Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Charlene OHanlon.

Dell is hoping its new cloud marketplace offering will ease the transition for solution providers looking to enter the cloud fray. Through a partnership with IT-as-a-service provider CloudRunner—and with support from Microsoft (MSFT)—Dell has created the CloudRunner offering, which provides a platform of services accessible on all types of devices at any time.

Aimed mostly at the SMB space in the healthcare, financial services and legal verticals, CloudRunner aggregates all the necessary business apps along with enterprise-grade security and compliance in one monthly subscription pricing model. “The SMB market changed overnight, empowering SMBs to no longer have to worry about IT,” said Darrin Swan, director of Worldwide Sales and Business Development, Dell Service Provider Program…

Grazed from Fortune. Author: Jonathan Vanian.

IBM continues to take the saying “you have to spend money to make money” close to heart. The tech colossus on Monday reported its thirteenth straight decline in quarterly revenue while executives continued to funnel money into IBM’s “strategic imperatives,” which includes its cloud computing and data analytics business.

For the three months ending June 30, IBM IBM -4.01% logged $20.8 billion in revenue, a 13.5% decline from the $24 billion it brought in the same time period a year earlier. The company’s software business was responsible for a big part of the drop. Revenue in that division fell to $5.8 billion from $6.5 billion the previous year…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

Like a lot of vendors Informatica created a dedicated business unit with its own selling motion to address cloud computing opportunities. Now that cloud computing is becoming the mainstream vehicle through which IT services are being delivered, Informatica is reunifying the way it brings products and services to market.

Jeff Moses, newly appointed vice president of cloud sales for Informatica, says one of the biggest opportunities that cloud computing creates is the need to not only integrate legacy systems running on premise with the cloud, but also all the applications that run in different cloud services. In an age where most IT organizations are now regularly accessing two or more cloud platforms, Moses said the number of integration opportunities that solution providers are likely to encounter is only going to increase exponentially…

Grazed from Bloomberg.  Author: Spencer Soper.

Amazon.com Inc.’s shares reached another record, three days before the company’s earnings report, as investors expected upbeat results from the fast-growing cloud-computing business, a boost in sales from last week’s Prime Day promotion and signs that the company is controlling spending.  Amazon rose 1.1 percent to close at $488.10 in New York on Monday.

The stock set records three days last week and is up 12 percent this month, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Retailing Index has gained 5.5 percent.  The Seattle-based online retailer reports earnings Thursday. Analysts on average project earnings of $364 million on sales of $22.4 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg…

Grazed from TalkinCloud.  Author: Nichole Henderson.

Cloud services brokerageComputeNext launched a new training program for the channel, calledCloudEd, which aims to help cloud resellers migrate wary customers to cloud-based solutions.

Created by ComputeNext’s director of channel development Dan Moore, CloudEd offers video tutorials for channel professionals partnering with the ComputeNext platform as well as an optional, free general cloud certifications provided by CompTIA…

Grazed from ComputerDealerNews. Author: Paolo Del Nibletto.

One of the top market analysts in the world Tiffani Bova, VP of Gartner Research, has comprised a list of essentials for channel partners who are in tough with the transition to the cloud. The noted analyst delivered her top 10 list to an overflow audience at the Microsoft Worldwide Partner Conference and said it’s not too late for the channel to embrace the cloud phenomenon. Before Bova unveiled her must-knows for the channel she told the crowd to ask themselves these hard, soul searching questions:

1. What kind of partner should I become?
2. Should I invest in cloud services?
3. Do I have the rights sales and technical skills?
4. Will our products and services resonate?
5. Can you think 2020 instead of 2015?…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Paul Miller.

451 Research recently released the latest update to their Cloud Price Index. The basic cost of renting from one of the big public cloud providers* has fallen just over 2% since the Index began in October 2014. For those who are willing to commit to buying cloud-based resources for months or years at a time, prices fall dramatically: 451 Research reports a 44% saving over the on-demand price, in the best case.

At a time when commentators have cited recently announced increases to Microsoft’s pricing in some regions, 451 Research’s numbers indicate that — overall — the downward trend in cloud pricing continues. A 2% fall in 10 months is hardly a ‘race to the bottom,’ but the direction appears inexorably downward. This is not a surprise…

 Grazed from Business2Community.  Author: Caron Beesley.

Grazed from TechAeris.  Author: John Vincent.

The United States Air Force. Cloud computing. The pun-filled headlines virtually write themselves. However we’ll try to refrain from being too punny.  Last week, the Air Force, in partnership with the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), announced that it awarded more than 100,000 seats of a Department of Defense dedicated version of Microsoft Office 365 to Microsoft, Dell and General Dynamics.

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Mike Kavis.

I have seen a lot of billion dollar valuations lately that have left me scratching my head. Many of those are in the B2C or social media space where companies are measured more on “eyeballs” (the number of active users) and less on things like revenue or business models.  So after Docker cracked the billion dollar club with a $95M round I decided to research exactly what it is about containers that could drive this type of valuation.

I have been covering Docker since the company, then called dotCloud, was toying around with the idea of pulling the Docker technology out of their core product and releasing it as an open source project. I saw the value of containers very early on. What I did not see coming was the vision that CTO Solomon Hykes laid out before our eyes at Docker Con in San Francisco last month…