Grazed from Geek. Author: Ryan Whitman.

There was a time, not that long ago, when most users managed their own data. Now faster internet connections and cloud services offer not only storage, but data processing. But how can companies looking to crunch data in the cloud know it’s being done correctly? A new piece of software developed by Microsoft and IBM aims to tell you if the cloud is lying about the sanctity of your data.

The software is amusingly dubbed “Pinocchio”, and is being billed as a lie detector for the cloud. At its most basic level, Pinocchio could be used to verify that a cloud service did what was instructed with a data set. Alternatively, it could alert you if the service was somehow compromised, thus altering the results…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: TJ Jones.

What’s the best way to increase your profits? Improve your leading product or service? Branch out into new markets? Launch an innovative marketing campaign? All of these are great options, provided you have the ability to implement them. Sometimes, though, the best way to increase the amount you make is to decrease the amount you spend. Cutting back on costs makes your business leaner, meaner, and better able to compete in the marketplace.

It is one area which is absolutely essential for businesses of all sizes, but which can get prohibitively expensive. Even with just a couple of employees you need to ensure that you have the right software and a reliable email system. Cloud computing is quickly gaining popularity as a cost control method, with hundreds of thousands of businesses worldwide adopting at least one cloud-based service in the workplace…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Ted Samson.

The Apache CloudStack project today announced Version 4.1.0 of the CloudStack, signaling that the cloud orchestration platform continues to thrive since emerging from the Apache Incubator in mid-March. The 4.1.0 release includes news features such as an events framework, API-request throttling, and Amazon Web Services-style regions. It also includes major changes in the codebase, aimed at making the platform easier for developers, along with a new structure for creating RPM/Debian packages and the full adoption of Maven as a build tool.

This new release of CloudStack should be heartening to supporters of the platform, which has been down a long and winding road since being acquired by Citrix in 2011 — then handed it off to the Apache Software Foundation (ASF) last year. In March of this year, the ASF approved CloudStack as a TLP (top-level project), helping the open source cloud software effort further establish its independence from Citrix…

Grazed from TechWeekEurope. Author: Tom Brewster.

Salesforce is again set to splash out to boost its marketing prowess, chucking a whopping $2.5 billion (£1.6bn) on rival cloud-based service ExactTarget. A Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company like Salesforce, ExactTarget was founded back in 2000. It has scored some top customers over the last 13 years, including Coca-Cola and Nike, helping run their digital marketing.

Salesforce, which is still a loss making firm despite its strong revenue growth, has agreed to pay $33.75 per share in cash for ExactTarget – a 53 percent premium above the company’s $22.10 closing price on Monday…

Grazed from Wall Street Journal. Author: Michael Hickins.

The high premiums built into Saleforce.com Inc. ’s $2.5 billion acquisition of ExactTarget Inc. and International Business Machine Corp. ’s $2 billion purchase of SoftLayer Technologies Inc. illustrate the growing importance of cloud services, particularly to business users outside the IT department. Cloud applications such as these are proliferating throughout organizations, often without the knowledge or blessing of CIOs Gartner Inc. has predicted that by 2017, chief marketing officers will have larger IT budgets than CIOs, but that doesn’t absolve CIOs from the responsibility of securing corporate and customer data, and of helping their companies make the most of their technology investments.

Michael Relich, senior vice president and CIO at Guess Inc. , said, half-jokingly, that CMOs would have more power over IT budgets “over my dead body,” during MIT Sloan’s CIO Symposium last month. But he also noted that SAAS applications are adding to complexity CIOs deal with “because it’s proliferating… I call it cockroach technology,” he said. Bill Miller, CIO at Broadcom Inc. , also noted that SAAS “creates more complexity” because vendors sell “directly to the business.”…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

StreamLink Software, a software as a service (SaaS) technology provider, closed $1,530,000 in new investment on April 15, 2013. This Series A-2 funding led by a group of individual investors will be used to accelerate the company’s growth strategy in order to meet aggressive marketing, sales and partnership goals.

Specifically, funds will be used to engage new, targeted markets for its products, decrease the sales cycle and close rates, and develop strategic federal partnerships. “Our goal has always been to build a great company, and our investors have helped us achieve significant progress toward this goal,” said Adam Roth, CEO of StreamLink Software. “This new investment will allow us to be very focused on growth strategy over the next 18 months, ensuring that we can build on our 348% growth from the previous year…

Grazed from WiredPRNews. Author: PR Announcement.

nexMatrix Telecom has announced that it is making its ATLANTIS application suite available in modular form, both as an add-on to its Protel premise PBX line, and as a cloud (SaaS) solution. ATLANTIS (Automated Telemarketing Local Area Network Total Information System) was first developed in 1981 under the name Distribunet 2100. Originally released as an enterprise-grade suite of integrated applications, it includes modules for Contact Records Management (CRM), Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP), Supply Chain Management (SCM), Fulfillment, Support Ticketing, plus numerous accounting, distribution, human resources and many other functions.

ATLANTIS also forms part of the core of the nexMatrix premise and hosted PBX product line and its nexSwitch softswitch. The modular format will now allow customers to purchase only what they need instead of a full suite of the CRM through to the Supply Chain. Currently, ATLANTIS is only offered in it’s full format starting with sales right to manufacturing based on the pipeline. By breaking out the modules, the application can be used solely for the CRM function…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud Technology Partners, the leader in transforming businesses with cloud solutions, today announced the private beta availability of PaaSLane™, a software tool that reduces the time and effort required to migrate applications to the cloud. Traditionally, cloud migration assessments are a manual process that can take months and cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. PaaSLane automates the process by evaluating application source code against a customizable rules engine to identify cloud compliance and compatibility issues.

"Our clients are moving hundreds of enterprise applications to multiple cloud platforms and need an effective way to clearly identify issues and estimate the effort required to make the move. We built PaaSLane to systematically accelerate migrating applications to the cloud," said John Treadway, senior vice president at Cloud Technology Partners. "PaaSLane inspects application code to find the underlying causes of these issues in a matter of minutes so development teams can start fixing them immediately."…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

SmartFile, a leader in FTP and file sharing, announced today the release of SmartFile for Developers. SmartFile for Developers is a fully integrated file management solution for companies and developers who need to quickly integrate web, smartphone and internal applications. The SmartFile platform gives businesses the tools they need with no code to develop, manage or support, freeing them from worries about file security and compliance.

Drawing on 4 years of experience in the SaaS file sharing business, SmartFile has repositioned itself to become the only Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) for file sharing in the world today. SmartFile uses proprietary infrastructure combined with a RESTful API to offer the most robust and scalable platform of this kind…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Gina Narcisi.

Flexible, pay-as-you-go cloud pricing models have attracted enterprise customers to cloud services, and providers are struggling to turn a profit. In a recent TechTarget survey of cloud providers, 44.8% of nearly 300 respondents listed profitability of cloud services as their main business challenge. The problem will only worsen as cloud services become commoditized, said Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corp., a consultancy in Voorhees, N.J.

The upfront costs associated with building data centers, coupled with unrealistic buyer expectations and competitive cloud pricing, can set cloud providers up for failure. Cloud providers can find profits by differentiation through value-added services and with a little help from larger cloud players or colocation…