Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Despite the hype around its high-end engineered “Exa” systems, Oracle hardware revenue continued to swoon in the second quarter when it was off 23 percent year over year. But, CEO Larry Ellison said that the company has just about turned the corner.

Oracle must be really worried about its hardware business. In its second quarter earnings release, the company trotted out a canned quote from CEO Larry Ellison to defend hardware’s honor. Said Ellison: Sun has proven to be “one of the most strategic and profitable acquisitions we have ever made.” Oracle bought Sun Microsystems for $7.4 billion three years ago…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

How low can PaaS pricing go? AppFog says it’s cutting the price of the paid version of its polyglot, multi-cloud PaaS in half for developers. That’s great for developers, but will it boost corporate adoption? Developers love PaaSes but no one likes to spend money. So AppFog, which offers a multi-language, multi-cloud PaaS built atop a Cloud Foundry foundation, is cutting its list price in half to lure more developers to the platform.

The new option, available from AppFog’s site, costs $50 per user for 500MB to 4GB of database storage and 50GB of data transfer. In July, Portland, Ore.-based AppFog launched its ambitious cross-cloud PaaS effort including a free version for up to 2GB of RAM. Additional monthly plans with more memory started at $100 for 4G, $380 for 16GB and $720 for 32GB. The free version is still available…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Bernard Golden.

This has been a curious year for cloud computing. The technology has moved into mainstream consciousness, but many vendors remain frustrated with the pace of enterprise adoption. While widespread agreement about the importance of cloud computing is present, many vendors see enterprises pursuing internal cloud implementation projects with a slow pace. As you can imagine, vendors are impatient with this pace—but not as frustrated as early-stage investors in those vendors.

Notwithstanding, I expect 2013 to be an inflection point for cloud computing, although not in the way many IT organizations or vendors do. You can expect that cloud computing trends of 2012 will become more vivid in 2013 and will prove disconcerting to incumbents, no matter which side of the vendor/buyer table they sit on. Cloud computing will prove more disruptive to the established order of things than almost anyone anticipates, and it will prove to be extremely uncomfortable for many. Here are five things to look for in 2013…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Charles Babcock.

With KPMG predicting a doubling of cloud services revenue over the next two years, it’s a good time to point out where cloud computing has gained strength over the past year in capabilities and services. At the same time, we should look at the cloud’s weaknesses, as a cautionary tale for those IT teams whom KPMG says are about to migrate production applications to the cloud.
Here are the top seven developments we saw in public cloud computing in 2012: The three biggest setbacks, and the four biggest wins. We’ll start with the setbacks.

Setback #1: Outages Plague Amazon And Others.

When you’re trying to convince big companies to bet their business on cloud operations, the worst thing that can happen is for the cloud infrastructure you’re thinking of using to suffer an unplanned outage. Amazon Web Services didn’t have an outage in 2012 that rivaled the hit it took over the Easter weekend in April 2011, when multi-availability zones in one of its data centers went down. However, Amazon was nevertheless buffeted at its big East Coast complex by service outages on June 14 and June 29, due to power outages…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Five9, the leader in cloud contact center software, was honored with a Cloud Computing Excellence Award. Cloud Computing Magazine recognized the Five9 Virtual Contact Center solution for helping advance a significant, growing technology market.

Five9 pioneered the cloud contact center software market and continues to grow and enhance its solutions to deliver scalable cloud contact centers quickly, at a cost of ownership far lower than traditional premise-based solutions. The Five9 Virtual Contact Center, built on a fully multi-tenant cloud platform, has all of the features necessary to effectively run contact center operations, including inbound, outbound and blended call center capabilities, interactive voice response with speech recognition and workforce management.

"It’s exciting to see Five9 recognized for innovation in the cloud. Five9 delivers next generation cloud contact center solutions that help organizations eliminate the hassle and expense of outdated premise-based solutions." – Mike Burkland, president and CEO, Five9.

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

New research from Host Analytics and conducted by Dimensional Research has found that for four out of five business execs, the cloud is chosen for its value over anything else. A similar number of employees surveyed said that it’s beneficial for them to use cloud applications. The research, which covered over 300 CIOs and business executives, again found various benefits to cloud adoption, which may perhaps shift the balance as IT budgets are being prepared for 2013.

When asked for the reasons a cloud app was chosen over other, on-premise options, the disparity between business executives and CIOs was stark. Value was the obvious factor for execs (80%), whereas compliance was the most important component for CIOs (58%); value (53%) and greater competitive advantage (51%) completed the top three. Compliance is a vital, perhaps underrated reason for utilising the cloud. 61% of survey respondents said they have out of date business critical software, and 14% said their on-premise software hadn’t been upgraded in four or more years…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Ayushman Baruah.

Software developers now have a chance at focusing on doing what they are best at – coding, for, they can leave the rest to Seattle-incorporated and Bangalore-based startup CloudMunch. The 15-member startup offers developers with a cloud-based platform that claims to take care of the entire software development lifecycle, enabling them to build, test, run and manage their applications in an automated environment. In the words of the company’s founders, developers can now “Focus on the code, CloudMunch the rest.”

Pradeep Prabhu and Prasanna Raghavendra, both long-term Infosys executives started CloudMunch in September 2011 with the aim of delivering better software faster in the cloud. “We do so by providing early and instant feedback; automating the entire process with one click; and enabling ‘dev’ and ‘run’ seamlessly in the cloud,” Raghavendra, the company’s co-founder and CTO said…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

With an objective to offer the most comprehensive research covering the market for Cloud and related opportunities, ReportsnReports.com offers research reports that address competitive analysis, market opportunities in various industry verticals, cloud applications and solutions, the future of the Cloud, and more.

Key cloud impact areas covered include but not limited to: Cloud Solutions and Opportunities, Cloud and Commerce, Content, and Applications; Cloud and Broadband including 4G and Beyond; Cloud and Small and Medium Business (SMB); Cloud and Content Delivery Networks (CDN); Cloud Telephony and impact on Incumbents; Cloud Convergence with Social and Local; Cloud and Machine-to-Machine (M2M); Cloud and Next Generation Networks; Hardware, Software, Professional Services; Primary, Backup & Cloud Storage Solutions; Hybrid Mobile Cloud (HMC) Computing; Cloud Backend-as-a-service (BaaS)/ Mobile BaaS (MBaaS) and more…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

To stay on top in the computer forensics game, the quality which must be embraced above all others is adaptability to constant change. Every day there are new computers and devices, new applications, new fads and new offerings, and as technology continues to encroach on almost every aspect of doing business today, staying on top of the newest trends and technologies is essential for any professionals who will be relied on to “save the day” when problems and/or questions lie in the digital world.

Global Digital Forensics founder and CEO/CTO has lived on that cutting edge of the cyber world for over two decades and is once again getting Global Digital Forensics geared up for the challenges and technologies he expects will crowd more into the spotlight in 2013 and answers some questions to share some of his insight on what he believes clients can expect and how GDF will be positioned to respond…

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

The Application Deployment Software (ADS) market in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region grew 8 percent year-on-year to US$641 million in the first half of 2012. It is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate of 7.6 percent over the next five years (2012 – 2016), according to the latest IDC Asia/Pacific Semiannual Application Deployment Software Tracker.

"Inevitably, the weakening economies in the United States and Europe have impacted the APEJ region, with companies heavily dependent on export businesses the worst hit among all. Various economic statistics have also indicated signs of slowdown in the key growth engines of the region – China and India," said Chris Zhang, Senior Market Analyst for IDC’s Asia/Pacific Application Deployment Software Research…