Samsung mulls enterprise cloud services for mobile devices
Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Agam Shah.
Samsung is looking into the idea of hosting its own cloud services to extend the appeal of its Android-based consumer smartphones and tablets to enterprises, the company said on Wednesday.
With more employees bringing personal devices to work, the company is thinking about building cloud-based services for enterprises to connect disparate devices based on different OSes, said Dave Lowe, vice president of enterprise sales at Samsung Mobile, during a launch event for the Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone in New York.
"When I talked about … knitting together, stitching together devices, it’s absolutely a direction we want to go — creating cloud services," Lowe said…
Switching to Cloud Saves up to 90% of Energy Costs says Google
Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Florence de Borja.
A lot of people are focusing on the security issues of cloud computing that’s why they fail to see the probable energy savings it offers. Companies go to the clouds because they want to increase profits by lowering their expenses. However, they fail to see that cloud computing has environmental benefits also. In fact, cloud computing services do help in reducing carbon emissions and energy uses. Google had released a report that when a company switches to Google Apps and other online productivity tools, it stands to reduce its energy usage by as much as 85%.
Now, Google has proof that cloud computing does provide energy and money savings to government agencies and companies. It has recently published a whitepaper which documents the savings the US General Services Administration achieved when it switched to Google Apps. The US GSA switched to Gmail in 2011. At that time, the government agency expects to save as much as $3 million on their email operating expenses. When the organization switched to Google Apps, it further expects savings on its energy costs. With more than 17,000 GSA users around the country, Google has enough data to monitor GSA’s energy usage prior to using and after using Google Apps…
Oracle Boasts Most Comprehensive Cloud
Oracle CEO Larry Ellison has done a 180-dgree turn on cloud computing, as he unveils the company’s new cloud offerings, boasting that they will be the "the most comprehensive cloud on the planet Earth." Ellison has previously been heard mocking the cloud computing movement, calling it simply a marketing strategy to repackage long-standing technologies. No such mockery surfaced on his Wednesday, June 6 webcast.
Ellison’s claims that the company’s public cloud offerings will be the most comprehensive yet seen in the cloud arena are based on the inclusion of a host of features encompassed in the company’s cloud. These features include the company’s suit of Fusion Applications, which will be available both as platform as a service (PaaS) and software as a service (SaaS), and over 100 different applications in the cloud, including CRM, HCM, and ERP applications and top-level security protocols…
Bitcasa cloud service launches public beta
Grazed from ITWorld. Author: Cameron Scott.
Bitcasa, a consumer cloud services startup, launched a public beta of its unlimited cloud storage service on Wednesday.
The service claims to deliver "unlimited storage" by compressing data and de-duplicating files from multiple users, rather than simply storing all of each user’s files on its servers. If multiple users have the same file saved, Bitcasa saves pointers to the files rather than copies.
De-duplicating data across users has raised eyebrows among industry watchers. But the company says that file encryption occurs on the client side, keeping the user’s files safeguarded from intrusion by the company or other users, concerns that have potentially slowed the adoption of consumer cloud storage services…
NCR Announces New Cisco Data Center Certifications
Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.
NCR Corporation (NYSE: NCR) announced today that it has achieved two new next-generation data center certifications from Cisco Systems in North America, Unified Computing Technology and Advanced Data Center Architecture specializations. These designations recognize NCR as having fulfilled the training and program prerequisites to sell, deploy and support the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) and Cisco Data Center Solutions.
“These new certifications position NCR well to assist our customers in their next-generation data center transformations, such as data center fabric, virtualization and cloud computing, which are consistently ranked by industry analysts as one of the top priorities for CIOs,” said Nadine Routhier, vice president, NCR Telecommunications and Technology. “We are pleased to commence this new milestone in our global relationship with Cisco, helping our respective customers use their IT infrastructure more effectively, elevate service level agreements and enhance their business agility.”…
Apache Traffic Server v3.2 Ships
Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.
The Apache Software Foundation has announced the availability of Apache Traffic Server version 3.2, the latest stable release of the open-source cloud computing service.
The Apache Software Foundation (ASF) has announced the availability of the Apache Traffic Server v3.2, the latest stable release of the technology.
The Apache Traffic Server is a high-performance cloud computing service that serves dynamic content, billions of objects, and terabytes of data for large-scale deployments in use at Akamai, Comcast, GoDaddy, LinkedIn, Yahoo and other large enterprise organizations…
Gaining Control in a Crowded Cloud
Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Michael Vizard.
There is no shortage of cloud computing options these days, which is also the major reason why many IT organizations are currently experiencing a loss of control. In the absence of a fully functioning private cloud within their own data centers, many IT organizations have been turning to third-party cloud service providers to either set up or manage a private cloud for them, while relying on low-cost, public cloud services for ancillary functions such as application development.
At some point, IT organizations are going to need to bring all those forms of cloud computing under a common management framework. To address that specific issue, Virtustream, a provider of a cloud computing service, this week announced that it’s making its xStream 2.0 software for managing clouds available to IT organizations that can now use it to manage internal private clouds, third-party private cloud services and public cloud services…
Cloud Computing Transforming IT
Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Patrick Burke.
One thing people can agree on is that the cloud is the most transformative information technology to come along in decades – on the same level as the rise of the personal computer or the Internet. And that means there is a lot at stake for enterprises struggling to lay down the foundations needed to support cloud operations going forward, according to a post on IT Business Edge.
It’s possible to identify the key factors in successful cloud development that will encourage the cloud’s transformative aspects while diminishing its disruptive ones. These include user attitudes, technologies and processes, all of which have a lot to gain and lose depending on the way cloud systems are architected and implemented, according to Arthur Cole of IT Business Edge…
Cloud Standards Customer Council Announces Case Study Competition
The Cloud Standards Customer Council (CSCC), managed by OMG(R) and in partnership with BPTrends and TechTarget, today announced the 2012 Cloud Computing Case Study Competition. The competition is open to member organizations of all sizes, including government agencies, which have successfully delivered cloud implementations. CSCC membership is free to all end user organizations. For more information and to submit a case study visit http://www.cloud-council.org/contest-pr .
The goal of the Cloud Computing Case Study Competition is to highlight business success stories and lessons learned to provide proof points and insights for other organizations considering or pursuing cloud computing adoption…
How cloud computing is driving success for Europe’s small businesses
The economic news making headlines across Europe is enough to keep any entrepreneur up at night. Despite this, small and medium-sized enterprises have been remarkably resilient and recent research from Microsoft found that a quarter of SMEs in Europe plan to hire new staff in 2012, while a large portion (up to 40% in some countries) expect to be more successful this year than last.
With only a few bright spots on the horizon, why do SMEs have such a sunny outlook? The Microsoft report provides another interesting clue: 18% of SMEs also plan to invest in new technology in the next year. That number may not seem like a blockbuster statistic, but it points to a key factor driving the success of small businesses, both in Europe and around the globe – cloud computing…