Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Chris Kanaracus.

SAP’s burgeoning portfolio of cloud-based applications has prompted it to make some changes to its PartnerEdge program.  More than 500 partners who have relationships with SuccessFactors, the cloud HCM (human capital management) vendor SAP finished acquiring last year, will be added to the program during the course of 2013, SAP said this week.

Partners "now have the opportunity to tackle the fast-growing cloud market and offer best-of-breed cloud solutions and suites to their installed base customers and prospects," SAP said in a statement. SAP is also trying to make life easier for partners on the contractual side of things. A single deal will allow partners to sell all of SAP’s cloud offerings, rather than requiring separate agreements for each one, according to the statement…

Grazed from The Ottawa Citizen.  Author: Ian Macleod.

American spies can snoop through Canadians’ computer data — including that of political organizations and without warrants — if the data resides within popular U.S. cloud computing services, says a former Microsoft executive.

In a report commissioned by the European Parliament, former Microsoft chief privacy adviser Caspar Bowden reveals, “it is lawful in the U.S. to conduct purely political surveillance on foreigners’ data accessible in U.S. clouds,” operated by U.S. firms such as Google, Microsoft, Apple, IBM and others.  One sweeping provision of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) authorizes the targeting of, “foreign-based political organization(s)… or foreign territory that relates to… conduct of the foreign affairs of the United States.”…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

As the data center continues to become an integral part of any organization, administrators are working hard to find ways to be as resilient as ever. The data center environment is a lot more complex now with many moving parts – all of which are vital to the efficiency foundation of an infrastructure. With cloud computing, more users, and an increase in data – the challenge has become disaster recovery and business continuity. All distributed systems have to be checked and the data points must all be monitored. In working with these more complex data centers, many administrators are turning to the cloud and virtualization to help them create a more robust DR plan.

The reality is this: a well-planned out cloud and virtualization solution can truly help any organization create a more agile environment. There are inherent benefits to working with specific types of cloud models and virtualization platforms. A large part of IT is creativity – that’s why using new types of technologies can help reduce management costs and keep an environment running longer…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

A new survey from Brocade finds the role of the CIO is changing, apparently driven by cloud computing. The survey of 100 CIOs from Europe, the Middle East, and Africa finds that half expect cloud adoption to take less time than required to deal with IT infrastructure issues, such as email and storage.

Moreover, one-third of the CIOs report that cloud computing is already in their enterprises — and IT had nothing to do with it. Finally, about 70 percent stated that cloud computing services are here to stay, and they would adopt more in the years to come. We’ve known for some time that cloud computing is showing up in all enterprises, with or without CIO approval. Although shortsighted CIOs push back hard on those who use cloud services such as Dropbox or Google Apps, CIOs who "get it" are using this interest in cloud computing to move in more productive and innovative directions…

Grazed from ERP Cloud News. Author: Editorial Staff.

Cloud computing — you’ve heard of it, you may even be using it without realizing it. What is it exactly, and what potential benefits does it offer for your small business? As the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) points out, cloud computing has been around in some way, shape or form for years. Facebook, Gmail and Flickr are just three applications of the technology that many of us use daily to store comments, photos, videos and other content in the cloud. But that are many other applications, says the SBA.

“Imagine being able to log onto a website and access all the tools and programs that your employees need to do their jobs without having to invest in lots of standalone software licenses,” it notes. “What if you could access all your office productivity tools (email, calendar, word processing, databases, invoicing, CRM, intranet, etc.) from any location or device? What’s more, all the software management and trouble-shooting can be done by the cloud service provider, freeing up your IT resources.”…

Grazed from Information Daily. Author: James Johns.

Before the birth of the electricity generating industry, any enterprise needing power had to build and run private generators. These were inflexible, inelastic and did not scale easily. In the mid 19th Century, centralised generation allowed electricity to be provided as a utility, meaning that consumers only had to pay for what they used. Consumption could be scaled up or down to meet demand without the need for capital expenditure. A century and a half on, this is precisely the emancipating effect that cloud computing is now having on the enterprise.

Organisations no longer need to build, maintain and renew cumbersome IT infrastructure in order to consume as much, or as little computing resource as they need. The cost implications of this model for both public and private sector organisations are clear inasmuch as cloud allows the enterprise to make use of sophisticated business solutions on a “pay as you go” basis with almost no capital costs…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Beth Pariseau.

Talk of Dell going private might scare enterprise customers, as they may see it as a sign of ill health for the company, but when it comes to cloud computing, it could be a good thing. Dell partners say it’s in the company’s best interest to go private, as it struggles to deliver a cohesive Dell cloud strategy.

Going private would potentially rid Dell’s management of worries about its PC business, which has dragged the company’s revenues down as of late, and it could free executives up to focus on new efforts like the cloud, said Scott Houston, CEO of GreenButton, a Dell partner that runs its cloud-based software management tool on a mix of Dell’s vCloud infrastructure and Amazon Web Services…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

Technology is not without its pitfalls even if it has so many benefits, especially if it is not used properly. Cloud computing is no exception; in fact a lot of people think that cloud computing has more pitfalls than the current solutions that they are already employing in their business. Some of these are actually real but can be prevented, while others are just rationalizations out of laziness to plan and execute or even simply an undeniable resistance to change. A lot of people are afraid of change, to step out of the comfort zone. True enough, stepping out of your comfort zone half-heartedly and without a real plan will quickly help you realize these fears. But we shall only tackle the biggest one here.

The most glaring of these pitfalls that people are buzzing on about is security. In a data-driven world, security is paramount. And why shouldn’t it be, it’s the most powerful weapon anyone could possess; whole empires have come crashing down because of a few key pieces information. Granted it would take years to tear down an empire with mere information or disinformation, but it would only require a few minutes for a big company, no, a whole economy to fall because of lost information. Imagine if the worldwide stock exchange entity suddenly lost all of its valuable data including all the backups at the same time, that would be billions in every currency lost, causing an entire worldwide economy collapse…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Matthew Ramsey.

Internal telephone networks, switches, wires, and other equipment used to make up a significant part of the enterprise infrastructure. The rise of cloud computing has changed this and nowadays you have a cloud computing alternative to consider, as with most everything else. Cloud PBX is now a widespread phenomenon. If your organization hasn’t considered such a system instead of implementing or upgrading a traditional phone system, it probably will soon.

Chances are, your business has some form of Voice-over-Internet protocol, or VoIP, in place. Many hosted and cloud PBX systems are based on this concept. The transition is being guided by the much more expansive transfer of public switched telephone networks to VoIP. Internet based telecommunications services have been used in homes for several years. The technology has advanced to the point that businesses find it reliable enough for their telecom needs, at a much lower cost of ownership…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Arthor Nichols.

In the cloud conversation, Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) appear much less than the famed Software as a Service (SaaS). This is not surprising when you consider that a world already populated with built platforms and infrastructure has but to operate on them. However, offering Platforms and Infrastructure through the cloud has been a boon to the software development field, especially with the recently growing push toward increased collaboration between developers and admins, commonly referred to as Development Operations (DevOps).

Distinctions and Utilization

Though somewhat easy to confuse the two, it may be best to view PaaS as a subset of IaaS with fewer responsibilities in terms of provision of infrastructure. Specifically, choosing PaaS over IaaS moves the responsibility of managing the database, runtime, and middleware from an organization to the vendor of the service. PaaS and, to a lesser degree, IaaS are a direct route via the cloud to facilitating the work of software developers, though IaaS may be more desirable in cases where an organization has a suitable existing infrastructure and prefers more control over those elements…