Grazed from WebProNews. Author: Mike Tuttle.

Cloud computing is a disruptive force in the business of gaming. Not only is it revolutionizing how gamers purchase and play games, but redefining how developers and publishers run their businesses. The gaming community disagrees over what cloud can mean for the future of their industry, but nearly all agree it is becoming increasingly important.

In a newly published whitepaper by Video Games Intelligence, Chris Petrovic, former head of Gamestop, says, “One of the challenges facing our industry is to settle on a definition of ‘cloud’– and then what it means for particular businesses.”…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing is used in many different ways these days, but not everyone is completely on board the cloud train quite yet. For those holdouts who just aren’t sure whether or not they’re really benefiting from the cloud, a close look at the technology shows that you can improve almost any IT department with a bit of cloud computing. You don’t have to go as far as setting up a platform or complete infrastructure on the cloud, as even a small amount of cloud applications could provide you with cost and time saving features.

Flexibility

The main advantage of the cloud computing world is its flexibility but initially this can seem confusing as you can have private clouds, public clouds, or a mix of both. A private cloud is your own virtualized environment, while a public cloud is one that another company provides for you. Companies may opt to do a mix of both, with their own proprietary applications in their private cloud, and additional applications in the public cloud. This allows the business to use their own developed software in a cloud that they personally handle the security of, while getting the cost saving benefits of the public cloud by avoiding upfront equipment costs and other overhead…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Cyberspace Law and Policy Centre at the University of UNSW has published, with sponsorship from data centre operator NEXTDC, global insurance broker AON and law firm Baker & McKenzie, a guide for company boards and executives into the technical, legal and risk governance issues surrounding data hosting and the jurisdiction of overseas law authorities over hosted data.

NEXTDC CEO, Craig Scroggie, said the report would fill an important information gap for customers of cloud computing services. “Most customers in our data centres have an interest in the issues relating to their obligations and concerns regarding data sovereignty, yet there wasn’t a comprehensive piece of work available to advise them on the topic. We supported this project to ensure they have access to the important need-to-know facts,” he said…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Irmee Layo.

The first half of 2013 had various push and pull situations as cloud computing performances showed wide fluctuations in the global market. Out of the 20 major cloud companies, 10 showed steady revenue in the first half of 2013 alone. NetSuite led the Cloud Computing Stock Index (CCSI) figures with 37.30% share revenue from the $10,000 in January to $13,730.

The Cloud Computing Stock Index also revealed the other best performing companies in terms of revenues created from their cloud-based business solutions, applications, services and infrastructure. NetSuite on top is followed by Keynote Systems, Inc. with 36.18% share gain, then CA, Inc. with 26.67%, Workday, Inc. recorded 23.81% revenue and Cisco Systems, Inc. made it at number 5 with 22.60% stocks gain…

Grazed from ITBusinessEdge. Author: Arthur Cole.

Do you have your hybrid cloud yet? Are you planning to get one? If not, you may already be behind the curve, but that might not be a bad thing considering the immaturity of the technology and the still looming possibility that it might not do everything that it is expected to do.

To give credit where credit is due, even those who stand to gain financially from selling hybrid cloud services are working hard to prevent wishful thinking from getting ahead of reality. Rackspace, for one, is not shy in claiming that the hybrid cloud is the wave of the future, but cautions that it is not the ideal solution for all applications. Hybrids will most certainly cost less than traditional infrastructure, but security is more complicated–not less effective, just harder to implement–and the ability to offload key applications can be hampered if the public provider does not offer the correct APIs…

Grazed from ChannelWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud may be everywhere, but so are mobile devices. This is what’s exciting the channel today: providers see increasing demand for enterprise mobility offerings that expedite processes and boost customer business outcomes, according to CA Technologies’ Channel Index 2013.

According to the survey of 550 tech providers, 84 per cent expected to see increased spending in enterprise mobility over the next year. Almost all (94 per cent) believed the rapid adoption of mobile offerings by end users will open opportunities to help grow their businesses…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Josh Constine.

The shift to mobile is sucking the money out of e-commerce, but BloomReach thinks big data can save the day. Today it brings its big-data content optimization SaaS to the small screen to add smart product recommendations, predictive search, a trending section and cross-device personalization to the mobile presence of any business. BloomReach makes your app more relevant to boost sales with data science.

It’s already working on the web. The startup crawls the web learning what people search for, click on, and share. It then uses the information to improve a business’s ads, point them to personalized landing pages for each visitor, and show potential customers the products they’re most likely to buy…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

As the wave of cloud computing continues to ripple through the technology world, many applications are being left behind because they don’t translate well into being delivered as a software as a service (SaaS) in the cloud, says Osman Kent, founder of Numecent, which aims to fix that problem.

The company’s CloudPaging technology turns applications into ones that can be delivered as a cloud-based software as a service. There could be significant value in “cloudifying” apps: Kent says the SaaS market is about $30 billion, but growing at about 17% annually; native Microsoft Windows apps are about a $300 billion market, but are growing about 3% annually. That’s a big market opportunity to turn Windows apps into cloud apps. Today, the company, which was founded in 2009, just got a $13 million funding infusion, led by T-Venture, the VC arm of Deutsche Telekom…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Open Software Integrators, LLC (OSI) today announced a strategic partnership with leading Platform as a Service (PaaS) provider, CloudBees. This partnership will allow users of the CloudBees Platform to take full advantage of a complete package of professional services in North America.

Open Software Integrators is a leading open source, professional services company specializing in big data consulting and developing cloud-based solutions. OSI president, Andrew C. Oliver is enthusiastic about the PaaS trend and partnering with a former associate. "In this partnership, I am reunited with my friend and former JBoss colleague Sacha Labourey…

Grazed from Exigent. Author: PR Announcement.

TurnKey Cloud is a new service which has been released by Exigent Technologies, and will make it easier and more affordable for SMBs in New York and New Jersey to transition to cloud computing solutions. Exigent’s TurnKey Cloud services are currently available, and have been developed especially for SMBs. Customizable, cloud-based infrastructure solutions and data center services are featured, and this means that business availability will be ensured, and will allow smaller companies to consume information technology as a service (IaaS), instead of keeping it as a continuous expenditure.

Further to cutting costs and saving time, SMBs in the U.S. that are at present using a cloud service, are beginning to understand the key privacy, security and reliability advantages over companies that do not use cloud services, according to a recent Microsoft study. Ninety-four percent of SMBs (using one or more cloud services) polled in the study noted that they have more security benefits; something which was not available to them through previous on-premises technologies…