Grazed from TheStreet. Author: Chris Ciaccia.

Expectations for the high-flying Salesforce.com’s second-quarter earnings release, which takes place after the close of the stock market Thursday, are particularly lofty this time around. The shares have rocketed 45 percent this year.

Led by CEO Marc Benioff, Salesforce has become a leader in the cloud computing (learn more) industry, providing software-as-a-service (SaaS) to companies. Salesforce has expanded its social-media offerings, buying Radian6 and recently purchasing Buddy Media for $689 million, as it takes on rivals Oracle [ORCL 31.585 -0.115 (-0.36%) ] and SAP [SAP 64.52 -0.51 (-0.78%) ]. That acquisition closed Aug. 13…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Rob Wright.

As more applications move to the cloud and software publishers embrace the SaaS model, software piracy will decline and eventually become a thing of the past.

Or, maybe it won’t. Maybe users will simply find new ways — trading SaaS account login credentials, or setting up "dark clouds" — to get around paying for software.

A debate has been sparked by new data from the Business Software Alliance (BSA), which surveyed nearly 15,000 PC users in 33 countries; the study did not include smartphones or tablets. The survey shows that 42 percent of respondents say they share login credentials for paid cloud services inside their organizations…

National cloud and data center solutions provider Peak 10 is undergoing a multi-phase expansion on its Atlanta technology campus. Phase 1 includes a new cloud cluster as well as 2,500 square feet of additional premium data center space, bringing the total Atlanta footprint to 30,000 square feet. Phase 2 will involve the build-out of a third Peak 10 data center in the Greater Atlanta region. Details of the third data center will be released later this year.

The new cloud cluster combines new network infrastructure to improve scalability, performance, and enhance redundancy and replication capabilities. It also allows customers to easily manage Virtual Machines (VMs) and maximize cloud server resources.

Dell is unveiling new and expanded cloud services to enable customers to select solutions that will help drive business results, whether they need strict security and compliance, large or small workload capabilities, real-time storage and retrieval, or quick and easy online access for configuring their cloud services.

Dell Cloud Dedicated Delivers Private Cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service

Building on the success of Dell’s public and hybrid cloud offerings, the company is now launching Dell Cloud Dedicated Services to deliver managed private cloud infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) from a secure Dell data center. Dell Cloud Dedicated offers the rapid deployment, self-service access, scalability and metered usage benefits of cloud computing while meeting the security and compliance requirements of the most sensitive or highly regulated data.

Grazed from Ixia.  Author: PR Announcement
 

Ixia, the leading global provider of converged IP and wireless network test solutions, today announced that it will demonstrate the most comprehensive test solution for next-generation virtualized data center infrastructures in Ixia booth #413 at VMworld 2012 in San Francisco from August 26-30. Ixia will also demonstrate a proof of concept where Ixia virtual ports (IxVM) are being used to test an OpenStack (Cloud OS) environment.

Application virtualization in a cloud environment is a compelling solution with economic, flexibility, and capacity benefits for enterprises of all sizes. The shared and distributed nature of cloud computing components, however, makes it extremely difficult to predict requirements and optimize performance. A new, more specialized testing approach is required in order to measure the true capacity and quality of virtualized applications and infrastructures.a

Grazed from Reuters. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft Corp unveiled its first new logo in 25 years on Thursday as it looks to unify its branding ahead of a clutch of new product releases this year.

The world’s largest software company is introducing a dash of color in its first logo redesign since 1987, using a new multi-colored square next to a plain rendering of its name, replacing its well-worn italic style logo.

Microsoft is rolling out its new Windows 8 operating system along with new Office and phone software this autumn, and is hoping the new logo unifies customers’ experience of the company, much like rival Apple Inc’s distinctive logo has for its consumers…

Grazed from The DataCenter Journal. Author: Greg Schulz.

The Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA) has announced and published more documents for data center customers of cloud usage. These new cloud usage models for to address customer demands for interoperability of various clouds and services before for Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) among other topics which are now joined by the new Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and foundational document for cloud interoperability.

Unlike most industry trade groups or alliances that are vendor driven or centric, ODCA is consortium of global IT leaders (e.g. customers) that is vendor independent and comprises as 12 member steering committee from member companies (e.g. customers), learn more about ODCA here…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

CITIC Telecom International CPC Limited (CITIC Telecom CPC), a wholly-owned subsidiary of CITIC Telecom International Holdings Limited (SEHK: 1883), today announces a partnership with EMC and Riverbed Technology (NASDAQ: RVBD) to further enhance its SmartCLOUD cloud computing offerings. The new solutions give Asia Pacific enterprises a more secure cloud storage environment and increased application performance and reliability, while providing them with a trusted, internationally-complied and secured springboard to grow business in the region.

New SmartCLOUD offerings with industry-leading storage and traffic management capabilities

The enhanced offering includes the new traffic and application balancing solution SmartCLOUD TAB (Traffic and Application Balancer), as well as enhancements and expansion of the storage capabilities in the SmartCLOUD portfolio…

Grazed from TheServerSide. Author: Cameron McKenzie.

Will there will be no end to the media hype surrounding cloud computing? Every day a new press release touts the remarkable service provided by some previously unknown PaaS provider, or an article or research study comes out that trumpets the incredible benefits and cost savings we would all enjoy if we abolished our data centers and indoctrinated ourselves as patrons of the Church of IaaS or the Temple of SaaS.

But putting all of the hype aside, not to mention the fact that there are indeed real benefits to be realized by properly leveraging cloud based technologies, the question remains: how does this shift towards cloud computing impact the typical developer who is building enterprise Java applications?…

Grazed from Data Center Knowledge. Author: Bill Kleyman.

There is now a direct connection between facilities teams and those engineers tasked with designing a cloud solution. Too often, the first response from IT professionals regarding the cloud is that of unease. The primary reason for this type of reaction is oftentimes the result of a lack of understanding revolving around cloud computing.

Remember, when we’re working with any sort of cloud infrastructure, we are effectively only transferring data over the Wide Area Network. There are, of course, accelerators, monitoring tools, virtualization metrics and other components to a cloud solution. But in its simplest form – it is the transfer of data over the WAN…