Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Barracuda Networks is continuing the expansion of its cloud data storage initiatives. This time, the company has acquired mobile signing and document storage platform provider SignNow, which recently grew to more than 1 million users and represents more than 100,000 small businesses and half of the Fortune 500. It’s an interesting acquisition, as there’s a bit of a niche here. It may very well be a big niche, but it’s far from a traditional cloud storage offering. According to Barracuda, this acquisition brings significant expansion and expertise that the security and storage vendor will use to boost its own cloud data storage growth.

"The SignNow acquisition strengthens our offering in cloud data storage and continues our focus on providing simple, yet powerful and affordable IT solutions," said BJ Jenkins, CEO of Barracuda Networks, in a prepared statement. "SignNow has experienced phenomenal growth, and we are looking forward to bringing it into our fully integrated suite of cloud and on-premise security and storage solutions."…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Michelle Boisvert.

Mention the words "open source" to IT pros interested in adopting cloud computing, and their ears likely will perk up. Open source software offers a solution to the vendor lock-in concerns many enterprises have with committing to a cloud platform. And cloud platforms like the OpenStack Foundation, which fosters ‘coopitition’ among seeming competitors in the hot cloud computing market, give companies the option to build interoperable open source clouds. But what options do enterprises have when seeking open source PaaS?

SearchCloudComputing spoke with Cédric Thomas, chief executive officer of OW2, a Paris-based, independent community focused on creating a code base of open source software for cloud computing. Similar to Apache and the OpenStack Foundation, OW2 concentrates on infrastructure software as well as the tools to develop, deploy and manage applications for approximately 100 projects over a 60-member community that’s 22,000 developers strong…

Grazed from EconomicTimes. Author: Editorial Staff.

German business software maker SAP said it was revamping its management to sharpen its focus on cloud computing as demand for the service which saves clients money grows. SAP and rivals such as IBM and OracleBSE -2.65 % are dashing to meet surging demand for cloud computing, which allows clients to ditch bulky and costly servers for network-based software and storage in remote data centres.

The company said it was now grouping all of its development activities and putting executive board member Vishal Sikka in charge of them from June 1. It also named board member Gerhard Oswald to oversee its new HANA Enterprise Cloud product. "In record time, we went from being a startup in the cloud to being one of the largest companies in the cloud," Co-Chief Executive Jim Hagemann Snabe said during a conference call…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Converge Enterprise is a cloud based CRM designed to offer comprehensive complete business solution to small and medium size businesses through simple features and intuitive navigation. It offers a complete set of features including lead management, campaign management, intelligent marketing solutions, sales force automation, customer intelligence and in-depth analytics. Converge offers integration with third party Email services, MS Office, Outlook and Google Apps to help SMBs manage all their business activities from a single platform.

According to the review, Converge CRM has a unique value proposition in the CRM industry as it approaches CRM in a comprehensive manner. It solves the sales side and marketing side of the business, all of it at an affordable cost…

Grazed from The Var Guy. Author: DH Kass.

Midmarket backup solutions provider STORServer has released version 5.0 of its Virtual Machine Backup (VMB) software, featuring IBM (IBM) Tivoli Storage Manager for Virtual Environments (TSM) and designed to protect VMware (VMW) vSphere backup machines.

Adding TSM to the new Virtual Machine Backup software enables users to protect their data without a traditional backup window by offloading workloads to a centralized server and avoiding any impact on the physical resources of the VMware server, according to IBM documentation. STORServer VMB 5.0 supports both TSM for VE v6.4, which includes the incremental forever or periodic full backup strategy available for full virtual machines, file level and instant restore operations and the prior TSM for VE v6.3…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

According to my friend Brandon Butler at Network World, "Dell has dramatically shifted its cloud computing strategy, canceling plans it once had to launch a public cloud service based on the OpenStack open source platform, and discontinuing an EMC VMware-based public cloud it already has on the market."

What is Dell going to do now? Give up on computing and move to agriculture? Go back to building computers in dorm rooms? Nope. The company will focus more on private clouds — OpenStack-flavored private clouds, to be exact…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Clint Boulton.

Although the hype suggests that CIOs are ditching on-premise software in droves for the maintenance-free comforts of cloud computing, the reality is different, with two of cloud’s biggest arguments–lower capital outlays and freedom from on-premises agreements–not enough to convince some CIOs.

For companies with easy access to capital, the cloud’s promise of reduced capital expenditure is not enough. Dropping on-premise vendors means leaving behind expensive service contracts, but also the expected services and the agreed-upon vendor obligations should something go wrong. Some companies considering the cloud fear that today’s cloud service level agreements, which establish the legal relationship between the cloud provider and the client, may not go far enough to guarantee data security and establish financial responsibility…

Grazed from Virtual.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

It’s been over two years since we posted our blog analyzing the financials of public versus private cloud computing solution models. While the dollar figures may have changed since then, the outcome still holds true—building a private cloud, while more expensive initially, can save nearly 50 percent over the course of three years versus a public cloud.

First… the assumptions. Many factors can go into a financial cloud computing model, so this is merely a starting point for discussion. Here’s what we did:

+ Assumed all instances of public or private cloud server usage are active 24/7

+ Calculated the public cloud (Option 1) using 10 extra-large CPU classes, 60 large CPU classes, and 30 small CPU classes

+ Used a scenario of 100 virtual server instances, for initial analysis purposes…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Tom Caper.

As enterprises begin to eagerly experiment with cloud software solutions to pioneer their business to new levels, it is important to clarify the value it brings to your business and the requirements needed for successful implementation. Here are 6 key factors to consider when picking a SaaS provider for your enterprise:

1. Prioritizing Quality User Experience

As users are more willing than ever to experiment with different apps and software to suit their needs and maximize productivity, the stranglehold of IT-mandated enterprise software has been considerably reduced. It is important for IT departments to analyze the enterprise SaaS solution they are choosing from the user’s perspective and whether it can really offer the best experience over other alternative software in the market…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: Joab Jackson.

Deploying an update of its DB2 database, IBM is pitching its SmartCloud infrastructure as a service (IaaS) for use in data reporting and analysis. "We’re the only player in the marketplace that has [a cloud service] for data-in-motion — being able to analyze data in real time," said Bob Picciano, IBM’s general manager for Information Management.

Starting in the second half of this year, the IBM SmartCloud IaaS will start using version 10.5 of IBM’s DB2 database, which should be generally available by early June. One new set of technologies that will come with this database, collectively called BLU Acceleration, can speed data analysis by 25 times or more, IBM claimed. IBM also announced that SmartCloud can now run copies of SAP’s HANA in-memory database, initially for test and development jobs…