Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Stacey Higginbotham.

Austin (Tex.)-based start-up Spanning has embraced the concept of cloud computing so much that its product is a backup service for Google Apps (GOOG), completely hosted and run from Amazon Web Services (AMZN). The idea of backing up one cloud service via another intrigued me, so I asked Mike Pav, Spanning’s vice-president of engineering, how he does it.

The company charges people or businesses $30 a year to back up Google Apps, including e-mail and documents. That covers customers who somehow delete or lose those files. Google will support users if it loses their data, but it won’t search for your files if you mess up…

Grazed from WinSuperSite.  Author: Paul Thurrotte.

n 2007, Apple released its first take at cloud computing, an intriguing service called MobileMe which apparently bombed with consumers. Certainly, MobileMe was a bit buggy out of the gate. But what most people don’t realize is that Apple actually fixed the bugs and delivered a pretty excellent service for a few years there, one that really did follow-through on its original promise of bringing Microsoft Exchange capabilities to the masses.

This past year, then-Apple CEO Steve Jobs infamously dissed MobileMe during the introduction of the service’s follow-up, iCloud. But as the laughter subsided, I became intrigued. It was immediately clear that iCloud would be a much bigger deal than MobileMe, more aggressive and offering far more functionality. And unlike MobileMe, iCloud would be free…

Grazed from Tech.Blorge.  Author: Susan Wilson.

Data centers give off heat, a lot of it.  At least half the cost of a data center is the cost to cool the servers.  With all of that heat going to waste, researchers at the University of Virginia and Microsoft Research wrote a paper suggesting that data centers broken down into data furnaces would make great whole house heaters and still save corporations money.

According to The New York Times, the paper, The Data Furnace: Heating Up with Cloud Computing was presented at a recent Usenix conference.  Basically, your home could become a mini data center with one to three cabinets of servers hooked up to your heating fans and duct work…

Grazed from Business Line.  Author:  Mahananda Bohidar.

A look at the changing IT storage trends in most companies will tell you that everyone wants to move, at least a part if not all of their IT needs, to the cloud. To serve this purpose, they look for companies that take care of all their network storage and security worries while giving them the ability to opt for flexible solutions, customised plans and affordable rates. It’s no wonder then that tech biggies like HP and Dell are going all out with their innovations in cloud computing.

Dell recently held it’s first DellWorld 2011, a seminar to discuss and showcase the latest trends in social, cloud and mobile innovation. Business Line spoke to Mr Praveen Asthana, Vice-President, Enterprise, Storage and Networking Services, Dell after the event…

Grazed from New York Times.  Author:  Randall Stross.

TO satisfy our ever-growing need for computing power, many technology companies have moved their work to data centers with tens of thousands of power-gobbling servers. Concentrated in one place, the servers produce enormous heat. The additional power needed for cooling them — up to half of the power used to run them — is the steep environmental price we have paid to move data to the so-called cloud.

Researchers, however, have come up with an intriguing option for that wasted heat: putting it to good use in people’s homes…

Grazed from Benzinga.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Research and Markets has announced the addition of the "3rd Annual Cloud Computing Summit 2011 – Accelerating your cloud strategy" conference to their offering. 2nd December, Taj Krishna Hotel, Hyderabad.

Cloud Technology is changing at breakneck speed. According to IDC, within just a few years, cloud computing has reshaped the IT marketplace and the way that organizations acquire and use IT products and services, disrupting their strategies and forcing them to re-evaluate all of their alternatives to the status quo. Now the use of cloud computing is accepted as mainstream, this disruption is creating new opportunities for suppliers and catalyzing major changes in traditional IT offerings…

Grazed from Business Insider.  Author:  Matt Rosoff.

The world of enterprise computing is in the middle of a once-in-a-lifetime shakeup.

It will change how companies buy and use technology. It will revolutionize the way we work. And it could shift tens of billions of dollars away from big established players like Microsoft and Oracle — or at the very least, require them to make huge sweeping changes or risk becoming irrelevant.

SAI: Enterprise is here to help you make sense of this shift…

Grazed from ADI News.  Author: Mark Whysall.

Infinet Cloud Solutions, developers and specialist providers of cloud-based enterprise solutions recently launched the Infinet Cloud Payroll SuiteApp. The managing director of the firm, Fraser Selfe, made the announcement. The service was made available to businesses in New Zealand and Australia to those searching for streamlining their payroll services. Based on the development platform provided by NetSuite’s SuiteCloud, this payroll SuiteApp does not need any external integration for providing a seamless and complete payroll solution. The outcome is a simple but a very highly featured and efficient payroll system that that carries NetsSuite’s core functionality at heart…

Grazed from CloudBusiness News.  Author: Editorial Staff.

China’s biggest search engine provider, Baidu, will receive more than 100 million yuan as part of the Chinese government’s efforts to boost the development of cloud computing services in the country. Baidu is one of 15 private sector companies benefiting from a new government pot of around 660 million yuan (£66m) to be distributed by the country’s top economic planner early in the new year.

The funds, the first batch of their kind distributed by a public sector department in China, will be designated to 15 cloud computing programs scattered across the country’s five cloud-computing pilot cities of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Wuxi…

Grazed from VentureBeat.  Author: Jennifer Van Grove.

Proving that cloud computing is more than a here-today-gone-tomorrow fad, Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics manufacturer best known stateside as the makers of key parts for Apple’s iPhone and iPad, will spend $63.3 million over the next five years to construct two cloud computing buildings.

Foxconn will start building its cloud complex on a 4.57 acre lot at Kaohsiung Software Park in southern Taiwan beginning December 1, according to a Digitimes report that cites sources familiar with the company’s plans…