Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

According to physicist Geoffrey West, the world’s cities have what one might call a growing problem. As they grow bigger, their problems grow worse at a super-linear pace, which means it takes an ever-faster pace of innovation to keep things in check. We can either figure out a way to innovate faster, watch our cities crash and burn, or — perhaps worst of all for capitalists — figure out a way to live without constant economic growth. West says the scientist in him doesn’t see us being able to innovate fast enough, but I think big data might be the key to making that happen.

The problem is cities themselves

I heard West espouse his theory at The Economist‘s Ideas Economy: Information event in early June, but you can read about it in this in-depth interview he did with Edge last year. Here’s a very simple explanation for a very complex theory that involved analyzing lots and lots of data…

Grazed from Midsize Insider. Author: Marissa Tejada.

The cloud isn’t as reliable as some researchers would like it to be. New reserch found that cloud failures cost more than $70 million dollars over the past five years, along with more than 500 hours of downtime. This has a direct impact on enterprises, as well as SMBs.

Unreliable Cloud?

In an article featured in Computerworld, the International Working Group on Cloud Computing Resiliency (IWGCR) indicated that there were a total of 568 hours of downtime at 13 well-known cloud services since 2007. This downtime sometimes lasted for days or even weeks, which affected millions of users, including smaller companies that implement cloud services. The downtime had an economic impact of more than $71.7 million.Cloud computing types…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Pallavi Anand.

The adoption of cloud computing is rapidly gathering momentum, as more companies use this technology to store data and access applications online. However as cloud computing becomes more mainstream, security concerns are being raised.

A recent Robert Half survey of 150 CIOs and CTOs in Asia Pacific revealed that security was the most prevalent concern among the respondents when migrating their technology functions to the cloud.

In fact 44% of those surveyed in Hong Kong were concerned most about security. Other concerns included data integrity (26%), lack of internal knowledge on cloud computing (18%) and migration cost (8%)…

Cloud Services & Consumerization Driving Competition with Internal IT

There are two market forces that are fundamentally changing the nature of enterprise application delivery and consumption:

1. delivery of enterprise applications as a service via the cloud
2. the rapid shift of accessing enterprise applications on mobile devices

IT organizations are facing stiff competition from Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud providers who are delivering enterprise applications as a service that are faster, cheaper and accessible anywhere, on any device.

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Veeam Software, innovative provider of backup, replication and virtualization management solutions for VMware vSphere and Windows Server Hyper-V, announced it has won the 2012 Microsoft Management and Virtualization Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

“Veeam is pleased to be recognized as the 2012 Microsoft Management and Virtualization Partner of the Year,” said Ratmir Timashev, President and CEO, Veeam Software. “We have been working with Microsoft to help our customers manage and monitor their virtualized environments using System Center for more than five years. With the introduction of System Center 2012, we believe the promise of cloud computing is tangible and the benefits to businesses large and small will be immense.”…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Stoneware, the leader in Unified Cloud computing, announced the upcoming availability of LanSchool 7.7. This release includes many new features but remains simple and easy-to-use, as teachers and tech coordinators have come to expect. LanSchool v7.7 includes the ability to provide Distance Teaching, expanded iOS Teacher Assistant, iOS Student and Android Student support.

“We are proud to be the first classroom management vendor to provide Distance Teaching over the Internet,” said Rick German, CEO of Stoneware. “With this release, classroom management is no longer bound to an internal school network. Teachers have the same ability to help students learn wherever they are located.”

Distance Teaching is made possible by combining LanSchool with the webRelay technology inside Stoneware’s webNetwork 6.1…

Grazed from PR NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Today, Sogeti, a leading provider of professional technology services, proudly announced it has won the 2012 Microsoft Alliance Cloud Innovation Partner of the Year Award. The company was honored among a global field of top Microsoft partners for demonstrating excellence in innovation and implementation of customer solutions based on Microsoft technology.

"We at Sogeti are honored to be recognized as the Alliance Cloud Innovation Partner of the Year as well as the Windows Azure Partner of the Year. It is a rewarding to see the results of our commitment to the Microsoft Platform and the great collaboration between our two companies in this very exciting space," said Luc-Francois Salvador, Chairman and CEO of Sogeti Group.

"Cloud Computing is going to play a major part in the future of computing. We are therefore very excited to play a leading role in the innovation around this technology from the very beginning working together with Microsoft. We are committed to providing high quality technology solutions on the Microsoft Cloud Platform that create business value and results for our clients," added Sanjeev Agarwal, Sr. Vice President, Microsoft Solutions Practice at Sogeti…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Salesforce has bought SMB-focused corporate perks and employee rewards management start-up ChoicePass a year after the outfit drummed up $250,000 in seed money.

Its site will be shut down on June 30 and the team that put the operation together sucked up into Salesforce according to an official blog posting.

It said that "Since launching our Perks product, we’ve found that there is massive demand from businesses for innovative ways to manage employee engagement, rewards and incentives. It has been an amazing experience for us to work with such great companies, partners and of course, people."…

Grazed from Economic Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

Your e-mail has been on the internet cloud ever since you started using one. Now brace up to store more content on the cloud-with the convenience of being able to access it anywhere, anytime on any connected device. That’s the promise of cloud computing and this trend will only accelerate over the coming years.

According to research firm Gartner the desire to share content and to access it on multiple devices will motivate consumers to start storing a third of their digital content in the cloud by 2016. Gartner said that just seven percent of consumer content was stored in the cloud in 2011, but this will grow to 36% in 2016.

"Historically, consumers have stored content on their PCs, but as we enter the post-PC era, consumers are using multiple connected devices, the majority of which are equipped with cameras. This is leading to a massive increase in new user-generated content that requires storage," said Shalini Verma, principal research analyst at Gartner. "With the emergence of the personal cloud, this fast-growing consumer digital content will quickly get disaggregated from connected devices."…

Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Michael Vizard.

It’s one thing to be able to share files via cloud computing service; it’s quite another to be able to collaborate with multiple people who share access to the same applications on their favorite mobile computing device.

To help achieve that goal, Box today announced that it is extending the BoxOne Cloud service to add support for Google Android devices and applications alongside Apple iOS. According to Chris Yeh, vice president of platform at Box, Box is asking Google Android and Apple iOS application developers to use a Box application programming interface (API) in a way that allows their applications to be hosted in the BoxOne Cloud environment. At the moment, Yeh says that Box has 50 third-party applications available on the BoxOne Cloud platform for both Google Android and Apple iOS…