Grazed from CMSWire. Author: Steven Pogrebivsky.

You’ve been thinking about moving to Office 365. You know it offers some great capabilities while helping reduce some costs, but you need to convince management it’s the right move. There is a lot to take into consideration, but these 10 talking points should help you explain your recommendations to management.

1. The Advantages and Challenges of a Public Cloud

Office 365 is a SaaS (software as a service) offering, hosted by Microsoft. This is a public cloud service, so it comes with a number of potential concerns — availability and security being the two biggest ones. There are a number of benefits to a SaaS offering like Office 365: you pay a monthly subscription for your site and nothing more, you get most of the standard SharePoint features, and you can work with external partners much more easily than in an on premises SharePoint implementation…

Grazed from NationalLawReview. Author: Christine M. Wahr and Sarah T. Hogan.

You’ve read part 1 of our series, and you’re now armed with the knowledge about hosted services and cloud computing that you’ve been too embarrassed to ask. To help you bring it home – virtually – we offer our top 5 considerations when purchasing hosted services for your organization:

1. Implement processes for agreement to non-negotiable terms. Many lower priced hosted services providers will present terms of use in a “click-through” or “click-wrap” agreement. These “take it or leave it” terms are intended to avoid a costly negotiation over legal language where this is low profit margin for the services. While the vast majority of click-through terms will be acceptable for the services being purchased, your organization should make sure individuals with purchasing authority are trained to recognize provisions that raise your organization’s risk profile, and to escalate those provisions for legal review. For example, legal and IT security should review all terms relating to privacy and data security. Additionally, users should escalate for legal approval any provision requiring indemnification by your organization, as well as any provision purporting to claim ownership of any of your organization’s data or intellectual property…

Grazed from StarTribune. Author: Dee Depass.

In a potentially major breakthrough for data centers, 3M Co. today announced a new cooling fluid for large computer systems that reduces the need for powerful air conditioners and slashes energy costs. The technology is being portrayed as a game changer for massive data centers, which have proliferated with the rise of cloud-based networks for businesses and consumers and as storage for so-called “big data” applications used by business and government.

Such centers today use lots of energy to run computer servers and storage arrays and also to cool off those machines from the heat they generate. 3M will demonstrate its new 3M Novec Engineered Fluid at its Maplewood headquarters later today along with partners IntelCorp. and SGI…

Grazed from NationalLawReview. Author: Christine M. Wahr and Sarah T. Hogan.

In today’s world, it seems that virtually every business is using or offering some degree of online services. If you’re involved in making technology purchasing decisions for your business, you likely receive numerous requests related to purchasing hosted services, though the nuances of what a hosted service is and the particular legal considerations such a purchase raises may still be hazy concepts. If this resonates with you, you are not alone – even the most tech-savvy users can be left confused in this ever-evolving industry. To assist you in responding rapidly to these requests, we have pulled together a two-part series containing a quick reference guide of basics and top 5 considerations for purchasers of hosted solutions. Welcome to part 1 of this series, Hosting 101: The Basics.

What is a hosted service? The term “hosted service” is used to refer to a product or service powered by information technology resources that you do not own or control. Users are provided with access to the product or service without the need to purchase and maintain the necessary software,hardware, server space and other logistical and technical resources. You may run into hosted services that are provided on a dedicated server owned by the provider, but today, more often than not, hosted services are provided via the cloud…

Grazed from Parallels. Author: PR Announcement.

Parallels, a leading hosting and cloud services enablement provider, today announced a significant expansion of its strategic alliance with Ingram Micro Inc., a leading master cloud services aggregator and provider, as well as the world’s largest wholesale technology distributor and a global leader in IT supply-chain and mobile device lifecycle services.

As part of the relationship, Ingram Micro will adopt and deploy Parallels Automation as the core service delivery platform for its new global Cloud Marketplace, which was announced today at the Ingram Micro Cloud Summit 2014. Parallels expanded relationship with Ingram Micro also includes an equity investment by the distribution leader that demonstrates Ingram Micro’s commitment to the platform and the alliance…

Grazed from CMSWire. Author: Jeff Lawrence.

The choice between cloud-based and in-house DAM used to be easy. Between the high cost of cloud storage and bandwidth, and the limited capabilities of SaaS (software as a service) solutions — the argument for in-house DAM was clear. Cost is no longer the sole determining factor. Cloud computing and storage costs have lowered in the last few years, making SaaS a viable choice for many organizations. SaaS DAM vendors have responded to customer needs by offering new features and functionality that directly compete with the capabilities of in-house solutions — such as integration tools for social media — which places them squarely on the competitive playing field.

What’s the Difference?

SaaS is not a panacea, in-house solutions are still the right fit for many organizations. In general, in-house DAM solutions are limited only to the organization’s hardware infrastructure, security governance, network and quality of IT support. The client is responsible for the purchase and support of the hardware, software, database, storage, security and business continuity planning…

Grazed from UNSW.edu.au. Author: Editorial Staff.

UNSW researchers are using artificial intelligence to create a computer network capable of regulating its own consumption of public cloud services. The team, led by School of Computer Science and Engineering Lecturer Srikumar Venugopal, hopes the research will make truly elastic cloud computing a reality.

Elasticity is seen as a key benefit of the cloud, allowing companies to automatically and immediately dial up or down the consumption of cloud computing power based on need. The idea is to prevent companies over- or under-provisioning resources to run a particular workload. Presently, companies set rules to manage when to spin-up new virtual servers or shut them down. Systems administrators use their experience and historical data to set the rules…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Backupify, the leading provider of cloud-to-cloud backup and recovery solutions for Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, today announced a significant feature enhancement to its Backupify for Salesforce product with the ability to restore objects in Salesforce. Backupify for Salesforce users can now securely, automatically back up and restore data in their Salesforce accounts.

Salesforce data is often considered the lifeblood of an organization and as such, the Backupify for Salesforce solution gives Salesforce admins an automated, daily backup of their critical Salesforce data. Now restoring this important data back into Salesforce is a seamless process. The one-click restore feature ensures that objects such as accounts, contacts, leads, campaigns, opportunities, contracts and more are quickly and easily restored back into a company’s Salesforce instance. Users can choose to restore an entire object or just a selection of records from that object…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Jelastic, Inc., the first company to deliver Platform-as-Infrastructure, has been profiled in a new 451 Research report: "Jelastic eyes opportunity in converged IaaS and PaaS". The report describes a key cloud trend, the convergence of the current technologies of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) and describes Jelastic’s strategy and product portfolio. The 451 Research report also provides some key insights into enterprise strategies as they undertake the migration to cloud including:

• Enterprise IT departments are intent on functioning like hosting service providers.
• Enterprises have a growing appetite for PaaS.
• Whereas PaaS adoption was previously being driven by the polyglot programming trend, a new important driver is IaaS-PaaS integration…

Grazed from Technorati. Author: Steve Shattuck.

There’s a lot to be excited about in the nonprofit sector today. New technologies are allowing charities to reach current and potential donors at a rate and ease never seen before. Although charitable giving grew 4.9% in 2013, some metrics paint a cloudier picture of the sector’s overall health. Donor retention rates have dropped year-over-year over the past seven years – the entire span in which its been officially studied – landing at only 39%.

That same metric dips into the 20s when considering first-time donors only. Online giving’s percentage of overall giving contracted from 7% in 2012 to 6.4% in 2013 and effective social media usage still lags behind the for-profit sector. Some sub-sectors of the nonprofit world are reporting annual employee turnover rates upwards of 100%…