Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Chris Kanaracus.

Customer experience has emerged as one of the enterprise software industry’s hotter segments of late, as companies try to run marketing, sales and support across both traditional and digital channels. While Salesforce.com, Oracle, and other large vendors have generated headlines for their moves into customer experience, SDL is hoping to present itself as an independent alternative with a newly launched product suite.

The SDL Customer Experience Cloud brings together Web content management, campaign management, social analytics, e-commerce, language translation services and documentation, with a unified user interface, according to a company announcement Monday. The suite is the result of several years of work, according to SDL…

Grazed from DailyCaller. Author: Steven Titch.

Tuesday’s State of the Union address affords President Barack Obama another opportunity to address the government’s massive overreach in collecting data about ordinary Americans in the name of protecting us. Although Obama, a constitutional scholar, spoke at length in a January 17th address to the nation about balancing individual privacy and national security, even conceding that there is a "bias" within government to amass as much information as it can, he offered no guidance or framework to Congress as to how existing law can be strengthened to protect Americans from wholesale government intrusion into their online lives.

Fortunately, bipartisan efforts on Capitol Hill have been gaining ground. And while the scope of NSA and other government abuses defy a single solution, strengthening existing laws, particularly the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, is a great place to start. Even before news of the NSA’s surveillance programs broke last June, Sens. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., and Mike Lee, R-Utah, had co-sponsored revisions of ECPA to extend Fourth Amendment protections to private data stored on servers on the Internet, or as it’s called current nomenclature, the "cloud."…

Grazed from NextGov. Author: Joseph Marks.

The agency in charge of HealthCare.gov bought an emergency cache of computing power from Verizon?s cloud division just days before the online insurance marketplace’s troubled launch on Oct. 1, 2013, contracting documents show. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services bought an additional $8.8 million in cloud computing power on Sept. 26 after stress tests revealed the site as it had been constructed could only handle about 10,000 concurrent users, far shy of its expected peak of 50,000 concurrent users, CMS said.

Verizon added that cloud space on Sept. 30, the day before HealthCare.gov went live, according to the notice posted on Friday to the Federal Business Opportunities contracting website. The move could add fuel to arguments the government was ill-prepared for the HealthCare.gov launch…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Dan Woods.

The expansion of Software-as-a-Service offerings, mobile devices, and all variants of managed and cloud computing mean that the definition of the data center as an expensively provisioned room, with lots of power, a raised floor, incredible cooling is obsolete. The entire Internet is your data center now. CIOs are playing catchup in learning how to manage this new world.

When a company had just a few SaaS applications that were not mission critical, and one or two APIs or cloud based apps, this was all manageable. Many firms are just leaving this stage, prompted by adoption of more SaaS apps, and especially by Microsoft Office 365, which is going to present a host of new challenges for many CIOs…

Grazed from BaselineMag. Author: Dennis McCafferty.

A "state of the IT worker" survey from ScienceLogic contains mostly good news: Information technology employees expect that their organizations will spend more money on IT initiatives in 2014. They also think that the enterprise network, IT applications and the data center will likely emerge as the top areas of future investment.

The IT pros also confess that they make pretty good money. In fact, some of them even feel that they are overpaid, and they anticipate making even more next year. But these workers are less encouraged by their preparation for what’s ahead, especially when it comes to their educational grounding in cloud-focused developments…

Grazed from Calligo. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud service provider Calligo has launched two new products, CloudAnalyser and CloudCentre, to assist client’ moving to cloud computing. Written in-house by Calligo’s software development team, these two solutions give Calligo clients visibility into their own environments to help them decide whether to move some, or all, of their IT infrastructure into the cloud, along with making the on-going management simpler.

CloudAnalyser imports statistical data taken from existing systems and combines this with the results of a detailed questionnaire. The software then uses custom algorithms to evaluate the costs and benefits of using the cloud along with recommending the type of cloud technology the client should be considering for each of their business applications…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud computing is the newest wave in the world of data storage. Essentially, when a business uses a cloud server, their information isn’t in their office-instead they access their information through an Internet connection. Using the cloud has tremendous advantages for businesses of all sizes, particularly because it’s possible to access information from any location or computer, and the amount of storage space is nearly unlimited. With that being said, as with any data storage, there are security risks, and it’s important that business owners are prepared for a transition to the cloud that is safe and secure, otherwise they could jeopardize their entire business.

SecuritySystemReviews.com, a site that provides reviews of the top security companies in the country, including a newly updated FrontPoint security review and a Vivint security review, has created a list of tips for business owners that will help them better navigate the cloud transition…

Grazed from The Washington Post.  Author:  .

Following the relatively easy fiscal 2014 budget and appropriations agreements, the Pentagon has some level of budgetary certainty for the first time in several years.  Though the Defense Department did not get as much money as it wanted, it has some sense of its funding ceilings and can plan accordingly. Make no mistake — belt tightening will continue as policy and legislation force the Pentagon to root out waste and streamline operations.

Information technology will play a major role in the effort to save money. IT has been recognized as an enabler of cost savings if done right, as demonstrated by the mandates driving cloud computing, data center consolidation, mobility and other technologies.  The Pentagon’s strategic IT direction hinges on progress in eight key areas:…

Grazed from PRWeb.   Author: PR Announcement.

Awesome Cloud Services recently published an infographic illustrating the growth of cloud computing. The infographic also showcases the opportunity for IT providers to generate new revenue by providing cloud services to their clients as part of the AwesomeCloud Channel Partner Program.   Cloud Computing Infographic:
http://www.awesomecloud.com/blog/cloud-insights/cloud-computing-infographic/

The infographic is interesting in that it not only outlines the growth rate of cloud services by segment but also predicts growth. For example, by 2014, 60% of server workload will be virtualized, meaning more businesses will be utilizing cloud services. Of all the cloud computing revenues, about 50% comes from the US and currently, 40% of the customer relationship management (CRM) systems sold globally are cloud-based. Additionally, IT organizations in 30% of Global 1000 companies will likely broker two or more cloud services for internal and external users by 2014. That is up from today’s current figure of 5%…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Jamin Andrews.

I’m one of those people (as I’m sure you are too) who has moved a great deal of my life online and into the ‘Cloud’. If you’ve joined the cloud computing revolution then you will also be experiencing the benefits of having your emails, documents and images all online and accessible wherever you want.

WordPress in its own rights has become a type of cloud computing, storing multitudes of content on each website. WordPressers use the site to store content and images that they intent to make live one day. Most users will admit to only storing this material on their WordPress site and not having another copy elsewhere, why would you need to …right? Here I’ll aim to answer the above question, does WordPress keep your content safe?…