Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Colin Barker.

For companies looking to take the complexity out of managing their IT infrastructure outsourcing has long been a popular option, allowing them to hand over the problem to a services company used to dealing with the intricacies of technology.

But now cloud is offering a similar deal: the ability to simplify both at the level of the application and from a budget point of view. Working out which to use — and when — will be a tricky balancing act that CIOs will have to get used to managing. Right now, as the hotter concept, cloud is generating much more excitement than traditional outsourcing — indeed, some companies are concerned that their existing outsourcing contracts are holding them back from the benefits of the cloud…

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

Dell Services has announced that it will provide its customers a complete portfolio of services to enable development and migration of applications onto the Windows Azure platform. This collaboration expands Dell’s comprehensive suite of application services to include the leading cloud application platform from Microsoft.

Customers can now work with Dell as a single point of contact for design, delivery and ongoing management of applications hosted in the cloud on Windows Azure. This will make it quicker and easier for them to adopt Windows Azure and drive benefits such as increased speed-to-market and agility, better collaboration across organisational boundaries, more modernised application portfolios and a greater ability to manage variable demand capacity needs…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM (NYSE: IBM) is accelerating its Linux on Power initiative with a new high-performance PowerLinux server as well as new software and middleware applications geared for the growing number of clients embracing big data, analytics and next generation Java applications in an open cloud environment.

The new PowerLinux 7R4 server, built on the same Power Systems platform running IBM’s Watson cognitive computing solution, can provide clients the performance required for the new business-critical and data-intensive workloads increasingly deployed in Linux environments. IBM is expanding the portfolio of software for Power Systems with the availability of IBM Cognos Business Intelligence and EnterpriseDB database software, each optimized for Linux on Power…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

EPM Live, the leading Enterprise Work Management platform built on Microsoft™ SharePoint and part of Upland Software’s family of cloud-based project, portfolio, and work management applications, today announced that it has been named a winner of the Best of SaaS Showplace (BoSS) Award. This program promotes the measurable business benefits delivered by today’s Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions.

EPM Live’s innovative cloud-based SharePoint Project Management software is able to support both project execution level and project portfolio level customers. The application’s configurability and unique app marketplace allows it to quickly and easily meet the business needs of all departments and verticals, such as IT, Project Portfolio Management, New Product Development, Application Lifecycle Management, and Professional Services Automation. Its numerous out-of-the-box integrations allow organizations to bring all work into EPM Live for overall visibility and insight in one centralized location…

Grazed from The Verge. Author: Jacob Kastrenakes.

NASA is having some trouble making a move into the cloud. In an internal review, the space agency discovered that many of its ongoing cloud initiatives were severely lacking on security — and some had even left sensitive data at risk. Looking over five contracts that it had for cloud hosting, NASA found that "none came close" to meeting the practices it set forth for ensuring proper data security.

NASA seemingly failed to write those security procedures into its contracts with cloud hosting services, and in two cases had used those hosts to hold data that, if compromised, could have had "serious adverse effects" on the space agency. The review also found that NASA had at times moved entire systems onto public cloud servers, and did so without the appropriate internal oversight…

Grazed from Network World. Author: Brandon Butler.

RSA President Tom Heiser is transferring from the security company to its parent company EMC to focus on cloud computing initiatives, according to an internal communication sent from the company today. The move marks the departure of a high-level executive from RSA and an increased focus by EMC on cloud computing initiatives…

In his new role, Heiser will focus on how EMC products can adapt to a cloud computing world, particularly in the IaaS and SaaS markets. EMC already has a number of other initiatives in the cloud computing market, including Pivotal, which is a spinout from EMC and VMware that focuses on cloud-based and virtualized big data applications…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Sinclair Schuller.

Public cloud is tremendously popular — there’s no question. However, enterprises have yet to consume public IaaS and PaaS in an “at-scale” way. They dabble in public IaaS and PaaS here and there, but public cloud is home to only a *tiny* minority of enterprise application workloads. Why? Enterprise workloads are trapped within the firewall by a few key constraints (some perceived, some political, some real – in order of constraint complexity):

• Dependencies – Custom apps written by enterprises often have dependencies on other external systems that either: A) can’t themselves be brought to public cloud, thereby making them inaccessible; or B) cannot be safely exposed to the outside world such that those dependencies can be resolved
• Performance – Stringent performance requirements may prevent certain applications from landing on a public cloud, particularly when high I/O performance is required.
  Security – Public clouds may not be able to fulfill security requirements, particularly in regulated industries such as banking.
• Data – Because of size and sensitivity, many data loads may not be easy to move to a public cloud. This data acts as an anchor; a corollary is that most applications depending on this data will also not move to public cloud…

Grazed from SBWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Cellingo.com — a start-up company will launch the nation’s first Wordpress based VOIP and SMS telephone system using the SaaS or software-as-a-service business model on July 25. Users can access Cellingo’s SaaS website to make and receive telephone calls online, send and receive text messages, or send delayed SMS to a group of contacts at a specific time and date.

Unlike other VOIP telephone companies, each user could choose a new local telephone number. Once a telephone number has been chosen, the user can make and receive calls online or send and receive text messages. All users will have access to real-time call and SMS logs…

Grazed from AllThingsD. Author: Arik Hesseldahl.

Still doubtful about the whole cloud computing thing? Here’s a new metric that should probably change your mind. The combined market capitalization of the Top 30 cloud computing companies is now north of $100 billion. Who says so? Bessemer Venture Partners, that’s who. The venture capital firm known for backing cloud companies like Box and Eloqua has tallied up the valuations of 30 different cloud and software-as-a-service companies that have gone public.

And here’s another interesting metric that should get your attention: If they were traded as an index, their shares are up by 168 percent since the start of 2012, beating both the Nasdaq and the Standard & Poor’s 500.  BVP partner Byron Deeter announced the Cloud Index in a blog post today. The numbers, Deeter argues, slam the door shut on the argument still made by some software companies that running software in the cloud is a fad…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Gary Flood.

Finally, some good news for Xbox fans: Microsoft promises buyers of its Xbox One gaming and media console unlimited cloud storage when the system debuts this fall. In contrast, the current Xbox 360 device offers only 512 MB of cloud space.

The new plan, which will be hosted on Microsoft’s Azure platform, will provide the computational horsepower required to meet the demands of next-gen Xbox games while also enabling players to save unlimited game data, music and other media. The announcement was made by Microsoft’s PR team during the first-ever Australian version of the popular PAX gaming convention, when new key features Xbox One features were also announced…