Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Ellen Messmer.

Cloud computing services, both software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), are subject to taxes, whether your cloud provider tells you or not when you purchase them. Reid Okimoto, senior manager in the state and local tax practice at KPMG, shares tips to help you understand the real cost of cloud computing.

Q: What questions should companies buying cloud services be asking about state and local taxes?

A: One major question is, "Is it subject to sales tax?" If sales tax isn’t clearly charged by the cloud provider, the customer may still be subject to ‘use tax.’ IT-focused professionals and their enterprises are consuming and purchasing cloud services and they’re normally dealing with sellers and vendors of cloud services, not necessarily those familiar with the "taxability of services." Questions to ask the seller of the cloud services: "Are you charging sales tax or not?" If the answer is no, the next question is, "Why not?" It could be either that the provider does not have nexus or that the service is not taxable. This answer makes a difference to the consumer…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

At any given moment, Netflix Inc. is serving up thousands if not millions of videos online that are hosted in a big data center that the company’s 33 million subscribers couldn’t care less about as long as those shows run immediately on demand.

While Netflix may be the face for providing its subscribers access to movies such as “The Hunger Games” and TV shows like “Mad Men,” it’s Amazon.com Inc. AMZN -0.42% actually streaming that content to their screens. And the e-commerce giant has gone well beyond movie streaming, having used its massive technology backbone and expertise to solve the cloud computing needs of many large and small enterprises…

Grazed from The DataCenter Journal. Author: Richard Seroter.

On his classic 1950s TV show, the immortal Jack Benny once replied to a mugger—who said, “This is a stickup. Now come on. Your money or your life…”—by saying “I’m thinking it over!” Jack Benny would have been a great IT operations manager.

Another time, when told “You’re gonna give us $10,000, or we’re gonna break both your legs,” he replied, “Does it have to be both?” Faced with seeming life-or-death financial decisions, the seasoned IT manager knows that the correct answer is seldom the easy one. Some evolving practices in the cloud, however, are making it a bit easier to deliver outstanding cloud-based IT while managing costs. Below, we’ve listed five simple tactics to help IT shops achieve more from their cloud spend…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Zack Whittaker.

Dell announced on Monday it will acquire Enstratius, an enterprise cloud management software firm, for an undisclosed amount. Founded in 2008, Enstratius offers cloud management services to hybrid and single-cloud customers as a software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering that sits either as a hosted service or within the network. By embracing a "cloud agnostic" platform, the technology works with both Dell and non-Dell customers, including OpenStack, Microsoft’s Azure, Amazon Web Services, VMware and Rackspace, just to name a few.

The firm’s software cloud management capabilities allow administrators and IT staff to quickly and easily deploy multi-component applications across one or multiple clouds. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Dell said it will retain Enstratius’ staff and continue to invest in its engineering and sales divisions to help grow the business…

Grazed from FierceTelecom. Author: Sean Buckley.

Sprint (NYSE: S) is taking its partnership with CSC to another level with the introduction of its new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) service called CloudCompute. The new service, which couples CSC’s utility-based cloud computing solution with Sprint’s Global MPLS network, has been designed to provide its mid-sized domestic customers a path to cloud services.

A key point of Sprint’s new service is focused on helping its mid-sized customers that are considering a move to cloud reduce costs. According to a recent Ovum Business Trends Cloud Services Survey, reducing IT and business-related costs while improving business agility are the top priorities that businesses consider in adopting cloud services…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Steve Pate.

Is cloud security the chicken or the egg? Are CSOs playing the ‘it’s not secure’ card to avoid anything that, well, smells like work? Are IT pros rabidly defending their turf because they fear their jobs might also be outsourced, along with their data center? Surveys continually place concerns about data security as one of the top reasons preventing organizations from moving to the public cloud. Yet, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is the fastest growing segment of the public cloud, with CAGR above 40% through 2016, according to Gartner’s Forecast Overview: Public Cloud Services, Worldwide, 2011-2016, 4Q12 Update.

How do these seemingly inconsistent statistics come together? Rather than discussing the negative points at play, let’s think about what factors are at work. I’ve been talking to a lot of organizations lately — both enterprises as well as cloud service providers (CSPs) — about their cloud migration perspectives, and here’s what I’m seeing…

Grazed from ITNews. Author: PR Announcement.

The Debian Project has released the finalised version 7.0 of its latest free operating system distribution, with tools to set up private clouds built into it. Code-named Wheezy, Debian 7.0 provides testing packages for the open source OpenStack cloud operating system, and also the Xen Cloud Platform enterprise server virtualisation and cloud computing platform.

This enables Debian users to set up small OpenStack clusters with two or more servers, and also try out virtualisation with XCP. It is now also possible to run 32 and 64 bit software packages on the same machine, through the multiarch support in Debian 7.0. There is now support for booting with the Unified Extensible Firmware Interface or UEFI that replaces the older BIOS computer hardware start-up code. Secure Boot, a controversial security feature in newer UEFI-based PCs that prevents the installation of operating system code not signed with a private Microsoft cryptographic key, isn’t yet supported however…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Michael Venables.

I’ve been using Chrome OS since the Chromium project was in beta, when I tested out the CR-48 for the Chromebook pilot testing program. This time, I took about two months to completely road test the Chromebook Pixel, Google’s latest hardware for Chrome OS. I tested the ‘cloud laptop’, with the help of my son in two natural computing environments: work and school. For this review, my testing focused on what you can do on the Chromebook Pixel, using apps on Chrome OS to complete everyday computing (and not so everyday development) tasks. During two months of testing, I used the Chromebook Pixel for my writing work, and my son used the unit for his school work.

Hardware Features
The review unit I tested was the version with LTE capability. Out of the gate you have a 64 GB solid state drive. One of the issues pointed to with Chrome OS is that you have no control over your local data, because you are using a “glorified browser,” but this is not the case. Although the whole proposition of Chrome OS points away from local storage, the immediate plus for the user is that you have plenty of local storage for your data: 32 GB and double that on the LTE model…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Four years after becoming the first account reconciliation/financial close software provider to successfully complete a SAS 70 (now Statement on Standards for Attestation Engagements No. 16 or SSAE 16 SOC 1) audit, the internationally recognized standard developed by the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) to set guidelines for auditors to use in order to objectively assess the internal controls of service organizations, BlackLine Systems is now also first in its space to successfully complete a SOC 2 Type 2 examination – adding even greater focus on controls related to the security and availability of the BlackLine Financial Close Suite, and demonstrating the operating effectiveness of these controls over the entire period of the audit.

"In today’s global economy, service providers must prove that they have sufficient controls and safeguards in place when they host or process data belonging to their customers. Using a provider like BlackLine, that has met the requirements and criteria of the SOC 2 Type 2 examination, should be a non-negotiable factor," said Chris Kradjan, a partner with Moss Adams LLP, the tax, accounting and consulting firm that conducted the BlackLine audit. "The SOC 2 Type 2 audit sets providers like BlackLine apart from the rest."…