Grazed from CloudPro.  Author:  James Stirling.

Grazed from Law.com.  Author: Evan Koblentz.

SHMsoft, which makes the FreeEed open-source e-discovery application, is expanding its product lineup into cloud computing and growing its staff.

SHMsoft released FreeEed 1.0 in June 2011 as a text-based processing tool. In January the company launched version 3.5, which sports a Windows interface and a search function for early case assessment. The newest edition is called SHMcloud that lets users process and store their e-discovery data on Amazon.com’s public cloud or in a private network.

SHMcloud is commercial software and closed-source, meaning that unlike FreeEed, it is not free and its code is not open for modification. It will cost $10 per hour when users process their own data, and $25 per hour if SHMsoft processes the data, explains Mark Kerzner, CEO of SHMsoft. Its companion SHMcloud Player is a desktop application that is free, but closed-source — both programs should exit their beta stages later this summer, he says…

Grazed from The Gadgeteer.  Author: Ian Lim.

The Google Chromebox is a partnership between Google and Samsung that brings Cloud Computing to the desktop.  Mainly aimed at businesses, the unit can also bring benefits and advantages to the consumer.  It runs an Intel Celeron and has a 16GB SDD, built-in WiFi, Gigabit Ethernet, 6 USB 2.0 ports, 2 X Display Ports and Bluetooth; the box runs Google’s latest Chrome OS version 19. Made to allow you to work entirely from the Web (surprisingly generally with Google products), Google has alluded to off-line Google Docs support in the near future.

The Chromebox will be available from Best Buy in the US in the next few weeks for $320, and for business, can be purchased with management and support packages direct from Google for an additional $150.

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Jason Bloomberg.

The more you focus on the business benefits of Cloud, the more likely you’ll be leaning toward public over private deployment models. Furthermore, this mind shift isn’t all about security risks. Once you work through the issues, you’ll likely come to the same conclusion: there’s generally little or no solid business reason to build a private Cloud.

I had the pleasure of speaking at two quite different Cloud Computing conferences last week: Opal’s Business of Cloud Computing in Dallas and UBM’s CloudConnect in Bangalore. As the conference names and locations might suggest, the former was the more business-oriented while the latter was chock full of techies. What I didn’t expect, however, was that the business Cloud crowd had a more mature, advanced conception of Cloud than the technical audience. While the techies were still struggling with essential characteristics like elasticity, trying to free themselves from the vendor nonsense that drives such conferences, the business folks generally had a well-developed understanding of what Cloud is really all about, and as a result, focused their discussions on how best to leverage the approach to meet both tactical and strategic business goals…

But the road to cloudy happiness is a long and winding one. Getting your applications into the cloud takes preparation.

The first step is to nail down the motivation for the move. Cost reduction is usually a key motivator, as companies pool resources by virtualising their hardware.

Agility is another. Putting applications in the cloud makes it possible to provision computing power and storage faster and more flexibly than running them on dedicated tin. Cloud computing also helps regulate volatile demand…

Grazed from TriplePundit.  Author: Sharon Florentine.

‘Disruptive’ is a word tossed around a lot in technology circles to describe new innovations and their transformative effects on the industry. But is this disruption a good thing? Or a bad thing?

That depends on who you ask.

Phil Wainewright, writing for his SaaS blog at ZDNet, believes cloud computing technology is both inherently good and inherently bad.

“There’s a reason we call [game-changing technologies] disruptive. They displace established industries and bring misfortune to those on the receiving end,” he said. Adoption of cloud computing tech in the enterprise is disruptive in a bad way for existing IT hierarchies and in a good way for business and existing revenue models, he explained…

The dense, cheap widgets aren’t generally available. They aren’t ready for prime time yet.

Instead Dell’s got a seed program happening called Copper that won’t brighten Intel’s mood any since Dell is the second-largest maker of x86 servers behind HP, and HP is also skipping down the ARM path. What’s more, Dell, at least, is ultimately contemplating the enterprise mainstream despite the risk of cannibalization.

It said Tuesday morning that it’s shipped ARM-based clusters to a few "hyperscale" customers for evaluation and it’s putting demonstration clusters at Dell Solution Centers worldwide – as well as at the Texas Advanced Computing Center, the supercomputing center at the University of Texas in Austin – where they can be remotely accessed by ISVs so they can develop the nascent ARM server ecosystem…

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

HP Wednesday named Bill Veghte chief operating officer, a newly created position that relieves the former Windows executive of running the company’s poorly functioning software operation two years and three CEOs after he got the job.

Veghte is keeping the corporate strategy charter he was given a few months ago as well as responsibility for Autonomy, HP’s great problematic British acquisition that he was given last week when Autonomy founder Mike Lynch was fired.

HP doesn’t have much of a strategy, at least nothing that doesn’t resemble what everybody else is doing and that – as of last week – is to focus on Big Data, cloud and security – all of which depend on software…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: David Linthicum.

There are two prominent cloud technology strategies these days. First: Let’s copy everything Amazon Web Services (AWS) is doing. (You know who you are!) Second: Let’s rebrand our old technology as a private cloud.

The lack of innovation and creativity in cloud computing is beginning to bug me, and it should bug those of you in enterprise IT. Here’s how to spot technology providers that are, er, innovation-challenged.

What’s lacking is new ideas: specifically, ideas that bring different approaches to familiar problems. Ideas that should lead to new technology and service categories, as well as bring much more value to the enterprise. However, most of the bigger cloud computing providers seem to consider innovation and creativity as high-risk concepts. Instead, they focus on replicating products and services that already work in the market…