Grazed from Forex Pros.  Author: George Liu.

Cloud-computing is a type of technology that has become increasingly prevalent in businesses everywhere. Cloud-computing allows businesses to use applications without actually installing them, which helps companies reduce operating costs.  Recently, a study sponsored by enterprise software giant SAP (NYSE: SAP) showed that cloud-computing could save U.S. businesses as much as $625 billion over five years.  Moreover, this study also showed that existing cloud-computing companies such as Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), Fusion-IO (NYSE: FIO) and F5 Networks (NASDAQ: FFIV) are projected to grow revenues by an average of $20 billion per year for the next five years. There are significant opportunities in the cloud-computing business, a business which is still relatively untapped, and one company is in a prime position to gain from these opportunities: NetSuite Inc.

NetSuite Inc. (NYSE: N) is a cloud computing company that targets small- and medium-sized companies. It has seen its stock increase 21.8% YTD and has been a hit among mutual funds: NetSuite has experienced 8 consecutive quarters of increasing mutual fund ownership and a 9% YOY increase in mutual fund ownership this first quarter of 2012. There are significant positives contributing to NetSuite’s appeal as an investment, but there is also a large negative that can potentially affect NetSuite’s future growth…

"There are some large companies that can get a cloud up and running fast, and some have done that and then are disappointed that the company doesn’t adopt it or users don’t adopt it or costs actually go up, not down, and provisioning takes longer, not less time," said Jay Seaton, chief marketing officer at GlassHouse Technologies. "And so a lot of what we’re seeing is if a cloud is set up without the right objectives or without the right configurations and all of the pieces that go behind that, then bad things happen and people are disappointed."…

Grazed from IDG.  Author: Sophie Curtis.

Researchers at the European Organisation for Nuclear Research (CERN) in Geneva are being held back from adopting cloud computing on any significant scale due to the delay in establishing a European regulatory framework for data protection.

Dr. McCoy was always one of my favorite Star Trek characters. Among his many endearing quirks was a healthy skepticism of transporter technology. Being a doctor, he understood the complexity of the human body and all its constituent systems. Taking someone apart, molecule by molecule, and then reassembling them somewhere else is fraught with peril.

It’s not enough to get the skeleton and muscles right. You need the heart and lungs to be there, too, in the right places. You need the brain, down to every firing neuron and synapse. And it all has to rematerialize just so for the person to walk away from the experience. Otherwise, McCoy knew, you end up with a mass of vaguely humanoid Jell-O on the transporter room floor. Consequently, I’m certain that McCoy would have made a great DevOps manager…

The 35-year-old company hailed its technological transition Wednesday at its Redwood Shores, Calif. headquarters, where hyperbolic CEO Larry Ellison announced plans to distribute more than 100 business software applications over the Internet instead of selling them as products that have to be installed on individual office computers.

The concept of leasing software applications reachable on any Internet-connected device is known as "cloud computing." It’s an idea that Ellison has frequently mocked as a passing fancy, but his comments Wednesday made it clear that he realized some time ago that the trend had become a serious business…

ArcGIS Online organizational subscriptions, in beta since December, also provide:

• Tools for application development using geospatial data;
• An open API for integration with software such as Microsoft Office, Salesforce and Cognos;
• Mapping of data within Excel as long as that data has a street address or city name (geocoding will be automatic);
• Cataloging of GIS assets, making such data easier to find (and less likely to be duplicated by others in an organization who don’t know it’s there);
• Private sharing among internal groups;
• Maps that display across numerous mobile devices as well as in Web browsers;
• And hosting on either public or private cloud infrastructure…

The last time, we discussed how private Clouds weakened the enterprise value proposition for Cloud Computing, eliciting consternation far and wide, not from enterprises implementing such Clouds, but from consultants and vendors in the business of building and outfitting them. To which we say: well, duh! Cloud Computing is a paradigm shift precisely because we won’t need to hire pricey consultants or buy a lot of gear to use them!

In fact, enterprise software vendors are running scared. Cloud Computing represents an enormous threat to their entire business model, and they’re fighting it every step of the way. Of course, if you ask them, they’ll sing a different tune: they’ll talk about how Cloud-ready they are, how you can get their stuff via a pay-as-you-go SaaS or PaaS model, or if you like, install it yourself in your own IaaS Cloud. Yeah, right. Just as they crossed off the word “Web” from their software boxes and wrote in “SOA” back in 2004, now that word has gotten the axe, and “Cloud” is the mantra of the day…

As with any new technology, the big question surrounding Hadoop as a viable market is whether enterprises will adopt it. The answer seems to be a resounding “Yes.” Already, Hortonworks CEO Rob Bearden told me, “We are seeing Hadoop in almost every Fortune 500 in either a proof of concept or a pilot.” Bearden doesn’t mean that his company has accounts with everyone in the Fortune 500, though, just that the majority of those companies are looking into Hadoop…

 

Grazed from Accounting Today.  Author: Michael Cohn.