Grazed from CIOL.  Author: Ajay Goel.

Today’s SMB operates in a highly competitive and increasingly technology driven market. Operational efficiency is naturally a high priority for small and medium businesses to stay ahead and emerging technologies like cloud and virtualization have a crucial role in determining the same.

Cloud computing in particular, offers many advantages in terms of flexibility, agility and on-demand resources that can give organizations a real competitive edge. Cloud as a cost effective technology also fits in comfortably within the strained IT budgets of the SMBs. 

The interest levels around cloud adoption are rising, amongst SMBs.  Factors such as increased agility and fewer burdens on IT teams are making this a profitable option. The first step towards cloud adoption is server virtualization and SMBs are increasingly considering the adoption of this technology…

Grazed from NY Convergence.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Lower trading volumes and less than stellar profits mean that Wall Street firms are looking to cut costs, so the adoption of third-party cloud-based applications and services is expected to accelerate this year.

Scivantage runs  a retail online-trading portal and professional trading and tax applications in a private cloud. Joe Stensland, SVP and managing director of Scivantage, told Wall Street Technology that, “We deliver the application with a private cloud and allocate the resources needed for each client deployment so they don’t have to bring in resources and infrastructure.

While the interest in cloud services is moving up the list of priorities at large firms that have become cost-conscious, according to Stensland, “Midrange firms have become even more interested in the cloud’s pay-for-what-you-eat philosophy.”…

Grazed from Information Week.  Author: Doug 

Microsoft announced Monday that it will embrace rival mobile platforms and browsers with a planned second-quarter service update of its Microsoft Dynamics CRM application.

"In today’s hyperconnected world, customers need to be able to access their business-critical data on the device of their choice," said Dennis Michalis, general manager, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, in a statement.

That’s not exactly new news to customers, but cross-platform support is something Microsoft has only slowly–and fairly recently–embraced as it has moved into broad cloud computing services such as Azure and Microsoft Office 365…

Grazed from Network Computing.  Author: Robert Mullins.

While virtualization and cloud computing pretty much dominate the IT world, security and compliance with IT standards are neither trivial concerns, nor going away anytime soon. But in some ways, security is easier to accomplish in virtual systems than in physical

Take the task of tracking an inventory of IT assets in a data center, for instance. Catbird, a security and compliance technology vendor, has just introduced version 5.0 of its vSecurity suite of tools for securing virtual, cloud and physical networks. One feature of the product is Automated Asset Inventory: every time a new device is attached to the network — a server, a router or a printer — the inventory feature sees it and applies the appropriate security rules to it…

Grazed from Government Computer News.  Author: Rutrell Yasin.

To date, cloud computing has been dominated by big e-mail and infrastructure providers selling commodity services. As a result, infrastructure-as-a-service and software-as-a-service have gotten most of the attention.

Platform-as-a-service could be next. Federal CIO Steve VanRoekel has identified PaaS as “the next major value set for federal cloud computing, and it also aligns closely with his Shared Services initiative to knock down stovepipe software and save money,” said Kevin Jackson, general manager of NJVC cloud services and a co-author of the white paper "Platform as a Service (PaaS). What Is It? Why Is It So Important?"

The paper attempts to clarify some of the confusion around PaaS for federal IT buyers…

Grazed from The Motely Fool.  Author: Alex Planes.

The cloud computing industry can be a little daunting. Every week there’s a new start-up promising to be a Netflix for YouTube, or claiming to leverage the cloud for customer relationship algorithmic optimization. You know, marketing gibberish. What does it all mean? There may be a ton of companies in the cloud, but many may not survive, and a number of them are just full of hot air. Let’s take a look at a few of the most promising stocks in the sector, and try to figure out why they’ve gotten this far.

Cloudy bona fides
A company doesn’t merit being part of the cloud just because it’s got something running on the Internet. But software as a service is easy enough to define. Whenever you have to access your application through a central location, and pay ongoing license fees to the developer, that’s generally software as a service. Microsoft‘s Office suite is plain old software. Its Office 365, available through subscriptions, is software as a service. Got it? Cool. Let’s check out some other top cloud software companies, and try to figure out if they’re worth your money…

Grazed from Datamation.  Author:  Jeff Kaplan.

The phenomenal growth of Cloud Computing has been driven by a number of factors. But in order for the Cloud industry to build on its initial momentum, a broader cross-section of IT and business decision-makers must become adept at taking full advantage of the rapidly expanding array of virtual resources available in the Cloud.

The whirlwind of activity surrounding Cloud alternatives over the past few years has not only spawned countless start-ups seeking fortune in the Cloud marketplace, but also attracted a myriad of established players attempting to repurpose, or ‘Cloud-wash’, their existing products and services to exploit the escalating demand for Cloud solutions.

I’ve often referred to this ‘Cloud-rush’ effect, in which a proliferation of players is frantically trying to gain mind- and market-share while customer interest and receptivity are high…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

enStratus announced today that Bernard Golden has joined the company as its new Vice President of Enterprise Solutions. In this new role, Bernard will help enStratus customers leverage the cloud and build best-practice operations based on the enStratus cloud management platform. Bernard brings vast experience working with CIOs around the world to incorporate new IT technologies and meet their business goals.

"Enterprises continually informed me about the challenges they face as they add public and private clouds to their IT infrastructure," commented Bernard Golden, VP of Enterprise Solutions for enStratus. "The enStratus solution brings the critical governance and automation capabilities that enterprises require across all the leading clouds. I look forward to helping our customers meet this goal and to being part of the great team at enStratus." …

Grazed from IT Business Edge.  Author: Michael Vizard.

The battle for control of the cloud is ultimately going to be determined by the platform that wins the hearts and minds of the most application developers.

With that goal in mind, Salesforce.com is already playing host to over 1 million cloud applications that are running on its Force.com and Database.com platforms, or on the cloud computing platform managed by its Heroku subsidiary, says Byron Sebastian, CEO of Heroku.

Each of those platforms, adds Sebastian, is targeted at a specific type of application. Force.com is aimed at developers who are creating data-centric applications that are similar in nature to the customer relationship management (CRM) application that Salesforce.com markets, while the Heroku platform is designed to run custom applications that are rewritten in multiple languages. Database.com, meanwhile, gives developers who need a relational database access to a cloud service. Sebastian says Salesforce.com sees Database.com as the platform that unifies the Force.com and Heroku platforms under a common set of federated cloud services…

Grazed from InfoWorld.  Author: Stephanie Overby.

Around this time last year, the cloud computing contract signings were coming fast and furious — not just for commodity work like IT management or email, but for software and infrastructure closer to the core of corporate value. Not long after that, the calls started to come in to Greg Bell, principal and the Americas service leader for information protection at KPMG.

Cloud services customers more often line of business leaders that IT executive — were panicked as they began to realize that their intellectual property (IP) was now at risk. Some, like one client who discovered that he’d potentially exposed his company’s precious formulas, had to bring the software and associated processes back in-house — at no small expense. "They quickly went through an assessment, made very aggressive movement [into cloud computing], and then had to retreat because they were not able to put the proper controls in place," says Bell…