Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

Amazon Web Services Monday reduced its prices on its lowest cost option, reserved instances, by "up to 27%." That means a reserved instance virtual server may cost 65% less than the comparable on-demand instance running on the AWS EC2 infrastructure at $0.06 per hour.

One effect of the move is to reinforce the perception that it’s much cheaper to run Linux than Windows on EC2. Amazon has been wary of Microsoft as a potent competitor with its Windows Server and Visual Studio tools in Windows Azure…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Editorial Staff.

According to analysts, your average low-end smartphone now has more than enough storage for most user. A study from IHS found that on average, customers who purchased a smartphone in 2012 only needed about 12.8GB of storage to meet their needs.

The report suggests that users are now making such heavy use of cloud-based services that local storage has become something of an afterthought. As a result, we have less data to store on our phones and the concept of regular storage increases is less of a selling point than it once was…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Walter Bailey.

The world of technology is doing wonders every now and then since many past decades –a few advancements here and a few there! So what does the year 2013 have in store for the world of technology? What are some Cloud computing changes that can be experienced in 2013? Who are the vendors that will be most sought after in 2013? And what technologies will be in vogue for the year 2013? Let’s see what some experts have to say about these significant changes and developments during the year.

Mark Eisenberg

This expert gentleman thinks that the Amazon Web Services (AWS) are off for a big win in 2013. He views Microsoft as the industry leader and talks about how it would continue its legacy in 2013. Also, he believes that Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) will continue to dominate the industry. He feels the industry would do much better if companies start adopting rather than sitting on the sidelines discussing…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

AppZero, the fastest way to move enterprise server applications to the cloud, announced today that it has been named to CIO.com‘s “10 Hot Cloud Startups to Watch” compiled by Startup 50 writer Jeff Vance. The 10 companies making the list were selected from a “top 25” list that was nominated to the Startup 50 blog. Factors in moving onto the final list were: the company’s standings following a vote, viability of product, competitive advantages and management team’s pedigree.There will be a new round of voting to rank the companies on the top 10 list. Please vote for AppZero here.

According to Vance, AppZero made the list because, moving applications from traditional IT systems to the cloud isn’t easy. AppZero encapsulates an application and its dependencies in a "virtual application appliance," without a virtual machine (VM). The result is an application that is flexible, "hypervisor-agnostic, cloud independent, and fast."…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Matthew Ramsey.

To know whether cloud computing can give your organization a competitive advantage, it helps to look at the success of other businesses which have turned to the cloud. An in-depth look will help quell some of the apprehensions of executives in many companies. Schumacher Group, a healthcare company focused on improving patient care in Texas and Louisiana, recently moved to a software-as-a-service model. Even CEO William “Kip” Schumacher admits that the IT staff is better equipped to work on innovations driving its mission.

Schumacher Group now works with thousands of health care providers, meaning it is involved in the treatment over four million patients a year. The company has, according to Schumacher, established a plan to buy up 80% of the infrastructures available. By customizing the remaining 20%, it has given IT the ability to drive essential innovations seen as the competitive advantage the cloud is providing the organization…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

People have actually been using cloud services for years. When they’ve needed to conference with each other, they go through third-party providers such as WebEx or On24. Apple iTunes has been popular for years. Now, people use cloud for many other personal needs. When they need to store files, they use Dropbox or Amazon — or move everything into Apple iCloud. And who doesn’t have a Gmail account?

The bottom line is people have become comfortable with cloud, and this level of comfort is percolating into corporate policy. In adopting their own personal cloud computing-based applications, employees are now driving their organizations to cloud as well. Who says companies don’t listen to their employees?…

Grazed from BizTechMagazine. Author: Steve Zurier.

For mobile solutions developer Mobiquity, running a business in the cloud makes perfect sense. As a startup, Mobiquity made the fiscal decision to leverage cloud-based infrastructure versus building out costly on-premises services. In the beginning, it used Google Apps and cloud-based storage. That was then.

As demand soared for enterprise ­mobile solutions, applications and websites, Mobiquity, too, grew exponentially, says Infrastructure Architect Tim Harney. The Boston-area company launched in April 2011 with just a handful of employees. By the end of 2012, it had 160 full-time people. And the company — whose clients include Weight Watchers, Fidelity and the New York Post — expects that in 2013 it will employ nearly 300 people. That doesn’t mean it’s outgrown the cloud. “As the company grew, we found that in Google Apps, there was no real sync tool to integrate Microsoft Outlook on a Mac,” Harney says. “I got some feedback from people wondering why we couldn’t use Microsoft Exchange.”…

Grazed from Smallbusiness.co.uk. Author: Mark Seemann.

It’s no surprise that cloud computing services are so enticing to businesses: the minimal upfront costs, pay-as-you-go cost structure, flexible access to software and data, and the promise that the cloud vendor will handle the awkward, costly parts of IT.

Cloud services can make applications that were once the preserve of only the largest organisations, like CRM, sales management, contact centre software, call recording – available to any company, from a two-person business to a £20 million turnover organisation. It puts what were once the big kids’ toys in the hands of any business, irrespective of size. However, using the cloud can still be perceived as a leap of faith. Some businesses are concerned about exactly how to choose the right cloud applications, how to get the best use from them, and if their data will be secure when it’s up there. To help dispel these doubts, here are the key questions you should ask a cloud service provider before committing.

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

Study of cloud computing among 1,300 U.S. and U.K. executives, conducted by Rackspace Hosting with support from Manchester Business School in the U.K., found that cloud technologies enable significant budgetary savings.

The objective of this study was to determine whether to allow companies to reduce the cloud computing technology budgets, and determine where they will then invest the savings. Overall, the researchers were able to count the reduction of the IT budget by 26% of respondents in U.S. companies. The vast majority of all respondents (94%) stated that cloud computing somehow helped them save money…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Evernote and its 50 million-user population are having a bad week. The productivity software-as-a-service issued a systemwide password reset for all of its users on Saturday after a hacker or group of hackers broke into its user database and swiped various bits of user information, including usernames, emails and passwords.

It’s another weapon in the arsenal of cloud skeptics, who tend to point at breaches like this as proof the cloud is not secure. Of course, that’s ridiculous, as these breaches are less common than attacks or theft within the four walls of a business. Still, Evernote is coming under fire—and rightfully so—for allowing this breach to happen. According to the company’s blog, its operations and security team discovered and blocked "suspicious activity" on its network. The blog post, written by Dave Engberg, called it a "coordinated attempt to access secure areas" of Evernote’s service…