Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Dean Takahashi.

Corporate interest in software-as-a-service apps continues to grow, particularly in the era of cloud computing. But integrating those apps with the data in core systems of a business isn’t easy. And a number of companies are working on how to make integration “suck less.”

That was the topic of discussion for a breakout session at VentureBeat’s CloudBeat 2012 conference today in Redwood City, Calif. The goal is to make data integration “lightweight,” or easy enough to be done in an automated way, said Sam Ramji (pictured second from right), vice president of strategy at Apigee, a company that sells its applications programming interface (API) platform to big corporations…

Grazed from eChannelLine. Author: Mark Cox.

Distributor Avnet Technology Solutions has expanded its Cloud Solutions practice with the announcement of four new off-premise cloud computing solutions, two of them backup solutions, one SharePoint and one web hosting. All four services are powered by Amazon Web Services (AWS), and are the first offerings from a new relationship between the two companies. They are available to partners in the U.S. and Canada.

"This is our coming out party with AWS," said Tim FitzGerald, vice president of Avnet Cloud Solutions, Avnet Technology Solutions, Americas. "Our cloud portfolio was strong previously, but we have significantly broadened it with AWS. This is the first public announcement of our partnership with AWS."…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Lynda Stadtmueller.

When customers only dabble in cloud services, they fail to realize the full benefits of the cloud. This isn’t just a philosophical problem for providers; unmet expectations lead to customer dissatisfaction and a tarnished brand. In part one of this two-part tip, "If companies using cloud computing only dabble, providers may suffer," expert Lynda Stadtmueller outlined the challenges providers face from "cloud dabblers." In part two, she discusses how providers can prevent and mitigate these challenges.

The practice of "cloud dabbling" can be problematic for enterprises, since their first impression of cloud services is often dampened by unrealistic expectations for such noncommittal usage. In turn, the blowback that follows these disappointments and dashed hopes spells trouble for cloud providers as well…

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

CloudNOW, a nonprofit worldwide association founded by Jocelyn DeGance Graham has given 2013 top predictions regarding cloud computing. CloudNOW is working for the overall professional development of women with a focus on using technology by providing forums and platform for networking, knowledge sharing, counseling, mentoring, and economic growth. The forecasts were authored by CloudNOW members and advisors Lori MacVittie, Jocelyn DeGance Graham, Bernard Golden, and Margaret Dawson.

According to the report, the cloud 2013 predictions include a particular focus on the cloud federation, large use of cloud stack, and greater control over cloud services and resources through enterprise class characteristics…

Grazed from DataCenterKnowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

During the past year, new technologies have paved the way for data center innovations, efficiencies and growth. A big part of that push has been cloud computing. However, cloud technology isn’t the end-all in defining how the data center has transformed. There are numerous underlying components which now help support both cloud computing and a more robust data center infrastructure.

Demand For Cloud Staff On the Rise

Looking ahead, more organizations, data center providers and vendors are going to need help with these evolving technologies. They’ll need people who are well-versed in multiple technological disciplines who can make educated decisions in line with business needs. These engineers and architects need the ability to think and work “outside of the box” – especially with the amount of new technologies directly affecting the data center…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Ryan Faughnder.

Workday Inc. (WDAY), a maker of Web-based human-resources software, reported third-quarter revenue that beat analysts’ estimates as more companies switched to its cloud-computing tools to manage their workforces. In its first quarterly report since becoming a publicly traded company, Workday had a loss excluding some items of 39 cents a share, the company said in a statement yesterday. Analysts predicted a loss of 49 cents, the average of estimates compiled by Bloomberg. Sales in the quarter ended Oct. 31 doubled to $72.6 million, compared with projections for $64 million.

Workday, founded in 2005 by co-Chief Executive Officers Dave Duffield and Aneel Bhusri, makes applications to help corporations manage human resources and financial records. As large companies adopt more online tools, Workday is drawing customers away from enterprise software companies such as Oracle Corp. (ORCL) and SAP AG. (SAP) Those two, along with Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), also make Web-based software for businesses…

Grazed from ReadWriteWeb. Author: Antone Gonsalves.

It’s a great time to jump into cloud computing. If your business runs on the Web, you can reap the benefits of a good old fashioned price war among Google, Microsoft and Amazon. The trio is lowering prices for their Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) cloud-computing platforms in order to attract developers. For startups and other companies not tied to legacy platforms, that means the time is right to get a good deal on building and running websites and client-side applications on any one of three state-of-the-art data centers.

A New Round Of Price Cuts

Less than six months after launching Compute Engine, Google dropped prices this week by about 5% for its baseline services, even though the cloud service is still in preview mode and available only to select customers. Amazon and Microsoft are expected to bring their prices in line with Google’s for their Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) and Azure services, respectively…

“AWS helps companies get started by offering a technology infrastructure with no capital expense and low pay as you go pricing, and providing a technology platform with broad functionality and global scale. This year, at the first AWS re: Invent conference, we have created a dynamic, live stage environment for start-up companies to launch publicly for the first time,” said Ariel Kelman, Head of Worldwide Marketing, AWS. “It was a great experience for us to watch these eight exciting companies show off their new apps on AWS in front of 6,000 members of the AWS community.”

Grazed from XtremeTech. Author: Grant Brunner.

Today, most large online services aren’t hosted on a single server. Amazon, iTunes, and Xbox Live are all run on countless networked servers all over the world. There is a lot of benefit to splitting up the load over many different servers and locations, but cloud computing also has its own problems, such as latency and stability. Top network engineers are working on smoothing out problems as they arise, and Netflix just made a big step in helping cloud services become more resilient.

Announced this week as Hystrix, this system was originally developed by the Netflix API team back in 2011 to control the interactions between Netflix’s distributed services and systems, stepping in to prevent cascading failures if they seem likely. As of today, anyone can use Hystrix completely free because it has been officially released on GitHub under the Apache 2.0 license. The announcement does a good job at showcasing the enormous scale at which this system works: “Today tens of billions of thread-isolated and hundreds of billions of semaphore-isolated calls are executed via Hystrix every day at Netflix and a dramatic improvement in uptime and resilience has been achieved through its use.” This might not sound all that exciting at first, but this could have huge implications for the online services we already use as well as the services of the future…