cloud services player.

In Singapore on Tuesday to champion its message at VMware’s Partner Exchange On Tour conference, Gelsinger told reporters here the vendor was "uniquely positioned" to tap this transition since virtualization is the underpinning technology in the mobile-cloud era. VMware is looking to drive its vision by focusing on three primary areas: end-user computing, software-defined data center, and hybrid cloud…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Canonical today announces Ubuntu 14.04 LTS will be released on 17th April 2014, bringing a new level of reliability, performance and interoperability to cloud and scale out environments with support and maintenance for five years. "Ubuntu is the primary platform for cloud – public, private or hybrid. In this release, our third LTS with deep roots in cloud, we raise the bar for efficiency and orchestration at scale. That’s why businesses are adopting Ubuntu as they move to the cloud computing era," says Mark Shuttleworth, founder of Ubuntu and Canonical.

Global enterprises including AT&T, Bharti, Bouygues Telecom, British Telecom, China Telecom, China Unicom, Cogent Communications, Comcast, Deutsche Telekom, Korea Telecom, NEC, NTT, Numergy,Orange France, Time Warner Cable, Turk Telecom, Verizon and Yandex, as well as leading web scale services such as Netflix, Instagram, Hipchat and Quora are all building next generation services on Ubuntu…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Ben Kepes.

Many cloud vendors predicted that Edward Snowden’s whistle blowing about widespread NSA surveillance would fundamentally change the technology landscape in general, and the cloud computing landscape in particular. The theory went that customers, wary of their most intimate corporate data being perused by US agencies, would flock to non US cloud vendors to give them security over their data.

Non US vendors such as OnApp and GreenQloud, along with regional service providers such as telcos, either publicly or privately had a view of increasing levels of interest in their services as an alternative to AWS, Google, Microsoft MSFT -0.05% and the other global cloud vendors…