Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Spandas Lui.

Australia has one of the highest smartphone penetration rates in the world, and we’re known to be early adopters of new technology, so bringing the likes of iPhones and iPads into work just seems like natural progression; the inexorable outcome. But bring your own device (BYOD) is by no means the end point; it’s just an early symptom of the wider mobility trend infiltrating the corporate world. Mobile devices being used within organisations are changing how workers do their jobs, where they’re doing their jobs, and how companies prioritise workspaces.

It’s all about the workers

Attracting and retaining staff is now a priority for many companies, as skilled and talented workers are increasingly hard to come by. According to a report by professional services firm Deloitte, for every 100 people retiring over the next five years, there are less than 125 people leaving education and joining the workforce; that’s the lowest ratio in Australia’s history…

Grazed from The Boston Globe. Author: Naila Moreira.

Long missing from the biotech and high-tech map of the region, Holyoke is finally finding an advantage in its location on the western end of the Massachusetts Turnpike: It’s much faster to reach than some of the most connected places on the Internet.

Beginning this summer, life-sciences companies in the Boston area will be able to send troves of data to a new state-affiliated computing facility in Holyoke in a fraction of the time it would take to ship it to a commercial data center. Located at the new Massachusetts Green High Performance Computing Center, the life-sciences facility could lead to breakthrough drugs and other products by making it easier, faster, and even cheaper for companies to investigate leads involving large amounts of data…

Grazed from IT Jungle. Author: Alex Woodie.

IBM i shops and managed service providers that adopt the latest release of IBM’s SmartCloud Entry for Power software will gain several new points of control over their private cloud environments, including the capability to start and stop workloads at any time, and the capability to deploy multiple copies of an image simultaneously. IBM also divulged pricing details with the SmartCloud Entry for Power version 3.1 announcements, and made a statement of direction regarding "adopting a common technology base" rooted in open standards for SmartCloud Entry.

SmartCloud Entry for Power is a lightweight (for IBM anyway), AIX-based software product that allows organizations to turn their Power Systems servers into an infrastructure as a service (IaaS) private cloud environment. The software lets administrators create, modify, and delete virtualized slices of their server over a Web interface. It also delivers self-service provisioning for end users; provides security, auditing, and authentication capabilities; and includes basic activity monitoring and billing functions…

Grazed from Hydrapinion.  Author: Ian Grayson.

We all know cloud computing is changing the data centres of many organisations, but its impact on the corporate desktop is also increasing by the day.  Rather than shelling out for expensive office productivity packages, growing numbers of businesses are opting to provide their employees with cloud-based variants.

The trend first emerged among small and mid-sized businesses where the lower cost and reduced complexity of such an approach is particularly attractive. Now, however, the shift is becoming more prevalent inside larger outfits too…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Amy Armitage.

For the early history of computing, data tended to be kept locked down within isolated, local systems for security reasons. With the advent of the cloud however, the idea of accessing data from anywhere, using cost-effective on-demand services is now thoroughly mainstream. Indeed, the future of IT is the cloud.  As cloud computing continues its triumphant spread, one issue that has continued to get undeservedly little attention, though, is the geographical location of data. The ongoing NSA scandal is finally bringing to light just one aspect of how critically important the physical location of digital data has become.

Distance can increase risk

On the most basic level, choosing a cloud provider whose data centers are located on a distant continent will obviously increase latency and so adversely affect performance. For businesses where performance and speed are relevant that’s a major concern. But it’s also worth considering that submarine communication cables, despite all their protective layers, are regularly broken by fishing trawlers, anchors and natural events such as earthquakes and turbidity currents – more than 50 cable breakdowns a year are repaired in the Atlantic alone. So relying on distant cloud providers can add a layer of risk of service dropouts that isn’t tenable for many businesses…

Grazed from iProgrammer.  Author: Harry Fairhead.

A video from a team at ETH Zurich shows full 3D mapping in real time being performed by an inexpensive, lightweight Turtlebot. Instead of the computation being done locally it is offloading it using Rapyuta, the RoboEarth Cloud Engine.

 As depicted in the diagram below, the  robot is equipped with an RGBD sensor (ASUS Xtion PRO), an ARM-based single board computer (Odriod-U2), and an off-the-shelf wireless dongle. The robot transmits RGB images (QVGA resolution) and depth images (QVGA resolution) at 30 FPS to Rapyuta with a frame by frame compression (JPEG for RGB, and PNG for depth images). The single board computer is therefore only used for compression, communication, and low-level control of the robot.  The computation is performed in Ireland, courtesy of Amazon Web Services…

Grazed from GAO.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office confirmed the selection of Amazon Web Services as prime contractor for cloud computing services on behalf of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).  The award was confirmed over the protests of IBM.

The contract calls for a 270-day period to achieve initial operating capability, a 4-year base ordering period, a 3-year option, and a 2-year option, with a maximum value of $600 million over the base period. The contractor is to provide its existing public cloud (modified where necessary) to be installed on government premises and operated by the provider…

Grazed from The Web Host Industry Review.  Author: Justin Lee.

Web hosting and cloud hosting provider Vault Networks announced on Friday it has launched its new cloud servers product, vnCloud, which marks its first major move into the cloud computing space.  The move comes a few months after Vault Networks doubled the raised floor space it occupies in ColoHouse’s Miami data center, making it the facility’s biggest customer.

“We noticed that the hourly-based pricing structure most of the bigger players were using was, at the end of the day, adding up to a very expensive solution,” said Brian Jankovich, VN’s founder and president. “We knew our clients wanted to start leveraging the power and flexibility of cloud servers, but didn’t want to break the bank to get there. Our model fills that gap.”…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author: Tom Spring.

Google is bringing new meaning to the word "cloud computing." No Google is not rolling out a new SaaS solution. Instead Google is launching Project Loon that aims to bring Internet access to every corner of the globe via high-altitude balloons. Yes, that’s right it’s called Project Loon, as in "a crazy person" as Merriam-Webster defines the word. But it’s June and this is not an elaborate April Fool’s joke.  

Google’s Project Loon is an ambitious experiment to use a network of high-altitude balloons to bring Internet access to parts of New Zealand that would otherwise not have Web access. It’s a test of Google’s larger ambitions to pioneer efforts to bring the Internet to other parts of the world including Africa where millions do not have access to the Internet…

Grazed from PandoDaily.  Author: Ben Sesser.

Life would be much easier if a great product was the only requirement for a great business. Of course, talk to any vineyard owner or long-time New York Times shareholder and they can attest that this is not the case.  Software as a service companies are no different. As challenging as it is to build great software someone is willing to buy, other pieces must fall into place for success.

In SaaS, three critical pieces that must fall in place to create long-term value are price, customer acquisition cost, and churn. You need a sustainable mix of what customers will pay for your product, how much it costs to acquire customers, and how long you can keep them…