Grazed from Android Authority. Author: Chris Smith.

Earlier this year, among the plethora of pre-release Galaxy S3-related rumors we’ve seen was one that mentioned the next Samsung smartphone will come pre loaded with the company’s own cloud solution. Dubbed S Cloud, the Samsung cloud was seen as a direct response to Apple’s iCloud that became available to iOS, OS X and Windows users once iOS 5 was released back in October 2011.

Samsung never unveiled the S Cloud in May, or later, and we had to put a pin in the rumor. But it looks like Samsung’s cloud-computing solution has been spotted on the Galaxy Note 2 right at IFA 2012, as a S Cloud app can already be found on the phablet that was announced only last week…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: James Staten and Lauren E. Nelson.

In 2012, Forrester predicted that cloud computing would move out of the shadows and become a mainstream technology.

This means big changes in the test and development process, business intelligence and corporate governance areas. CIOs need to look beyond their IT department and go even further – beyond the four walls of their corporate headquarters – to make their cloud strategy a success.

Cloud technologies have matured nearly across the board, as have transparency, security and best practice use and adoption (see Figure 1). Cloud is no longer a toddler; it has entered the awkward teenage years. While many of us would prefer to spare our kids the angst of adolescence, the painful lessons of the teenage years make us who we are today…

Grazed from ComputerWeekly. Author: Adrian Bridgwater.

The Linux Foundation wrapped up its CloudOpen conference this weekend at the Sheraton Hotel & Marina in San Diego.

Billed as "the only" conference providing a collaboration and education space dedicated to advancing the open cloud, but what kind of taste did it leave in our mouths?

Can we say unequivocally that ALL open source cloud computing is ALL good news? Some might argue that it is, but (and it’s a big but) with both OpenStack and CloudStack in existence, plus the rise of deviations and modifications upon both standards… and then corporate vendor-driven spin in between…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Baidu Inc. said Monday that it would invest roughly 10 billion yuan ($1.6 billion) in a cloud computing center.

Baidu didn’t give further details such as where the center would be located and how it was going to pay for the investment.

China’s leading search engine by revenue has been pushing hard to expand its hold of the rapidly growing mobile Internet market, and cloud computing–or remote online data storage–has been a key part of that initiative. The company has been offering remote storage to users and application developers to woo them to use its mobile services…

Grazed from Cloud Times. Author: Xath Cruz.

As it is very sensible to use a private cloud environment for management, security, and other aspects of mobile applications, it can be expected that mobile devices will soon be the driving force in cloud computing, and vice versa. However, getting to that point will require investment and planning.

A number of companies have already started moving in this direction. For instance, the December 2011 survey of 3,645 IT decision-makers in 8 countries revealed that about a 3rd of the responders believe providing information access to different devices is their main motivation for implementing cloud computing. The survey also proved that cutting costs was only the third most popular reason for resorting to cloud…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Prabhakar Gopalan.

Cloud computing changes everything, including corporate strategy as a practice. I have listed five reasons why, although I’m sure there are many more. Long story short: Corporate strategists need to get out of their 20th century mindset and into the 21st century.

1. Emergent strategy rules

For years, the practice of strategy has been about analyzing value chains, applying frameworks like Porter’s five forces or newer strategic-intent-driven ideas like Blue Ocean Strategy. The problem with those framework-driven ideas is they assume a very static, deterministic model of the world. They work when the variables required to solve a problem are already well known, few in number and change at a slow pace…