Grazed from CRN.  Author: Liz Tay.

A panel of policy makers and advisors has blamed legacy software vendors and integrators for “disinformation” that has kept governments from adopting cloud technology.

Former US Government chief information officer Vivek Kundra told cloud vendor Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference of “cartels” of contractors that aimed to “put in as many people as possible and charge exorbitant rates”.

In February, Kundra introduced the Federal Cloud Computing Strategy (pdf) and Cloud First Policy (pdf), which required agencies to move three services to the cloud within 18 months…

Grazed from Experian.  Author: Philip Glass.

Government agencies worldwide should not be put off adopting cloud computing because of ‘unfounded’ security and privacy issues, according to the US first chief information officer.

Vivek Kundra said that such excuses are a "ridiculous" reason to not embrace the technology…

Grazed from ChinaTechNews.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Chinese telecom operator China Telecom has announced its eSurfing cloud computing strategy, brand, and solution, and it plans to launch eSurfing cloud devices and cloud storage products in 2012….

Grazed from Hydrapinion.  Author: Ian Grayson.

Grazed from Washington Post.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The federal government this year has made implementing its “cloud first” policy a top priority, requiring agencies to shift their data from hundreds of storage centers to Web-based systems. But in the impending era of austerity, with Congress members seeking significant cuts in spending, will the policy be elevated, maintained or diminished?…

Grazed from Destination CRM.  Author: Brittany Farb.

The cloud just got hotter. According to a forecast by Gartner, worldwide software as a service (SaaS) revenue will reach $12.1 billion by the end of the year—a 20.7 percent increase from 2010 revenue of $10 billion—and $21.3 billion by 2015.

“After more than a decade of use, adoption of SaaS continues to grow and evolve within the enterprise application markets,” explained Tom Eid, research vice president at Gartner, in a report.  “This is occurring as tighter capital budgets demand leaner alternatives, popularity and familiarity with the model increases, and interest in platform as a service and cloud computing grows.”…

Grazed from The Register.  Author:   Lucy Sherriff.

“The cloud agenda has to move beyond the security field and into business,” says Jacqui Taylor, freshly minted director of communications for the UK and Ireland wing of the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA).

“There is an education process that has to be done, and it needs an independent voice. That is where we come in.”

Grazed from Destination CRM.  Author: Leonard Klie.

Salesforce.com and its leader, chairman and CEO Marc Benioff, have both staked their reputations on cloud computing, so it comes as no surprise that Benioff is a big proponent of software-as-a-service.

"The idea of applications and platforms as separate entities is antiquated," he said during a press conference on the final day of this year’s Salesforce.com user conference. "We can’t think of applications and platforms as separate any more. We need one integrated offering."…

Grazed from Host Review.  Author: Dave Davies.

When cloud computing arrived at center stage back in the late 1990’s, it was the future.  It was the invention of the microchip all over again.  IT departments and CFO’s everywhere were breathing a sigh of relief.  They saw the cloud as a means to ending budget overages, pesky support tickets and reducing hardware costs.  As soon as the media got wind of this nifty cloud thingy, well, the cloud metaphors were more prolific than Captain America cosplayers at a Comic-on.  In fact, one could even say the media was largely responsible for the cloud’s success.  After all, we know the media is built on driving the rise of a trend and then greedily exposing its crash and burn.  That begs the question, is cloud computing really as fabulous as we think it is?  Is the cloud a victim of commercialism or a suspect in the breakdown of data security?…

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: J. Nicholas Hoover.

Amazon Web Services is a market leader in cloud computing, but it’s been a latecomer to the federal cloud market. The company is now pushing hard into the government market, releasing a government-focused cloud earlier this month and continuing to increase the size of its public sector group.

While Amazon has had government customers since the early days of its S3 storage service and EC2 infrastructure service (NASA was a launch partner for S3), the company didn’t begin to build its government-focused business until 2009, and didn’t have a formalized public sector business unit until late 2010, when it brought in former Microsoft federal sector VP Teresa Carlson…