Grazed from TimesDaily.com.  Author: Jim Blasingame.

One of the greatest products of human society is the marketplace. Webster defines it as a place where goods and services are offered for sale.

Over millennia, innovations took markets from local to global, and now to the 21st century iteration – virtual. Virtual markets are powered by “cloud computing,” aka “the cloud,” and accessed via the Internet.

Historically, as trade expanded markets, products led the way because services were difficult to convey to the last mile of consumption. But technology has helped services catch up, and now digital services are delivered efficiently from the cloud. And more than anything else, this last reality is helping small businesses compete and grow in ways that were formerly the domain of larger companies…

Grazed from RealWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

Actian Corporation today announced that it has signed a strategic partner agreement with FlyingBinary, provider of disruptive analytics and cloud computing solutions, and Tableau, the global leader in rapid-fire business intelligence software, to take Big Data and Social Measurement Optimization solutions to market. The announcement was made ahead of the Tableau European Customer Conference in Barcelona from April 2-4 where Actian is a sponsor.

FlyingBinary will integrate Actian’s Vectorwise, holder of multiple world records for performance and price performance, and business intelligence (BI) software Tableau in a cutting-edge, comprehensive business analytics solution that allows organizations ranging from financial institutions, retail and investment banking, online communities, manufacturing, advertising agencies and telecommunications companies to distill business insight from the growing tsunami of data…

Grazed from Talkin Cloud.  Author: Joe Panettieri.

Cloud computing and cloud services stocks rose a robust 26 percent in Q1 2012, according to our Talkin’ Cloud Stocks Index, which includes 20 companies. But which cloud computing companies saw their shares rise the most in Q1 2012?

According to our index, here are the top 10 cloud computing stocks and their returns for the quarter…

Grazed from Industry Week.  Author: Travis Hessman.

Microsoft Corp. (IW 500/16) released a report this week demonstrating how small businesses are turning to the cloud to help them become major players in the global market.

With paid cloud services expected to double in the next five years and triple in the next three with small companies, the research report shows that small and midsize businesses (SMBs) are increasingly turning to these services to expand their geographical reach and identify global opportunities previously unavailable to them.

"Gone are the days of large enterprises holding the keys to enterprise-class IT and services," said Marco Limena, vice president of Operator Channels at Microsoft. "The cloud levels the playing fields for SMBs, helping them compete in today’s quickly changing business environment by spending less time and money on IT and more time focused on their most important priority — growing their businesses."…

Grazed from Computer Technology Review.  Author: Andy Jones.

How many times have you heard the following about cloud computing?

• “The cloud can work for SMBs, but won’t scale for our enterprise needs.”

• “If I can’t track enterprise data in the cloud, then I won’t put it there"

• “The cloud is not secure.”

As IT consultants, MCPc hears and assesses “cloud myths” like these every day. We bust through them by leveraging the latest virtualization and cloud computing technologies to enable secure, mobile anyplace workspace environments for our clients…

Grazed from CRN.  Author: Sara Yirrell.

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

GridGain Systems has upgraded its namesake Java-based open source middleware platform for real-time Big Data processing.

Unlike complex, decade-old SQL, ERP or Hadoop ETL systems that use dead data for batch offline processing, the new GridGain 4.0 will process live data so businesses can get meaningful results faster from low-latency real-time transactional and analytical processing.  By comparison GridGain CEO Nikita Ivanov claims Hadoop is only good for long-term historical storage. GridGain is more like "Big Data 2.0."…

Grazed from Wired.  Author:  Jon Udell.

In “The hidden risk of a meltdown in the cloud,” a Technology Review blogger reacts to a paper by Bryan Ford on “the unrecognised risks of cloud computing.” I don’t know, the risks seem familiar to me. Beyond security, they are:

• Unpredictable interactions among loosely-coupled services
• Inability to preserve or reproduce an application or data set

The Technology Review blogger, who is evidently known only by the nom de plume Kentucky FC, echoes Ford’s conclusion: We ought to study these risks “before our socioeconomic system becomes completely and irreversibly dependent on a computing model whose foundations may still be incompletely understood.”…

Grazed from CBS Detroit.  Author: Editorial Staff.

When it comes to cloud computing, tech consultant Michael Simon Bodner says, “This is not an option” — it’s mandatory.

Like Star Trek’s Borg, he says, “Resistance is futile.”

Bodner told a CEO audience Thursday that the advantages of cloud computing are just so compelling that every business will likely make use of it and benefit from it.

“Start experimenting and prepare to prosper,” Bodner told an audience of about 150 at the Vistage Michigan Technology Summit at the Inn at St. John’s in Plymouth. Vistage is a business leadership group…