Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Russell deVries.

If you’re in the IT space, unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, odds are you’ve heard about cloud computing. In fact, you’re probably hearing about applications “in the cloud” now more than ever – accompanied by much debate and controversy. But what is cloud computing and how is it valuable for email archiving.

According to Gartner’s Key Issues for Cloud Computing (2009), cloud computing is “a style of computing where scalable and elastic IT-enabled capabilities are delivered as a service to customers using Internet technologies.” This broad definition is the reason why the umbrella of cloud computing is so huge; it’s a scalable technology than can be applied to virtually anything. In fact, it is being applied to virtually anything. There almost too many types of public cloud computing to keep up with, including:…

Grazed from Piston Cloud. Author: PR Announcement.

Piston Cloud Computing, Inc., the enterprise OpenStack™ company, today announced it has raised $8 million in Series B funding. The investment will be used to fuel product development, meet the needs of Piston Cloud’s rapidly expanding customer base and further deliver on the company’s vision for mass adoption of OpenStack. Cisco Systems Inc. (NASDAQ: CSCO), Data Collective and Swisscom Ventures join Divergent Ventures, Hummer Winblad and True Ventures as principal investors.

Corporate Milestones
• Today’s $8 million in Series B financing follows a $4.5 million Series A round in July 2011.
• Launched the first commercial OpenStack distribution with the general availability of the company’s flagship solution, Piston Enterprise OpenStack™, software for building, scaling and managing a private Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud on bare-metal, converged commodity hardware.
• Integration with Cloud Foundry™, the leading open source Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering, that allows Cloud Foundry PaaS to run on OpenStack…

Grazed from Windows IT Pro. Author: Editorial Staff.

Last week, Microsoft launched Office 365 Home Premium subscription service, the version of its cloud service aimed at home users of the company’s Office suite of applications. Subscribers will get the new Microsoft Office 2013 versions of Access, Excel, OneNote, Outlook, PowerPoint, Publisher, and Word. What got somewhat lost in the shuffle of this launch was that Office 2013 was also released for purchase in the traditional software model. I’m sure that’s no mistake, as Microsoft transitions to a "devices and services" company.

Microsoft also announced that the business versions of Office 365 would launch with new capabilities on February 27, which is probably the bigger news for IT pros. However, the company created some hoopla around the launch of the consumer-focused Office 365 Home Premium with an event in New York at Bryant Park where visitors were able try features of the new releases, including Skype world calling — which you won’t get in the retail version of Office. In all of Microsoft’s signage and press material surrounding the launch, the subscription model is highlighted and the straight software for purchase looks like an afterthought…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

At Parallels Summit 2013, watch for trends involving telco cloud services, as well as new companies integrating their email security, open source, storage and eDiscovery solutions with Parallels’ technology. Parallels Summit, a major cloud computing conference, kicks off today in Las Vegas. CEO Birger Steen says SMB cloud computing has gone mainstream. So what’s next for VARs, MSPs and aspiring cloud services providers (CSPs)? Talkin’ Cloud offers these five trends and news tips, which are worth tracking at the conference this week.

1. Telcos Become CSPs: It sounds like about 15 of the top 30 top telcos are leveraging Parallels’ automation software to build out their cloud services. I need to double-check those figures, but the overall trend is clear. Classic telecommunications companies, ILECs and other phone service specialists see Parallels as a path to offering cloud services…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Ted Samson.

Back in May, "Mad Money"’s Jim Cramer declared Dell’s stock dead, citing the company’s inability to compete with the likes of Apple in the ever-shrinking laptop and PC market. That very day, the company’s stock dropped significantly — and continued to do so for most of the remainder of 2012.

That price drop may be one of the best things to happen to Dell in recent memory in that it has put company founder Michael Dell in a position to inexpensively bring his company private as soon as today. By going private, Dell removes itself from the scrutiny of shortsighted, consumer-fixated Wall Street analysts who are sometimes too dazzled by the new and shiny to see beyond the next quarter…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

VMware’s fourth-quarter earnings, reported Jan. 28, set a record and came in ahead of analyst expectations. The next day, its stock, which had been trading at $99.10 just before the announcement, took a stunning hit, losing 20% of its value within a short time after the opening of trading. Several analysts had predicted VMware’s fourth-quarter earnings would disappoint because the market for virtualization products was nearly saturated and Microsoft was moving in to steal the customer base.

