‘Cloud’ Computing’s Substantial Footprint
Leading tech companies like Google, Apple and Microsoft are now offering unprecedented amounts of data storage and access to “apps” on huge Internet-connected servers, saving consumers and businesses the hassle of installing and running programs and storing information on their own local computers.
This emerging trend, dubbed “cloud computing,” means that these providers have had to scale up their power consumption considerably, as they are increasingly responsible for providing more and more of the computing horsepower required by the world’s two billion Internet users. No doubt, sharing such resources on centralized servers is more efficient than every individual and business running their own versions separately. In fact, the research firm Verdantix estimates that companies off-loading data and services to cloud servers could save $12 billion off their energy bills and reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 85 million metric tons within the next decade. But for the greenhouse gas savings to be realized, the companies offering cloud computing services need to make the right energy choices…
Sonian is named a Premier Partner at Cloudcor’s 4th Annual Cloud Slam’12 Cloud Computing Conference and Expo
Cloudcor(R) today announced that Sonian, the pioneer in cloud-powered archiving and search, is a Premier Partner at Cloud Slam’12 Cloud Computing Conference and Expo taking place May 30 — June 1, 2012 in San Francisco and broadcast online.
Sonian will showcase (at booth #16) its archiving service, which is a cloud-powered subscription-based service that eliminates the need for costly and time consuming ‘on premises’ archiving solutions. By delivering industry leading email archiving on a disruptively low ‘per mailbox per month’ pricing model, the service is available for all email users whether they have 50 or 50,000 mailboxes in use….
Cloud Computing: Four Steps for Transforming Enterprise IT
With the growth in cloud service offerings, and the increasing adoption of private, public, and hybrid cloud computing strategies and practices within the enterprise, many people have begun discussing the future of the CIO and corporate IT.
Will the IT department simply become a purchasing organization managing a bunch of service contracts at the behest of finance and the lines of business? By the time 2020 rolls around, will there be any need for a CIO? After all, if, as Nick Carr predicted in his 2004 book Does IT Matter? IT truly becomes a utility, like, say, electricity, conferring no competitive advantage, well, we don’t have a CPO (Chief Power Officer), do we?…
USC and iChartsMD Partner to Bring the Cloud to Med School
The cloud has come to medical school. Cloud computing, of course, where organizations can store and manage data over the Internet.
It’s coming now to the University of Southern California (USC)’s Keck School of Medicine through a partnership with iChartsMD, which will provide its cloud-based electronic medical record (EMR) software for the school and its medical students, according to a story by Steve Campbell.
USC will have the ability to integrate a Drummond ONC- ATCB certified solution into its curriculum as well as the software tools the medical students will need to incorporate into their medial futures. The Drummond solution helps organizations develop and use electronic health records and then demonstrate “meaningful use” to qualify for federal financial incentives…
Case Study: Making Cloud ROI a Reality
IT managers at enterprises of all sizes are exploring cloud computing and virtualization as a way to address conflicting demands within their organizations. These mounting pressures include a lack of internal resources, mandates from the CFO to lower costs, and the struggle to complete key initiatives while also performing mundane server maintenance and application storage tasks. These same IT professionals are also being asked to build and implement battle-tested disaster recovery and business continuity plans that not only reduce data loss and downtime, but present a recovery time objective that prevents the organization from further interruption in the wake of an outage.
You may have read some controversial articles in the early days of cloud computing stating that there is no such thing as ROI for cloud computing. These early cloud pundits believed that buying into cloud services is not an investment, but an avoidance in an investment – therefore, ROI cannot be measured…
Meeting data privacy, residency and security requirements in the cloud
In the Fifth Annual State of the Network Global Study published by Network Instruments in March 2012, 74% of the survey respondents indicate that their top concern about cloud computing is "security for corporate data." This survey is consistent with many others that always seem to identify data security concerns as a leading inhibitor to the adoption of cloud computing.
Actually, I think "security" is a catch-all phrase that also encompasses concerns about data residency (i.e., where is the data?) and data privacy (i.e., who can see our personally identifiable information, or PII?). Many organizations are fearful of or prohibited from placing data in the cloud due to restrictions on access to data or compliance with government or industry regulations…
Survey Addresses Sales, Income Tax Nexus Cloud Computing, Deal-of-the-Day Vouchers
The states are reacting to the growing use of new technologies such as cloud computing by adopting disparate nexus tax policies, Bloomberg BNA’s 12th annual Survey of State Tax Departments shows.
The survey this year focuses on how the states are taxing the new technologies and transactions that have emerged as the U.S. economy continues to shift from bricks and mortar of Main Street to the web-based world, which mostly operates independent of state or local borders. Most of the questions in the annual survey aim to clarify each state’s positions on the gray areas of corporate income and sales and use tax administration. Every state, except Alaska, participated in the survey…
Reader Submitted – CloudCow Cupcake
Thanks to @OscarOnlineCRM http://www.oscaronline.biz/ for sending!
We appreciate you being a member of our cowherd!
Do you have a CloudCow photo you’d like to share with us? Tweet it to us @cloudcowmedia
Cloud Computing: Fabled Google Drive Arrives, Creates Rights Panic
Google finally introduced its long-trumpeted cloud-based Google Drive Tuesday hours before Apple released its Q2 results.
Drive happens to compete with iCloud and Apple’s results, which could have been, shall we say, edgy, turned out to be over-the-top.
Drive also competes with Microsoft’s SkyDrive, Dropbox, Box, Amazon’s Cloud Drive and SugarSync.
Google says Drive users will get 5GB of free online storage for videos, photos, songs, files and PDFs that they can upload, create, edit, view, sync, share by way of different rights, collaborate on, get notifications, recognize scanned files, store, search (by word, owner, even some images to a point) and access from anywhere from PCs, Macs and Android devices (Gmail, iPhones, iPads, Chrome OS and Linux to come)…
Ubuntu 12.04 LTS ships with cloud computing and enterprise desktop enhancements
Ubuntu developer Canonical has officially released Ubuntu 12.04 LTS, the latest version of its enterprise-focused Linux distribution, which now includes provisioning and cloud computing features in its server build, and support for common desktop virtualisation platforms in its desktop build.
Available to download now, Ubuntu 12.04 is the fourth Long Term Support (LTS) release of the Linux platform, for which Canonical guarantees maintenance and security updates for five years.
Although aimed at enterprise users, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is free for anyone to download, with Canonical earning its revenue through technical support and services to corporate customers…