The technology industry has shifted sharply to consumer electronics such as smartphones, tablets and mobile applications—even as many analyst firms slash their PC forecasts. Today’s business travelers often leave their laptops at home, preferring to carry just a tablet and a smartphone.

The advent of mobility, consumer electronics and cloud computing in the enterprise is changing how the technology industry—and business in general—works. When any client device can access information in the cloud, why do we need PCs?

You may think that a company once known as Computer Discount Warehouse is worried about this trend, but that’s not the case. Instead, direct-market reseller CDW is experiencing strong product sales at the same time that it’s making inroads in the technology services business…

Cloud computing has revolutionized the way organizations around the world use technology. Despite the fact that many refer to 2011 as the Year of the Data Breach, and cloud computing has earned a reputation of being inherently insecure, that stigma is simply just not true. Most cloud providers have much higher security measures for their systems than even the most sophisticated IT departments can afford to deploy. The perceived lack of security comes from the mismatch between on-premise security assumptions and the expanded needs driven by the use of cloud…

Today, Citizens Against Government Waste published its second report on cloud computing, "Cloud Computing 201." The publication aims to provide agencies at all levels of government with a coherent approach to information technology (IT) procurement, which should both increase efficiency and save taxpayers money without compromising security or performance.

"Government agencies at all levels should procure IT while following rigorous policies and principles for all solutions, including the cloud, and always consider security, reliability, and total cost of ownership. Greater efficiency and cost savings can be achieved with the cloud, but the risks of transitioning to any new tool and method must be addressed proactively. Procurement officials should keep in mind that the cloud is one of many potential solutions, none of which should be mandated; and that the cloud is simply a computing tool, rather than the basis for an overall IT strategy," said CAGW President Tom Schatz…

Aditi Technologies, a software product and application development services provider, has acquired Seattle-based cloud-computing start-up, Cumulux.

Cumulux, founded in 2008 by former Microsoft employees Paddy Srinivasan and Ranjith Ramakrishnan, provides cloud computing services to customers such as US automaker Ford Motor, power generation equipment maker General Electric and Unicef, the United Nations Children’s Fund. …

The outages recently experienced by Apple’s Siri and RIM’s BlackBerry messaging services are now discouraging other companies in the industry from making the shift to cloud based computing, according to reports from several reliable sources, which suggests that there is still a lot of scope for improvement in online cloud based services. In the report released by the research firm called Saugtuck, BlackBerry and Siri are among the most prominent reasons why cloud computing is still not very acceptable for application in businesses and operations management…

Cloud computing is said to be the newest trend in information technology that most companies such as Apple, Amazon and Google had been incorporating into their services.

"Cloud computing is not only the future of computing, it is the present and the entire past of computing… All it is is a computer attached to a network," Ellison said in a speech in 2009. "Our industry is so bizarre. They change a term and think they’ve invented a technology."

But as more businesses have adopted the cloud, Oracle has warmed to the approach. It has developed private cloud hardware systems — Exalogic and Exadata — based on Sun technology, and Ellison launched Oracle Cloud Services at Oracle OpenWorld in October, saying, "We need a cloud."…