Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Sean Hull.

If your company hasn’t ventured an Amazon cloud deployment already, the day may be fast approaching. Amazon’s pay-as-you-go cloud is no longer "just" a popular playground for developers, a magnet for technology startups, and the clandestine home of "shadow IT" projects. It’s also increasingly a component of official IT operations.

Working with the Amazon EC2 cloud isn’t especially difficult, but it is different. This quick guide will get you up and running and on your way to cloud mastery. When your company finally embarks on that Amazon deployment or the next stop in your career requires cloud skills, you’ll be ready to answer the call…

Grazed from Law.com. Author: Doug Caddell.

Is the personal computer dead? The usefulness of Apple’s iPads and other mobile devices has been heavily debated in legal organizations; the "consumerization" of IT has been extensively discussed. Also in the conversation: desktop virtualization and cloud computing. What do they all have in common?

The intersection is anywhere/anytime computing. Each of these technology components is a cog of a larger phenomenon: users’ expectation of ubiquitous computing. Lawyers and other professionals demand "always-on" connectivity. Consider that just a few years ago the definition of a mobile user was someone connecting online from home — or perhaps a hotel room, or a client’s office. What they have in common: a physical location and, often, a hardwired connection to the Internet. Today’s definition of mobility is "everywhere," from a taxi or walking down a street…

Grazed from Trefis. Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is due to report its earnings from Q3 on 25th October, having finished the second quarter on a mixed note with revenues growing 29% to $13 billion approximately while trailing 12 month free cash flow decreased by 40% to $1.1 billion. The North America segment led the revenue growth with a jump of 36% while the international segment followed with at 22%. Operating income dipped from almost 4% of total sales during the same period last year to slightly less than 3% of total sales.

In the earnings call, we will be watching closely how Amazon plans to extend its lead in the Electronic and General Merchandise and cloud computing markets. We will also look for any announcements regarding the performance of the new Kindle Fire device range which was launched in early September. Amazon competes primarily with leading retailer Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT), consumer electronics giant Best Buy (NYSE:BBY) and eBay (NASDAQ:EBAY) Marketplaces in the Electronics and General Merchandise market, Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) in the device market, and Netflix (NASDAQ:NFLX) and Barnes and Noble (NYSE:BKS) in the content market…

Grazed from Small Business Trends. Author: Annie Pilon.

It’s no secret that cloud computing and mobile technology have changed the way modern workplaces operate. But with so many cloud-based collaboration tools available, businesses can have a hard time choosing the solution that works best for their company’s needs, current size, and growth potential. Igloo Software is a cloud-based collaboration tool that prides itself on adapting and scaling with businesses as they grow and change needs. The company also has a number of improvements changes and additions in the works, including stronger integration options with email providers, social task management, and secure instant messaging.

The company has already enacted a number of features that could be helpful for small business users, including drag and drop sharing, document reviews and approvals, editorial workflows, permission settings, and more…

Grazed from CIO. Author: Kenneth Corbin.

If the shift to cloud computing and the adoption of BYOD policies seem like an inevitability in the corporate world, they are anything but in the military and intelligence communities.

In a panel discussion Tuesday at a government IT conference, Debora Plunkett, information assurance director at the National Security Agency, joked that she would break out into hives at the mere mention of the term "BYOD." But just as private-sector employees have been clamoring for authorization to bring their iPhones, Androids and other devices into the workplace, federal workers–including those who deal with classified information–have been voicing similar requests…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Ted Samson.

Amazon Web Services has once again found itself in the unenviable position of being the poster-boy-turned-whipping-boy for the cloud computing world due to another high-profile service disruption that severely slowed down or knocked out a handful of heavily trafficked websites and services, including Netflix, Reddit, Airbnb, imgur, Pinterest, Heroku, and Foursquare. Like clockwork, the outage has generated a healthy debate around the blogosphere as to whether this most recent downtime spells doom for the cloud in general or for Amazon in particular, or whether affected AWS users accept a share of the blame for taking the cheap route and signing up for the bare-bones, single-region AWS services to host their mission-critical services.

AWS confirmed on its status page at 11:11 p.m. PT yesterday that it had experienced "degraded performance for a small number of EBS (Elastic Beanstalk Service) volumes." The page said that the issue was restricted to a single Availability Zone within the U.S.-East-1 Region, which is in Northern Virginia…