Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

Much has been written about the U.S. government’s plan to shutter 1,200 data centers. There’s been considerably less chatter about the fact that some of the remaining, revamped federal data centers are now leasing out excess capacity to other government agencies.

That strategy of going big and selling off extra capacity is right out of the Amazon playbook. Amazon data center guru James Hamilton has long maintained that it makes zero sense for most businesses to build their own data centers any more given the huge economies of scale they can get by putting their workloads with a data center provider that gets the best possible pricing on energy, servers etc. But, the corollary that applies here is that very large organizations that must field their own facilities should build big. Real big. And sell off what they don’t use…

Grazed from Business Weekly.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Texas cloud hosting innovator Rackspace has handed the Springboard tech accelerator programmes in Cambridge and London UK this year a massive boost.

The San Antonio-headquartered business is sponsoring both the Cambridge and London Springboard programmes in 2012 and will provide cloud hosting for applicants and winners.

Fanatical Support® has made Rackspace the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. It delivers enterprise-level hosting services to businesses of all sizes and kinds around the world…

Grazed from MSP Alliance.  Author: Laura Stotler.

Sales and marketing automation and lead management has moved further into the cloud with an announcement from Callidus Software Inc. that it has acquired SaaS provider LeadFormix.

Callidus (doing business as CallidusCloud) offers sales effectiveness and cloud computing solutions, while LeadFormix provides next-generation marketing automation and lead management. The deal amounts to about $9 million cash, subject to final adjustments, and a portion of the consideration is also subject to a holdback with respect to LeadFormix shareholders’ indemnity obligations to CallidusCloud…

Grazed from THE Journal.  Author:  Charlene O’Hanlon, Dian Schaffhauser, David Raths, Rama Ramaswami.

Is it any wonder that the forecast is calling for cloud? It’s a perfect storm out there, with powerful forces remaking the IT landscape in education. On one side, devastating budget cuts are pushing IT departments to identify ever-greater cost savings. On the other, the explosion in mobile devices is pressuring IT to provide anytime-anywhere computing with no downtime. And finally there’s data–a flood of never-ending data–that need to be stored and analyzed.

Implemented correctly, the cloud can help school districts tackle all of these issues. It promises to allow IT departments to support their institutions faster and more cheaply. But the term itself has become so abused that most people have no idea what "the cloud" means anymore. Right now, it’s more like a thick fog…

Grazed from NewsWirePRToday.com  Author: PR Announcement.

The National Cloud Technologists Association (NCTA), in partnership with NJVC a premier technology services provider delivering information technology and strategic solutions, has announced it will hold a Cloud Computing Open House on Saturday, January 21, 2012 at its Vienna, VA Headquarters. Included in the presentation will be information on the CloudMASTER® and CloudGURU® Certification programs.

NJVC General Manager of Cloud Services and noted Cloud Technologist and author Kevin Jackson will make a Guest Presentation on the $20 Billion Federal Cloud Computing Initiative and how state of the art methodologies are being used to train IT professionals in Cloud Technologies, Architecture and Operations…

Grazed from Business2Community.  Author:  Louis Columbus.

A good friend of mine recently became CIO of a financial services firm and was given his first major project last month: make the complete accounting, financial, and loan provider data and applications available 24/7 on any iPad or Android-based tablet from any office, at any time.

The majority of loan provider applications are cloud-based and his company is running NetSuite.  His corporate office is in Asia and cloud-based applications made it possible for the company to launch and operate in California within months.   He’s been given six months to transform this mobile vision into reality…

Grazed from ZDNet.  Author: Larry Dignan.

Grazed from Talkin’Clouds.  Author: John Moore.

The e-discovery sector has been moving to managed services and cloud computing for a while now. An additional data point comes from CaseCentral, a company that focuses on cloud-based e-discovery for corporations and law firms.

Steve d’Alencon, chief marketing officer of CaseCentral, said the 18-year old company has gone through previous iterations of cloud software delivery including  the application service provider (ASP) approach. Today the company offers its Case Central eDiscovery Platform, which integrates early case assessment with review and production.

The company uses direct sales, but also works with channel partners. Those include legal process outsourcers that provide managed review and others services.  Partners in that category include Cobra Legal Solutions LLC, Compliance, and Peak Discovery. In addition, CaseCentral works with vendors such as Hitachi Data Systems and Symantec Corp…

Grazed from Information World.  Author: Jeremy Edberg.

Everything old is new again. I’ve heard this adage many times but only recently realized what it really means: The old thing isn’t new again; it’s just technically feasible now.

Take Big Data, which isn’t a new concept. Companies have been dealing with large datasets for a long time, almost since the invention of the computer. What has changed is the way we deal with that data.

It started with the rise of cheap computing and storage. It became possible to store vast amounts of data and then split up workloads to have each computer deal with a small piece of work that it can complete in a short time. We can store and measure more as a result of technological advancements, and people are collecting more data than ever before. This data screams to be mined for valuable insights…