Grazed from The American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research. Author: Zack Christenson.

Cloud computing, a term unknown to most 10 years ago, is quickly transforming the way we do business today. In the past, companies stored most of their digital information on large server farms that were most likely physically present in the businesses office. Thanks to new technology and the wide availability of high-speed broadband access, that’s no longer necessary.

Cloud computing, to those who aren’t familiar, is when digital files or information are stored on a remote server in another centralized location. Oftentimes, these servers are managed by an outside company (Amazon and Rackspace, for instance). Users can then access their information via an Internet connection, as if the files were stored locally on their own machine, eliminating the need for on-site, or even on-machine, storage…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Sundeep Misra.

Technology has always been a force behind creating level playing field for small to medium enterprises. This has been more evident in the last few years as the cloud computing software products evolved. Cloud telephony solutions virtual communication is not different.

The virtual communication solutions like Virtual Receptionist, Virtual Call Tracking, Virtual PBX are creating a level playing field for SMEs and reducing the telephony advantage the larger corporations have had so far. Larger corporations have been at the forefront of combining telephony with software solutions to deploy powerful solutions that will enable them to improve profitability, ROI, service etc…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author PR Announcement.

Bull (Paris:BULL) today announces that it has finalized the acquisition of FastConnect, a leading French company in distributed application architectures. The acquisition reaffirms Bull’s ambition to speed up its development in Cloud and Big Data.

FastConnect will bring to Bull its unique expertise in transforming information systems for service-oriented architectures (SOAs), Cloud and Big Data. A number of major global companies, most notably in the finance sector, have already put their trust in FastConnect to help them migrate their critical applications towards Cloud architectures. FastConnect also designs algorithms and architectures for its customers, to address the new requirements created by the advent of Big Data and real-time analytics…

Grazed from IT Jungle. Author: Alex Woodie.

If you thought this whole cloud thing was just a passing fad, you’d be wrong–at least according to the industry watchers at IDC, which this month made some pretty tall predictions concerning the size, scope, and growth of the cloud computing phenomenon. According to IDC, spending on public cloud computing (as opposed to private cloud services) will grow from $47.3 billion this year to $107 billion by 2017.

That represents a 23.5 percent compound annual growth rate (CAGR), which is more than five times the rate of growth for the IT industry as a whole. As the "3rd Platform" enters Chapter Two of its life, the big growth driver will shift from saving the IT department a few bucks by basically outsourcing the care and feeding of servers, to enabling startups to do new, interesting, and highly profitable things with cutting-edge clouds…

Grazed from AutomationWorld. Author: Dave Greenfield.

The reliability and low cost of cloud computing is no longer in doubt. When you have providers such as Amazon, Google, and Microsoft offering 99.99 percent uptime and some of the biggest companies in the world using their services, questions of robustness and dependability can be easily answered. Cloud services also offer the bonus of only paying for what you use, easy and low-cost scalability, improved collaboration possibilities, and huge savings on IT support costs.

But concerns about the cloud do still exist for many manufacturers, especially around security and availability. When using public cloud services, all information sent through those networks can be a target for hackers simply because it is on such a network. In addition, the government can access your information on a public cloud without a search warrant, and there can be concerns with bandwidth overload or problems accessing your applications when you have no Internet access. Beyond these issues, there are also concerns about latency and connection failures compared to a direct network connection…

Grazed from TechRepublic.  Author: Brian Taylor.

Grazed from Centrify.  Author: Corey Williams.

I am a typical enterprise knowledge worker. I extensively use Microsoft Office.  I switched from a Windows PC to a MacBook a few years ago. But during these past couple of years, either I, my department or my enterprise has adopted a TON of SaaS apps that now fit into my daily workflow.

As I stop and evaluate the consequences of this phenomenon, I am stunned at how screwed up and brittle my daily workflow has become.  But before I go into what some of these issues are, let me paint a picture of my typical SaaS app usage: 

• For file sharing and syncing, I use both Box and Dropbox
• For CRM and customer support, I use Salesforce, but I also use Dunn and Bradstreet, RainKing, Data.com and others
• For email, we recently moved to Office 365…

Grazed from FierceEntperpriseCommunications.  Author: David Weldon.

Though he never lived, a century and a quarter after his first appearance, Sherlock Holmes is still known as the greatest consulting detective of all time. Which is why it is so fitting that a new cloud- and analytics-based initiative looking to solve some of today’s most complex information challenges has been named Sherlock.

The Sherlock cloud computing effort is based at the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC) and looks to duplicate the great problem-solving skills of the fictional detective.  According to a recent report at HPC Wire, Sherlock is being aided by SD Technologies and Chickasaw Nation Industries, as well as a number of academic, industry and government stakeholders…

Grazed from FierceEnterpriseCommunications.  Author: David Weldon.

The results of more studies on cloud computing were recently released, and they confirm the rapid rate of adoption of cloud-based applications.  Verizon released the results of its latest study about the cloud, the "State of the Enterprise Cloud Report," indicating that the use of cloud technology for storage grew by 90 percent from January 2012 to January 2013. The use of the cloud for memory increased by 100 percent during the same period, the study said.

The Verizon study found that the growth rate for virtual machines being deployed on the cloud increased by 35 percent during this time.  These dramatic results aren’t surprising when taken in the context of another cloud computing survey from Dimensional Research. The survey was commissioned by cloud business intelligence provider Birst…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: James Urquhart.

I wrote in July about how cloud computing isn’t the same for every enterprise, and the true implications of this have been becoming clearer to many over the last several months. VMware’s vCloud Hybrid Service, in particular, offers a view of an entirely different cloud story targeted at a largely different buyer audience than the likes of Amazon, Microsoft or Google.

What VMware’s story most demonstrates to me is the one question that matters more than any other when it comes to cloud buying patterns: To what extent does a company engage in software development to define its business?  The answer to this question will determine the mix of technologies and services that company will demand — at least for the next few years…