Grazed from CNet.  Author: Ralph Needleman.

Zynga was once a big buyer of cloud computing services. Today, it’s becoming a seller.

In 2009, when FarmVille started taking off–it grew to 10 million daily active users in six weeks, 25 million in five months–the company began to lean heavily on rented resources to handle the load. Zynga used Amazon Web Services, and over time, shunted more and more of the day-to-day load of running its games to AWS. By January 2011, AWS was handling 80 percent of Zynga’s load. Only 20 percent was on servers that Zynga owned.

But at Zynga scale, using that infrastructure became inefficient, according to Zynga’s CTO of infrastructure, Allan Leinwand, who I spoke with earlier in February. And by inefficient, he means expensive..

Grazed from CloudTweaks.  Author: Casper Mains.

Considering a move to the cloud for one or several of your key services? If so, you are not alone. Cloud computing is growing exponentially as more and more vendors are starting to offer services, and as more businesses are beginning to see the potential for cost savings as well as the ability to offer new services that were beyond their capacity. When moving services to the cloud, you are moving critical parts of your IT infrastructure and corporate information assets to systems that you will not have direct administrative access to. You will be relying on your vendor to provide security, auditing, and change management for these components, and will be relying upon them to secure your data.

Security in the cloud is very good, and in many cases the economies of scale vendors have at their disposal along with the specialized staffing means it will be better than what you could reasonably accomplish on your own, but you do want to make sure you understand all aspects of security in the cloud…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Evolve IP, one of the country’s fastest-growing cloud-based technology providers, has reinvented its corporate website at www.EvolveIP.net . The new site is a comprehensive resource for organizations of all sizes that want to learn more about cloud computing technologies, uses, and benefits. The site also provides a broad array of training and support materials for Evolve IP’s growing portfolio of businesses that use its cloud-based technology services. And lastly, the site features everything a company needs to know about the vast opportunities available to channel partners interested in representing Evolve IP’s technology and services.

The new EvolveIP.net site is organized into six primary areas:

— Services defines the company’s three families of products that meet business technology needs: The Evolved Office, The Evolved Data Center, and The Evolved Network…

Grazed from Daily Markets.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The Greater Philadelphia Alliance for Capital and Technologies (PACT), in partnership with Dell Inc. and Fairmount Partners, today announced the emerging growth companies that will be showcased in the Phorum 2012 National Cloud Conference Demo Pit. The diverse group of participating companies are all headquartered on the East Coast, near to the Philadelphia-based conference, and were selected for their innovation in the use of cloud computing technology to solve strategic business problems. They include:

AboutOne – contact management tool, aboutone.com

Adaptivity – enterprise cloud decision support provider, adaptivity.com…

CloudConfidence.com – comprehensive cloud monitoring service, cloudconfidence.net

CloudMine – mobile app development platform, cloudmine.com

cWyze – interactive video platform, cwyze.com

eMaint Enterprises – facility and property management system, emaint.com

Houdini – enterprise crowdsourcing platform, houdiniapi.com

metaLayer – data management and analysis platform, metalayer.com

Profitably – small business planning and analytics tool, profitably.com

Queue in the Cloud – IT service management platform, qinthecloud.com

ReadySetWork – employee scheduling and communication tool, readysetwork.com

Ridaroo – employee ride sharing tool, ridaroo.com

Target Info – data analytics and management platform, target-info.com

Updentity – enterprise contact management automation tool, updentity.com

UXFlip – mobile app development platform, uxflip.com

Grazed from V3.co.uk.  Author: Daniel Robinson.

Collaboration vendor Intralinks has upgraded its service aimed at giving organisations greater control over content sharing in line with corporate security and compliance restrictions, making it an enterprise alternative to services such as Dropbox.

Available now, Intralinks Connect is a cloud computing based service that provides authorised users with access to documents anywhere, at any time, but with role-based access to the information, with an audit trail and optionally backed by multi-factor authentication…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Joyent, a global provider of cloud computing software and services, today announced its plans to extend its real-time public cloud offering to Asia in the second quarter of 2012, starting with a public cloud in Tokyo and following with a Singapore-based operation catering to the greater Southeast Asia region.

The plan is in response to existing customers who plan to expand their businesses into the two regions, and from partners like Telefonica who are encountering heightening demands for bullet-proof, real-time infrastructure that can handle the increasing need for machine-to-machine and real-time mobile communications…

Grazed from Reuters.  Author: Robert Evans.

A statement from CERN, the Geneva-based particle physics organization, said the platform — dubbed "Helix Nebula-the Science Cloud" — would be made available to government bodies and industry after a two-year pilot phase.

Also participating in the program are the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German-based European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), which like CERN are gathering vast volumes of information that cannot presently be processed…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Callidus Software Inc., the leader in sales effectiveness and cloud computing, announced today that it has signed a partnership with SESTRA, to market the CallidusCloud(TM) suite in Mexico and Central America. The agreement was signed in the first quarter of 2012.

The two companies will showcase CallidusCloud sales effectiveness solutions at "Creando Lideres Comerciales Efectivos" — a sales leadership workshop that will bring together sales executives, managers, and industry thought leaders from Mexico to deliberate on the latest sales trends and opportunities in the country. The workshop will be held on March 1, 2012 at Hotel Fiesta Americana Grand Chapultepec, Mexico City, Mexico. The workshop will focus on techniques to drive sales effectiveness by optimizing sales process management using leading indicators and by developing effective sales leadership practices including sales coaching and collaboration…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Bob Violino.

Many companies are just getting started with cloud computing, but others are already well entrenched. Indeed, some organizations in this latter camp have built massive private clouds that support significant portions of their operations.

These giant, multi-petabyte clouds present unique management challenges for CIOs and business leaders, including ensuring adequate security and service levels, and positioning the new cloud offering in such a way that internal customers want to use it. And because so much about cloud services is relatively new, organizations are learning to deal with the hurdles even as they deploy these mega-clouds. The biggest challenge in implementing private clouds is the massive culture and operating model shift from a ‘do-it-for-users’ model to a ‘user self-service’ model."…

Grazed from V3.co.uk.  Author: Dan Worth.

The outage on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud computing platform that caused the government’s G-Cloud service to go offline was the result of a calculation error caused by the extra day in February due to the leap year.

Writing on the Azure blog the firm’s corporate vice president for service and cloud, Bill Laing, said while the firm had still to fully determine the cause of the issue, the extra date in the month appeared the most likely cause…