Grazed from EON.  Author: PR Announcement.

Infinitely Virtual, a provider of virtual server cloud computing services for businesses, today reported record growth in 2011, as entrepreneurial businesses responded to its ability to deliver customized server hosting with minimal investment risk, combined with maximum performance and round-the-clock customer care.

“We offer an economical solution that CFOs appreciate, given that we bypass the entire subject of capital expenditures, depreciation and obsolescence.”

Infinitely Virtual doubled in revenue from 2010 to 2011 and expects revenue growth of 70 percent in 2012, with a projected 33 percent ROI this year, according to Adam Stern, Infinitely Virtual founder and CEO…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

The federal government has been very active in the cloud computing space in recent times, and accordingly, The National Institute of Standards and Technology has been busy researching and setting definitions and guidelines to ensure agency and contractor understanding and compliance.

To help organizations address security concerns in the cloud — an extremely sensitive area — NIST just issued a set of working guidelines on cloud security and privacy. The guidelines, prepared by Wayne Jansen of Booz Allen Hamilton and Tim Grance of NIST, are meant for agencies and contractors, but provide excellent guidance to private-sector organizations as well…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author:  Jeffrey Burt.

Cisco within the next few months will roll out its IEWS, a solution that includes its router and WAN offerings to help enterprises more easily and safely take advantage of cloud computing.

Cisco Systems continues to be the dominant player in the increasingly competitive router space, and executives are looking to push that advantage going in 2012 by extending the solutions strategy they say is the company’s key differentiator.

Over the past year-plus, Cisco has aggressively brought services—such as security and collaboration—onto its Integrated Service Routers (ISRs) to give customers more of a solution than simply a networking router, according to Praveen Akkiraju, senior vice president and general manager of Cisco’s Services Routing Technology Group…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author:  Elizabeth Montalbano.

Several states are using an online balloting website based on Microsoft’s cloud-computing platform to allow U.S. voters living overseas to cast their votes via the Web in 2012 primary elections.

LiveBallot, based on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud infrastructure, has already allowed more than 1,200 voters from Florida living in 40 countries around the world to access their ballots for a Jan. 31 election, according to Microsoft.

Democracy Live, a provider of e-ballot technologies, developed the system, the back end of which is running in Microsoft data centers. The website Florida developed to give voters access to the system–Our Mission: Your Vote!–also was built by Democracy Live and is being hosted by Microsoft…

Grazed from TechRepublic.  Author: Thoran Rodrigues.

Cloud computing is a term that encompasses a lot of different things. From servers and infrastructure to office software, a lot of IT is now sold on a cloud-based, service model. This means that any comparison of cloud providers can not only be very complex, but can also end up measuring companies that don’t even compete with each other. To avoid this situation, different types of cloud services should be looked at separately. Today, we are going to focus on infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS).

IaaS providers are companies that provide the most basic IT needs – servers, networking, and storage – on a usage-based payment model. They typically make heavy investments in data centers and other infrastructure, and then rent it out, allowing consumers to avoid investments of their own. Even these providers, however, are not all pursuing the same business model. While the largest and most well-known are focused on the general public, with fully on-line automated set-ups, there are also some niche players that cater only to the enterprise market, as well as smaller companies that resell infrastructure from larger ones, usually with some added services…

Grazed from ITWorld.  Author:  Brian Proffitt.

PostgreSQL has been getting a lot more enterprise attention lately, and now it’s going to be an even bigger player in the cloud.

PostgreSQL commercial vendor EnterpriseDB announced today the release of its new Postgres Plus Cloud Database (PPCD), a cloud-based instance of both their community and commercial database offerings that is currently ready for deployment on Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing (EC2) and HP’s Cloud Compute (which, as you will recall, runs on the OpenStack APIs).

EnterpriseDB’s marketing arm is a bit, um, overly enthusiastic about the release–they’re coining this as a database-as-a-service (DBaaS) product. But, despite the attempt to foist yet-another *asS term on us all, this release is still interesting…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Xform Computing, Inc. announces its AlwaysOnPC mobile app for Android is available in the Amazon Apps Store, with editions for Kindle Fire and other Android Tablets.

Xform Computing’s AlwaysOnPC App has raised the bar for Cloud-powered mobile apps, and is well aligned with Amazon’s Cloud Computing strategy. Amazon’s Kindle Fire tablet already includes the Silk "cloud-assisted" Web Browser, and it offers cloud storage of movies, music and books purchased on Amazon. Now with the launch of the AlwaysOnPC App, Kindle Fire and other Android tablet users get access to a unique "personal cloud desktop" with powerful, desktop computer-class applications and file storage.

The AlwaysOnPC Virtual Desktop offers the productivity apps and features such as editing office docs, PowerPoint presentations or spreadsheets; viewing and editing PDFs – including annotations and forms; retouching photos and images; creating and editing graphics and drawings; browsing/using productivity or game websites that require PC-class browser technology like Java; and more. This Personal Cloud Desktop enables many mobile users to leave their laptop behind and still do real work – right on their Kindle Fire or other Android tablet or phone!…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Joe McKendrick.

“May you live in interesting times.”

In a previous post, David Nichols, principal and CIO services leader for Ernst & Young IT Advisory Services, outlined some compelling business cases for the cloud, and described the threshold many enterprises have yet to cross before they become cloud-intensive enterprises. But what’s it doing to our important relationships — between companies, IT managers, business managers, and even outsourcers?

For anyone involved in technology development and delivery, these are exciting times, says Nichols. Cloud computing is reshaping the way businesses relate to technology, managers and professionals relate to each other…

Grazed from EON.  Author:  PR Announcement.

Softletter, the leading source of business insights and data analysis for software developers and publishers, announced today that its groundbreaking SaaS University Conference will be held February 28-29 with optional workshops on March 1 at the Marriott Austin South Hotel in Austin, TX. The SaaS University Conference series is recognized as the most comprehensive program in the industry and as a knowledge base for successfully launching and running a Software-as-a-service firm and/or transitioning to Software-as-a-service from a licensed model. The conference also provides a much sought-after opportunity for executives in this industry to network and share ideas and experiences.

“SaaS University offers a great opportunity to have a quality forum where we can address the important aspects of the Cloud.”

 

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author:  James Carlini.

"How resilient are the cloud computing solutions being sold today?" This appears to be a question not asked often enough by those who are immediately lured by the hyped positives of the concept before there is enough data to substantiate the claims made by the vendors as well as the documentation of failures of applications.

One concept that I have preached and that has held true for decades is "leading-edge organizations do not maintain their position with trailing-edge technologies." The need to constantly evaluate, assess, select and apply new technology-driven capabilities is a continual process. This holds true for cloud computing and our competitive global markets today.

That being said, according to experiences of executive reviews of procurement of Information Technology products and services, which include cloud computing, universal solutions are never universal. There are applications that work and applications that simply cannot be melded into the hyped "one-size-fits-all" solution for organizations that many vendors seem to sell…