Microsoft: Customer service to be cloud differentiator
In an interview with ZDNet Asia, Ker Wing-Dar, Microsoft’s general manager of customer service and support in Asia-Pacific and greater China region, said his department plays a key role as "strategic differentiator" for the push.
Support is critical and can make or break a deal, said Ker, noting that enterprises feel more confident choosing a cloud service provider that is able to provide someone they can talk to when they have questions.
Big business and Intel set course into the cloud
Data quality efforts ‘should be proactive’
Companies have been advised to take a proactive approach to ensuring high data quality levels.
David Loshin, president of consultancy Knowledge Integrity, explained to the B-Eye Network website that there is a tendency for data quality efforts to be focused on dealing with previously-identified problem areas.
But he stated that this may not be the best approach and that the real challenge for data quality initiatives is to identify where future issues may crop up.
Scrapers Target Online Forums
Your average Internet user leaves pieces of his or her life scattered all over the Web. Posts to social networks, comments on discussion boards, and reviews of products on Amazon are just a few ways that we leave our fingerprints on the Web as we use sites, fingerprints that could be used to collect a significant dossier on our habits as consumers, voters, parents, and — as an article in The Wall Street Journal recently revealed — patients.
Big name firms form alliance to drive cloud standards
Some of the world’s biggest companies are using their market clout to demand that computer equipment makers change the way they make their machines.
The 70 firms, which includes BMW, Shell and Marriott Hotels, said systems that do not work together are holding back the spread of cloud computing.
The companies have formed the Open Data Alliance Centre to push for unified standards for technology.
The businesses involved account for more than $50bn (£32bn) in IT spending.
"The old way just won’t work anymore," said Andrew Feig, an executive director at Swiss bank UBS.
Consumers Favor Personal Data in the Cloud, up to a Point: Survey
SMB Nation Wrap Up: Clouds Fill the Conference Hall
What a difference a year makes. Back in 2009, most attendees at the fall edition of SMB Nation, a semi-annual trade show for VARs and managed service providers, exhibited little interest in cloud computing. This year it was the dominant theme at the conference, held October 22nd through 24th in Las Vegas.
“We’re at the point where we’ve got to start figuring out the right places to use this technology,” said Dave Sobel, CEO of Evolve Technologies, an MSP and business IT consultancy in Fairfax, Va.
The Next Big Battle in the Cloud
The price of raw storage in terms of the cost per terabyte keeps dropping. So it shouldn’t come as a huge surprise to see application service providers such as Box.net announcing upgraded offerings that give an individual user access to up to 5GB of free storage, while giving business customers plans that start with a basic level of 500 GB of storage per user.
How Mobile and Cloud Computing Drive Each Other
The killer application for cloud computing will be mobile computing; and vice versa the killer application for mobile computing is going to be the cloud.