Spiceworks has launched version 6.0 of its free IT management and helpdesk platform for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs).

Chief among the updates the firm has added is a cloud discovery feature that enables administrators to see which cloud computing services are being operated by users on their network, and take appropriate action if necessary.

Unveiled today at the firm’s SpiceWorld conference in London, Spiceworks 6.0 also adds a number of new features, including the ability to customise the Spiceworks knowledge base, an optional agent to deploy on roaming devices, and a mobile admin user interface for iOS and Android devices…

As the Wall Street Journal’s Ben Worthen reported Wednesday, H-P said it will reallocate the $3 billion to $3.5 billion it says it will save each year from the 27,000 job cuts planned between now and 2014 to Big Data analytics, cloud computing and security infrastructure.

CIOs already purchase such technologies from Oracle, IBM, Amazon Web Services, SAP and, of course, H-P. But earmarking billions of dollars more sends a strong signal that it intends to be the CIOs’ top choice. I’m not predicting H-P will best its rivals here. The company must execute, an area where it’s been weak of late after reporting a 31% profit drop and a 3% revenue decline for its fiscal second quarter. But targeting Big Data, cloud computing and security certainly aims for CIOs’ sweet spots…

There’s no question that the adoption of cloud computing will continue to grow as companies look to increase efficiency and reduce costs. A recent study conducted by Dell and Intel found that an overwhelming majority (78% in Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) and 60% in North America) of IT and business staff plan to "significantly or moderately increase use of cloud" in the next 12 months.

Furthermore, when asked what the most significant driver for adoption of cloud computing were, 64.1% in North America and 63.5% in EMEA said to "reduce spending on infrastructure (ie CapEx)". Improving the IT organisational agility was a very distant second…

Protecting Data at Rest
One of the important concerns on utilizing the public cloud and the SaaS-based service model is about ‘How to protect the data at rest,’ which means organizations are worried about how the data is protected in a public cloud scenario, and when the data centers are physically away from the enterprise.

There are multiple methods organizations can adopt to protect data at rest. Each of the following methods are complimentary in securing the data…

Hewlett-Packard, a stalwart of the previous era, finds it hard to keep up.

It is not alone in that struggle. H.P., along with well-established tech companies like Dell and Cisco Systems, is contending with a faster-than-expected move by consumers and businesses from personal computers and small racks of computer servers toward mobile phones and tablets that are connected to millions of servers, all lashed together in remote supercomputing “clouds.”

The new systems are cheaper and more flexible, which businesses found appealing in a slow-growing economy. As for consumers, they have been dazzled by the new devices and abilities of those devices enabled by the cloud…

Combined legal and market factors may force online companies to offer more flexible contract terms, suggests new research from Queen Mary, University of London.

The paper examines how and why companies providing IT services over the internet, also known as cloud computing, have begun to negotiate standard contract terms to better meet cloud users’ needs, minimise operating risks and address legal compliance obligations.

The research, by the Cloud Legal Project at the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at QM, is primarily based on in-depth interviews with global and UK cloud providers, cloud users, law firms and other market players…

Big businesses use cloud services. You and I use cloud storage services like DropBox, Google Drive, and Amazon Cloud Drive every day. But, with each you have to trust your data on other people’s systems. With ownCloud, an open source file sync and share project, which began as a KDE project, you can keep your data on your servers and decide what other public cloud services you want to integrate into your personal cloud.

OwnCloud is primarily as an Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) cloud service. With it you can store your files, folders, contacts, photo galleries, calendars and more on a server of your choosing. You can then access that storage from your mobile device, your desktop, or a Web browser. You can also sync your date with local devices and share your data either with the world at large or specific approved users…

Cloud services contracts often provide little to no wiggle room for organizations. In planning to use cloud computing services, what steps do organizations need to take before signing any contract? IT security lawyer Françoise Gilbert offers some key strategies.

Gilbert, a founder and managing director of the IT Law Group, says most cloud providers offer their services with no room for customization, except for their bigger customers. Knowing this, organizations need to approach service agreements cautiously.

To begin, organizations need to figure out if they can enter a cloud contract legally. This means if a U.S. healthcare organization, for example, wants to enter into a contract with a cloud provider, they need to abide by the regulatory requirements of HIPAA, which might suspend them from doing that, Gilbert says…