Grazed from Talkin’ Cloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Toshiba is taking its business phone systems to the cloud with the launch of VIPedge, a cloud-based business phone system that enables customers to pay for telephony services in a monthly fee subscription package. Starting at $29.99 on average per user, VIPedge is the latest in Toshiba’s forays into cloud computing, putting the vendor up against a variety of services currently being offered — from consumer cloud services to business services from the likes of 8×8 and Mitel.

The announcement of VIPedge rounds out Toshiba’s business telephony portfolio, which already features IPedge and Strata CIX. Available now through authorized Toshiba dealers, VIPedge is being positioned as a cost-effective alternative to on-premise solutions. As with other cloud services, VIPedge is a subscription-based business telephone system service that makes it easy for customers to get going with a negligible up-front cost and fixed monthly fees…

Grazed from OStatic. Author: Sam Dean.

Reuven Cohen has an interesting post up on Forbes’ site, which asks, "Free Versus Open: Does Open Source Software Matter in the Cloud Era?" He writes: "I like open source as much as the next guy but, from a value proposition standpoint, just being ‘open source’ doesn’t sound all that compelling to me. This has become especially true in the emerging cloud computing landscape where APIs and Big Data have become some of the most valuable currencies." In fact, though, as the transition to the cloud and Big Data continue, open source software is playing an absolutely critical role.

Cohen notes that Big Data has become one of the "most valuable currencies," but isn’t the open source Hadoop platform–used to sift insights from extremely large data sets–one of the flagship pieces of software driving the Big Data trend? Hadoop has given rise to promising startup companies such as Hortonworks, focused on training and services surrounding it…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Larry Carvalho.

I recently participated in a panel discussion, titled: "Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) endgame – commoditizing the data center" at the GigaOM Structure 2012 Conference. While software is definitely defining the use of IaaS through Platform as a Service (PaaS), the underlying need for IaaS does not go away. In my opinion, the current pace of infrastructure and data center build out cannot be maintained, leading to a future need of resource sharing in this space.

Resource sharing includes everything that contributes to a data center, especially the physical infrastructure. Several Software as a Service (SaaS) providers, especially in the collaboration space, innovatively optimize their infrastructure to serve their specialized purpose. Facebook, for example, has open sourced their hardware design through Open Compute. Skype, as you know, routes calls and video through their users’ bandwidth, reducing the need for back-end infrastructure…

Grazed from Oregan Live. Author: Mike Rogoway.

The forecast continues to brighten at Cloudability.

The Portland startup plans to announce today that it has landed $8.7 million in investment backing to help market its technology, which helps businesses manage their computing in the "cloud."

Many companies, large and small, have shifted much of their data storage and processing into data centers — large, centralized facilities packed with thousands or tens of thousands of computers. Companies such as Amazon.com and Rackspace lease space in their server farms…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Elizabeth White.

ServiceMesh has teamed with Apprenda, Cloud Cruiser and Derdack, with sponsorship from Microsoft, to create a comprehensive set of cloud enablement solutions named the Private Cloud Solutions Suite (PCSS). By collective effort, the team that created PCSS offers Systems Integrators (SIs) an enhanced market solution for building private clouds using the Microsoft stack that eliminates stop gaps and enables full-spectrum delivery of enterprise private cloud capabilities to customers. Strategically aligned with Microsoft System Center, Hyper-V and Windows Server, PCSS ensures that SIs can attract new revenue from enterprise customers and deliver on outstanding private cloud project commitments.

"Private Cloud Solutions Suite is strategically important to Microsoft private cloud and System Center as our ISV Partner Solutions enhance Microsoft’s industry leadership. PCSS also equips key SI partners with additional technology to help deliver on enterprise private cloud needs," said Sergio Klarreich, Director of Business Development, System Center Partner Ecosystem, Management and Security Division at Microsoft…

Grazed from Talkin’ Cloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

How is Office 365 performing with channel partners moving into cloud services? And how should Microsoft channel partners most effectively compete with Google Apps and Amazon Web Services (AWS) in the cloud market? Microsoft Channel Chief Jon Roskill offers some clues and updates from Worldwide Partner Conference 2012 (WPC12).

First, a confession: I missed a face-to-face sit-down with Roskill (sorry about that, Jon) because of my own logistics nightmare. But Roskill was kind enough to answer my questions over email.

Here’s the discussion…

Grazed from PR.com. Author: PR Announcement.

Microsoft Office 365 allows companies of all sizes to leverage the combined power of productivity tools such as Exchange, SharePoint, Lync and Office with the benefits of cloud computing. Instead of installing and deploying SharePoint Server on premises, any business can now simply subscribe to this service online to provide their employees with an enterprise grade solution for creating sites to safely share documents and information with colleagues, partners and customers.

But integration of existing corporate data is still difficult to implement. Layer2, as one of the leading providers of SharePoint add-ons in Europe and Microsoft Gold Certified ISV, today announced a new version of its Cloud Connector to seamlessly integrate almost any local or cloud-based corporate data sources with native SharePoint Online lists and libraries in the Microsoft Office 365 cloud. The connector extends the outstanding SharePoint features to existing data sets that will continue to reside within the corporate network or in other clouds, e.g. SQL databases, file shares or line-of-business systems…

Grazed from PEHub. Author: Angela Sormani.

Notion Capital, an entrepreneur-backed venture capital firm with a focus on cloud computing and Software-as-a-Service, has made its first investment from the recently closed $100 million, Fund 2. The fund has made a 2 million pounds ($3.1 million) investment in The Currency Cloud, a provider of a cloud-based currency conversion and international payments service. The investment comes on top of £2.5 million previous funding from Atlas Venture and the Anthemis Group.

Notion Capital, the entrepreneur-backed venture capital firm with a focus on Cloud Computing and Software-as-a-Service, today announced its first investment from the recently closed $100 million, Fund 2…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

For an economy still recovering from recession, firms are burdened on the aspect of spending for expensive software and hardware. An aspect which is not financially viable in today’s business environment. To counter the increasing cost and resources spent firms are now increasingly migrating towards cloud computing environments. To cater to needs of small and mid level businesses access the benefits of cloud computing, Asahi Technologies a custom software firm in New York has announced affordable cloud computing solutions for PaaS(Platform as a service), SaaS (Software as a Service) and IaaS (Infrastructure as a service).

Cloud computing is essentially the provision of hardware, networks, interfaces and storage as a service to a group of end users. “It is an evolution of computing which has brought infrastructure to business processes under one cloud, which can be delivered as a service wherever and whenever required,” stated Vinod Subbaiah, CEO of Asahi Technologies…

Grazed from The Times of India. Author: Editorial Staff.

The US Department of Defense has released a cloud computing strategy, saying it will move the department’s current network applications from a cumbersome and costly set of application silos to an end-state designed to create a more agile and cost effective service environment.

In announcing the strategy Wednesday, the Pentagon said the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) has been named as the enterprise cloud service broker to help maintain mission assurance and information interoperability within this new strategy, reported Xinhua…