Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Abdul Salam.

2012 has been a takeoff year for cloud computing, there have been no real major breakthroughs yet no setbacks as well, but that is not to say that the field has been asleep overall, we have seen a continued growth in terms of support and adoption including the emergence of new types of services on offer. There have been a lot of improvements in the technology and also a lot of new directions taken that we have yet to see if they will lead to success or not. Let us take a look back a whole year at the state of cloud computing so far.

Wide adoption in media and entertainment – the cloud has proven its potential for the storage and delivery of media and entertainment elements mainly because of the introduction of high speed data communication standards like 4G and LTE. It has become easier to store, retrieve, and deliver media from the cloud. We are seeing a trend in consumer adoption of services like Dropbox, Box, Microsoft SkyDrive, Google Drive, iCloud, Netflix and Spotify. This may also be the reason why a lot of smartphone manufacturers chose to remove the expandable memory options from their devices like Google’s Nexus 4 by LG and the Nexus 7 tablet by Asus. HTC also did not include expandable storage on their new Droid DNA…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Caitlin White.

As cloud computing makes its way from testing to production environments, discussion around the real-world details of investing in cloud intensifies. We’ve pinpointed the rising cloud computing trends for the New Year. These keyword topics may not have been the hottest of the year, but as 2012 draws to a close, interest has been heating up — signaling some of the cloud issues and themes we’ll be facing in 2013.

‘Big data analytics’

This year has established the power of crunching big data and the competitive advantages it can bring to companies. According to Gartner, and after research into Web searches, it seems that in 2013 big data’s influence will only amplify. Since many enterprises have yet to choose a side, cloud computing standards will likely be a contentious issue moving into 2013…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Cloud computing may introduce new processes and technology challenges, but organizations appear to be ready to handle them, a new survey suggests. An overwhelming majority of IT executives, in fact, say they’re having no problems finding the skills they need to move forward with cloud engagements. But will this confidence be sustainable as organizations move deeper into cloud?

This is one of the results of a new survey of 327 CIOs, business executives and other stakeholders, conducted by Dimensional Research and sponsored by Host Analytics. More than eight out of 10 CIOs (81%) and IT managers (81%) in the survey say they are “easily able to find employees or contractors” who can help customize Software-as-a-Service applications…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Michael Finneran.

Cloud computing is all the rage in the IT industry, and UC is no exception. While it’s hard to find a concise market projection on the UC as a Service (UCaaS) market, there are a number of telling signs regarding its health.

For instance, UCaaS provider 8×8 saw its revenue increase 33% year-over-year. ShoreTel Sky (formerly M5) saw its revenue go up 27% while seat count increased 36%. The company is carrying a backlog worth $550,000 in revenue because it can’t keep up with installations. Broadsoft, which makes the UCaaS platform used by a number of providers including Comcast, Megapath and Verizon (which also sells Cisco Hosted Collaboration Solution or HCS) saw its revenues increase by 13%…

Grazed from Asus. Author: PR Announcement.

Asustek Computer on December 19 formed a health cloud computing alliance through cooperation with Taiwan-based Show Chwan Health Care System to establish a cloud computing ecosystem for health care management. The alliance will set up three cloud platforms: personal health management, health care and medical research.

The personal health management platform will provide personal cloud storage capacity of at least 5GB for individuals to store medical records and health-related measurements such as blood pressure, blood glucose and weight, and access the information via smartphones, tablets and other terminal devices…

Grazed from SFGate. Author: Editorial Staff.

GreenButton™, the leading provider of compute intensive and integrated on-demand cloud solutions, today announced the company’s predictions for cloud computing in 2013. GreenButton has identified the top trends covering technology and business innovation to include Big Data, Cloud Bursting, Cloud Governance, On Demand and HPC computing, and License Management for ISVs.

The year 2012 has proven to be a pivotal year for cloud computing, marked by one key takeaway: adoption of cloud computing for the enterprise has finally gone mainstream. No longer hidden from plain sight, IT departments are now very upfront about their company’s use of cloud computing, resulting in legitimate cloud budgeting taking place. In fact, a recent survey conducted by Forrester Research found half of all enterprises in North America and Europe are planning to create budgets for cloud-related investments in 2013…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Fernanda Aspe.

The BYOD trend finds itself at a tech crossroads. While end users are the first to embrace it, business managers and IT administrators remain skeptical about security and compliance implications. Since the benefits of BYOD are too tempting to ignore, IT teams must implement protocols to protect against problems mobile devices can cause and to reap the full advantages of cloud computing in the enterprise.

But how can enterprise IT make two new technology forces — cloud computing and bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trends — exist without disruption in companies? These frequently asked questions offer expert insight and answers to give you a better understanding of how BYOD works with cloud, how to manage mobile devices in the enterprise and how to secure enterprise data. We also provide ideas on ways to tweak your corporate program and optimize your cloud environment to ease tensions in what is becoming a BYOD world — whether IT departments want it to or not…

Grazed from ScienceLogic. Author: PR Announcement.

Dedicated to delivering smart IT solutions to help manage and monitor its customers’ increasingly complex physical, virtual, and cloud environments, ScienceLogic knows a thing or two (or ten!) about technology trends on the horizon in 2013. As cloud computing continues to shape the way enterprises, service providers, and government agencies operate, ScienceLogic predicts what to look out for in the coming year in its latest blog post titled, "2013 Cloud Computing Predictions."

Here are a few of ScienceLogic’s 2013 predictions:

The Cloud Wars Are Picking Up Speed: Last year, we predicted cloud computing would become more mature, and as a result, consumer cloud environments at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Salesforce.com would begin cut-throat competition for consumer and business dollars. This prediction will continue to play out in 2013 in a number of news ways as the cloud wars really begin to pick up speed…

Grazed from Information-Management. Author: Justin Kern.

Enterprise cloud applications are scoring some anticipated victories with modernization and business value, but are frequently used in a compliance gray area, according to results of a new survey. The report, entitled “Drivers of Cloud Adoption,” surveyed 327 CIOs, IT professionals and business executives involved in cloud adoption at their companies. It was conducted by industry analyst firm Dimensional Research and sponsored by software and on-demand performance management vendor Host Analytics.

When asked the driving factors for choosing a cloud application over an on-premise option, there was little surprise that 80 percent of business executives picked “value” as the top reason. CIOs, on the other hand, were split among a range of reasons: cloud better met compliance requirements (58 percent), perception of cloud holding competitive advantage (51 percent), turning to cloud applications as part of a wider cloud strategy (42 percent), along with, of course, value (53 percent)…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Examining Amazon Web Services usage is a cottage industry for a dozen or so startups. One of them, Newvem, has offered its service free to select customers. Now that the service is broadly available, it’s time to monetize. Newvem, which promises to watch your Amazon Web Services usage for you and recommend ways to get the most mileage out of rented compute and storage, is now ready to charge for its services.

Large enterprises will negotiate their own deals, but for smaller accounts the company will offer free services until the customer goes over 50,000 AWS resource hours per month. Then it charges a cent or two per additional resource hour depending on usage. According to Newvem’s price list, there are additional fixed-rate charges for more advanced analytics of S3 storage or EC2 reserved instance use…