Cloud Computing: Is Yammer worth $1B?
Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.
Microsoft’s reported $1 billion deal to buy Yammer isn’t done yet, but the move — despite what many see as a too-hefty price tag — could make sense.
Yammer has big name recognition in the burgeoning field of enterprise social networking — its product lets colleagues chat about projects and share tips in a business-defined context. Microsoft Office remains the market-leading productivity suite despite incursions by OpenOffice, LibreOffice and Google Apps rivals. Pairing the Office with Yammer makes sense, as Forrester Research analyst Rob Koplowitz wrote in Forbes…
5 ways the public cloud can go wrong for DOD agencies
Governments around the world are taking a leap into the cloud. New deployments are popping up every day, in large part because the cloud model has the potential to help agencies save on infrastructure and storage costs, pay “on-demand” for the services they use and access computing resources from any location.
But listing the benefits is easy. The real challenge is evaluating whether a cloud solution can provide these advantages while still meeting the unique privacy, security and compliance needs of large and complex government agencies.
This is especially true for the Defense Department, which has gone on record about seeking a balanced approach to cloud computing, ensuring that key concerns such as security remain a top priority during the transition…
Google: Use the Cloud, Save the Planet
Grazed from InfoWord. Author: Jeff Bertolucci.
Organizations generally switch to cloud-based services to save money, but there are environmental benefits as well. Cloud computing reduces energy use and carbon emissions, according to Google, which claims that an average enterprise can lower its energy usage by 65 percent to 85 percent by switching to online productivity tools such as Google Apps.
"Lower energy use results in less carbon pollution and more energy saved for organizations," writes Google’s Urs Hoelzle, senior vice president for technical infrastructure, in a Monday post on the Google Green Blog…
AWS Outage – Thoughts on Disaster Recovery Policies
AWS Outage – Thoughts on Disaster Recovery Policies
Simplifying the Building of Mobile Apps in the Cloud
Grazed from IT Business Edge. Author: Michael Vizard.
A lot of the developers trying to create mobile computing applications today don’t have a lot of experience with the backend server technologies needed to deploy a robust mobile computing application. And yet, when you look at the backend services required for any mobile computing application, they tend to be very similar.
Applicasa has turned that realization into a cloud-based service that masks all the complexity associated with building and deploying databases for mobile computing applications. The Applicasa service presents developers with a drag-and-drop interface for creating the database and custom queries in about 10 minutes. Once database objects and queries have been set up, Applicasa generates a customized software development kit that converts database objects to the native development environment without requiring manual coding…
Amplidata Shares the Secrets Behind Storage Clouds’ Exceptional Performance with Big Data at GigaOm Structure
Amplidata
Storage clouds are the conduit for an increasing percentage of business users to access their daily computing needs, not just for casual access to files while traveling, or sending an occasional large file among collaborators. Rather than base their storage clouds on traditional RAID architectures, service providers, online storage companies, and even large organizations are moving to achieve scalability and cost-efficiency in the same way as Facebook, Google and Amazon have done – with object storage implementations. This is particularly true with Big Unstructured Data applications, where the traditional file structure no longer can meet today’s demand for scalability and cost-efficiency…
Symform Wins Two Awards for Its Disruptive Cloud Storage Technology and Leading Corporate Culture
Symform, a revolutionary cloud storage and backup service, today announced two award wins that acknowledge the company’s innovative product and work environment. Symform won "Best Cloud Storage Solution" in the 4th Annual Cloud Computing World Series held in London earlier this month, recognizing Symform’s innovative and disruptive global peer-to-peer cloud storage network. In addition, Seattle Business magazine selected Symform as one of Washington’s ‘100 Best Companies to Work For’ in 2012.
These latest accolades come amid a year of record growth and achievement for Symform, including 100 percent quarter-over-quarter customer growth with tens of thousands of active users across 138 countries, and the company’s recent $11 million Series B funding round…
Google Backs Green-Cloud Claims, Touts Apps
Google describes how reducing energy use for servers and server cooling works. Image: Courtesy of Google
The cloud is more green than traditional on-premises setups, according to a recent Carbon Disclosure Project survey. But that survey, which Cloudline put to a question in March, did not sit well with readers (see the comments section.)
Now Google is championing the Carbon Disclosure Project, and touting its cloud apps’ energy efficiency as well as their green cred (notably, too, the post was lifted from the Google Green blog)…
Corent Wins TechAmerica High-Tech Innovation Award For Best Cloud Computing Product Of The Year
Corent Technology, Inc., a disruptive innovator in the Cloud Computing space, was honored as the most innovative cloud technology provider at the 19th Annual TechAmerica Orange County High-Tech Innovation Awards.
"Our ‘Plug & Play’ suite of software products continues to be recognized by our industry peers as a game changer in the Cloud and SaaS space. We are honored to receive this award and look forward to continuing to deliver high value to SaaS and software vendors as well as to global enterprises, which can now gain a decisive competitive edge by delivering their SaaS solutions – on any public, private, or hybrid Cloud – at a significantly lower cost of service," said Feyzi Fatehi, CEO of Corent Technology…
Cloud Computing: Dell Reportedly Offers $2.15 Billion for Quest
Quest Software said last Thursday that it got an acquisition offer worth about $2.15 billion from an unidentified "strategic bidder."
Reuters claims the unidentified mystery bidder is Dell after talks to buy Quest broke down earlier.
The $25.50-a-share cash offer bests the $23 a share Quest accepted back in March from private equity house Insight Venture Partners. Insight has to sweeten its offer or let it go for a break-up fee of either $4.2 million or $6.3 million…