Instead, VMware beat the previous fourth-quarter’s earnings per share by 2% — at $0.47 per share. But the news that it was laying off 900 and realigning resources was taken as a bad sign. Maybe the skeptics had been right about VMware’s diminishing future. Or perhaps lost in translation was the statement that VMware would hire an additional 1,000 people and focus on its top business priorities…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Dan Worth.

The lure of a takeaway pizza is well-known and thanks to technology it’s becoming ever easier to order whenever the mood takes you. Smartphones and tablets let us place orders from any location via dedicated apps and one firm that’s seen the rise perhaps better than any other is Domino’s Pizza.

It now sees over 50 percent of its orders placed online, and 20 percent are coming from mobile applications on Android and iOS devices, according to the firm’s chief information officer Colin Rees. Rees was speaking at Cloud Expo in London last week and explained how the firm has embraced the benefits of cloud computing to ensure it can cope with the growing demand placed on its ordering systems…

Grazed from FierceGovernmentIT. Author: David Perera.

Cloud computing adoption remains low among law enforcement agencies, according to the results of a survey unveiled Jan. 31. According to a Ponemon Institute survey (.pdf) of 272 officials, most of them chief executives of police or sheriff departments, 46 percent of law enforcement agencies are not considering utilizing cloud computing. Thirty-eight percent say they’re considering it, or planning for adoption within the next 2 years, and 16 percent say they use it now. Ponemon did the survey at the behest of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and cloud computing promoter SafeGov.

Cloud adoption in law enforcement faces the hurdle of meeting FBI Criminal Justice Information Services security policy standards (.pdf)–standards which the FBI says (.pdf) are "cloud-compatible," although acknowledging that "the requirements may be tough for some vendors to meet." In a high-profile case, the city of Los Angeles in 2011 reversed (.pdf) a Google Apps for Government deployment to its police department on the grounds of noncompliance with CJIS policy…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

MGI Research, LLC announced today the general availability of MGI Cloud30TM Index data. “Cloud computing has emerged as one of the most dominant and disruptive trends in technology. It is one of the key tools in transforming enterprise IT and is the underlying enabler of both social networking and mobile computing”, said Igor Stenmark, Managing Director of MGI Research. "While it is unclear if cloud computing will deliver on all of its promises, the reality is that no technology project is undertaken today without evaluating the use of cloud computing.

The MGI Cloud30TM Index is intended to be the most accurate proxy of the financial impact of cloud computing – whatever direction it takes”, Mr. Stenmark continued. The current data for MGI Cloud30TM Index indicates that over the past three years, the cloud computing trend generated a distinct and above average impact in financial markets. The MGI Cloud30TM Index is comprised of shares of thirty US-listed companies that have the most direct exposure to cloud computing. Today’s announcement makes the MGI Cloud 30 Index historical data generally available.

For data access, licensing information, details on index components, methodology and weights, refer to http://www.mgiresearch.com. or contact MGI Research at +1 (888) 801-3644 or via email: mgicloud30@mgiresearch.com.

Grazed from TechCrunch.  Author:  David Strom.

Do you ever encounter delays in loading web-based applications and get impatient? Resulting from poor network latency, or how fast data is transferred from one location to another, these delays are frustrating to as end users, but are far more costly to Internet businesses that depend on lightning-quick web experiences for their customers. With the proliferation of cloud computing placing added demands on Internet speed and connectivity, latency is becoming a more critical concern for everyone, from the end user to the enterprise.

Pre-Internet, latency was characterized by the number of router hops between you and your application, and the delay that packets took to get from source to destination. For the most part, your corporation owned all of the intervening routers, so network delays remained fairly consistent and predictable. As businesses migrate and deploy more and more applications to the cloud, the issue of latency is becoming increasingly complex. In order to leverage cloud computing as a true business enabler, it is critical that organizations learn how to manage and reduce latency…