Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Sylvia Lehnan.

Much has been said about the benefits of the SaaS model for its customers, including freedom from installation and maintenance hassles and – for many companies – being able to account for the purchase as an operating rather than a capital expense. But what does a software company that wants to start offering cloud products have to consider?

Vendors who want to develop cloud-based applications need to make decisions around technical infrastructure and adjust to a financial model that’s based on recurring income rather than one-time sales and on-going maintenance contracts. However, they also need to consider how the model affects all other areas of the business…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Canada-based infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) leader iWeb has joined the OpenStack® Foundation as a corporate sponsor with a commitment to developing open cloud standards and technologies.

The OpenStack Foundation supports a global community of more than 8,800 members representing 850 unique organizations across 114 countries and is responsible for continuing to promote the development, distribution and adoption of OpenStack cloud software…

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

By 2015, 10 percent of overall IT security enterprise product capabilities will be delivered in the cloud, according to Gartner, Inc. The services are also driving changes in the market landscape, particularly around a number of key security technology areas, such as secure email and secure Web gateways, remote vulnerability assessment, and Identity and Access Management (IAM). Gartner expects the cloud-based security services market to reach $4.2 billion by 2016.

"Demand remains high from buyers looking to cloud-based security services to address a lack of staff or skills, reduce costs, or comply with security regulations quickly," said Eric Ahlm, Research Director at Gartner. "This shift in buying behaviour from the more traditional on-premises equipment toward cloud-based delivery models offers good opportunities for technology and service providers with cloud delivery capabilities, but those without such capabilities need to act quickly to adapt to this competitive threat."…

Grazed from CBR. Author: Editorial Staff.

Despite deals increasing 3% in the quarter The transaction value of mergers and acquisitions (M&A) in the online and mobile industry decreased 50% in the first quarter of 2013 to $7.9bn, according to the latest report from Berkery Noyes. According to the report, the deal volume however increased 3% during the quarter compared to the corresponding quarter a year earlier.

Berkery Noyes said that the SaaS/ASP segment experienced the largest quarterly rise in volume, improving 16%. The transaction volume in the e-commerce segment increased 6% in Q1 2013 with Google’s acquisition of Channel Intelligence for $125m being the segment’s highest value deal. M&A involving transactions with a large mobile component grew 33% over the past three months…

Grazed from DZone. Author: Omri Erel.

Many people are becoming curious, with the increasing popularity of cloud topology, as to what cloud computing deployment models exist, and which ones are popular. While cloud is a big buzzword right now, a lot of people are kind of mystified in regards to what it really is. That’s ok, that’s what I’m here for.

So, today, I’m going to clarify once more, for those new here, what cloud computing is, then go over some cloud computing deployment models which are popular, and maybe talk a little bit about how they work. First off, cloud just means that it exists off location, and is being stored, processed and/or served by an outside machine or machines…

Grazed from The New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.

For the last several months, Andy Bryant, the chairman of Intel, has been trying to put steel in the backs of the company’s employees. At meetings, he tells them that Intel must fundamentally change even though the computer chip maker still has what it takes to succeed in engineering and manufacturing. It is an extraordinary message at a company with the fiercely confident unofficial motto, “Only the paranoid survive.” Intel now finds itself faced with a fundamental question: Can the paranoid also evolve?

Intel became the world’s largest semiconductor maker through a partnership with Microsoft that dominated the personal computer business for a quarter-century. PC sales are now collapsing, as users are relying more on mobile phones and tablets that rarely contain Intel chips…

Grazed from CFO. Author: Editorial Staff.

There’s a natural synergy between cloud computing services and mobile broadband, especially the latest 4G services. There are many benefits to cloud-based applications such as the cloud contact centre services offered by Premier Technologies. They enable the full functionality of the application to be available to anyone, anywhere. All they need is a sufficiently fast and sufficiently reliable broadband connection. Indeed, Premier already has a customer who is successfully using its Premier Contact Point cloud based solution over the 4G network.

Mobile broadband provides a connection to anyone anywhere within its coverage area. And the latest mobile broadband technology, Long Term Evolution (LTE) (better but incorrectly known as 4G) provides a mobile broadband connection that is sufficiently fast for most applications. Telstra has the most extensive 4G network in Australia and claims typical download speeds of between 2Mbps and 40Mbps and upload speeds typically between 1Mbps and 10Mbps…

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Alex Williams.

Bernstein Research has issued a research report saying it expects AWS will have an estimated $20 billion in revenues by the end of the decade. In a separate report, RW Baird & Co. projects $10 billion in revenue for AWS by 2016 and up to $40 billion in losses from the traditional IT market.

The estimates reflect Wall Street’s growing confidence in cloud services and the need that analysts see in letting their customers know that a shift is underway that will lead to continued flat revenues or even losses for enterprise companies and systems integrators. In times of disruption, something like AWS may actually exceed investment analyst projections. Conversely, AWS success is not a certainty…

Grazed from Motley Fool.  Author: Andrew Tonner.

Hewlett-Packard stock has suffered greatly over the past five years. But in this video, Andrew Tonner reviews some good news about the company, including its new line of energy- and space-saving servers that should help turn the company around. As mobile computing increases demand for servers, Andrew says this new product line should pay off for HP as it diversifies away from its dependence on the declining PC market.  Check out the video for more details.

The massive wave of mobile computing has done much to unseat the major players in the PC market, including venerable technology names like Hewlett-Packard. However, HP’s rapidly shifting its strategy under the new leadership of CEO Meg Whitman…

Grazed from Motley Fool.  Author: Tim Brugger.

If timing is everything, the unveiling of salesforce.com‘s (NYSE: CRM  ) mobile services application development platform April 9 was spot-on. The service aims to tap the skills of third-party developers, much as smartphone manufacturers do, to expand and personalize the mobile customer relationship management, or CRM, experience. Salesforce says its new platform is "the latest in a series of innovations to empower customer companies to transform for the mobile era."

Just how big a deal is it? According to a Gartner study released April 11, mobile applications for the CRM industry, both in number and the revenue they generate, will explode in the next several years. The CRM landscape is changing, and Salesforce is in the right place at the right time…