Grazed from TopTechNews. Author: Shirley Siluk.

Among the 2,500 customers that use Okta’s online identity management services, Microsoft Office 365 is now the most-deployed cloud application in the world, beating Salesforce for the first time since Okta began tracking such usage in 2012. That’s one of several striking findings about cloud application use revealed in the company’s inaugural "Businesses @ Work Report," released today.

The report also found that a company’s size no longer indicates how many cloud apps it might use, and that enterprise apps can quickly grow wildly popular . . . and can just as quickly lose ground in today’s fast-evolving market. Companies are also surging in their uses of new Web sites, portals and other cloud-based applications to engage with customers, partners and contractors, Okta reported…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Adrian Bridgwater.

Starting up a cloud computing deployment is a case of just choosing a cloud and switching it on, right? Kind of, yes. Cloud ‘instances’ can be ‘spun up’ inside 60 seconds — but obviously it’s not quite that simple. Customers will need to choose between public, private (on-premises) or some hybrid combination of both.

CLUE: The answer to the title is the last line of this post.

Deeper still, cloud comes in many shapes, colors and flavors. Firms can opt for a cloud that has been ‘provisioned’ (or tuned, if you prefer) for specific performance characteristics such as:…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Rackspace®, the #1 managed cloud company, today announced it has expanded its digital support offerings with the early access announcement of Managed Cloud for Adobe Experience Manager (AEM). As a leading, comprehensive content management solution for building websites, mobile apps and forms, AEM makes it easier to manage marketing content and assets.

With Managed Cloud for AEM, marketing leaders and the technology teams who support them can help reduce time for each new deployment, version upgrade, or major campaign launch in AEM – while also gaining access to specialized 24×7 support, maintenance, and monitoring of AEM environments…

Grazed from CloudAwards. Author: Denise Sullivan.

AURO is now offering high performance SSD block storage. The new service works with the company’s cloud computing products and their Tier 1 service. The SSD block storage comes as part of AURO’s service upgrades. The Canada based cloud company wanted to offer users a better way to run their applications and databases. As with all of their services, the new feature is powered by OpenStack technology.

SSD Block Storage Makes Cloud Faster

Solid-state drive, or SSD, is a device that uses integrated circuit assemblies as memory to store data. Because these systems do not contain spinning disks and movable read/write heads, they are take less time to access information written to them and have lower latency. Additionally, these systems are more resistant to physical shock…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

The trouble most solution providers have with migrating servers into the cloud is that it’s generally a one-time event that is hard to build an ongoing IT service practice around. Not only does the migration usually require a fair amount of time; each server migration can take weeks to migrate. But once it’s done the solution provider winds up with a lot of expertise in server migration that can only be reapplied only so many times.

For that reason WSM International has made a business out of working with solution providers to automate server migrations as much as possible. As of today, WSM International is now offering those server migration services at a fixed price starting at $849 per Linux or Windows Server…

Grazed from ManufacturingGlobal. Author: Abigail Phillips.

As with any new technology, cloud computing has been through the hype cycle, with inflated expectations giving way to disillusionment and moving further along the maturity curve toward realistic, practical and beneficial solutions. However, for many organisations, whether they have taken their first steps toward the cloud or are still contemplating a move, the journey can seem like an overwhelming task. In order to leverage maximum cloud benefit, whether organisations are just starting or are well on the way, a pragmatic approach is needed for the journey to the cloud.

The need for digital transformation within organisations is one of the biggest drivers for the cloud from the perspective of the CEO, along with the desire to transform the business and enhance the customer journey. However, the IT manager and the business typically have different cloud priorities, as the IT manager is tasked with improving processes and cutting costs…

Grazed from FirstPost. Author: Editorial Staff.

Just weeks after announcing its plans to make a foray into the cloud computing market, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba Group Holding said it was "on track" to open its data centre in Singapore in September. The Singapore data centre will serve customers in Southeast Asia.

Alibaba, which will invest $1 billion in the next three years into its Aliyun cloud computing arm and set up data centres in the Middle East, Singapore, Japan and Europe, hopes "to overtake Amazon (AWS division) in four years, whether that’s in customers, technology, or worldwide scale."…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

For the most part cloud service providers are generally platforms through that application developers invoke to either host their applications or access additional backend services. With that role in mind, Verizon has formed a strategic alliance with DreamFactory, a provider of an open source backend-as-a-service (BaaS) software based on REST application programming interfaces (APIs).

Rather than asking developers to master low level code to integrate with backend systems, DreamFactory enables solution providers to more easily integrate any number of backend applications and systems using a standard set of REST APIs. Dawane Young, director for platforms and applications in the Verizon Partner Solutions Group, said that partnering with DreamFactory represents a huge step forward in terms of the self-service integration capabilities Verizon will be able to provide application developers…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/verizon-enlists-dreamfactory-cloud-integration

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Nicole Henderson.

Recognizing that more customers prefer to contact brands through social media rather than phone or email, Oracle (ORCL) has added more social customer service capabilities as part of updates to the latest version of its Oracle Service Cloud and Oracle Social Cloud on Monday.

Oracle said that the latest release of Oracle Service Cloud allows organizations to deliver a seamless experience between web service and community interactions with Community Self-Service, which allows customers to find an answer quickly and reduces requests to the contact center…