Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: David Strom.

As you move workloads to the cloud, you’ve probably already discovered that keeping track of your monthly cloud computing bills is not an easy task. Certainly, using a cloud provider can be cheaper than purchasing your own hardware, or instrumental in moving a capital expense into an operating one. And there are impressive multi-core hyperscale servers that are now available to anyone for a reasonable monthly fee.

But while it is great that cloud providers base their fees on what resources you actually consume, the various elements of your bill are daunting and complex, to say the least. True, many of the cloud components can be had for pennies per month, but for some resources (such as those heavily loaded multicore CPUs) the meter can run up to real money very quickly…

Read more from the source @ http://www.networkworld.com/article/2913355/cloud-computing/paying-too-much-for-cloud-services-these-five-tools-can-help-cut-your-cloud-costs.html

Grazed from FirstPost. Author: Editorial Staff.

Organisations are embracing the speed and simplicity of VCE converged infrastructure as the foundation for next-generation cloud technologies and turning to partners who can help them leverage and build IT platforms that can quickly deliver business value. Increasingly the enterprise market is realizing the benefits of cloud computing.

Driving this massive transformation and adoption of cloud services are the large global System Integrators and Service Providers. These technology experts have the ability to transform legacy infrastructure into modern service-based portals. Indian IT majors who play in the global System Integrator space have contributed significantly to the adoption of innovative IT, with converged infrastructure vastly simplifying the move to hybrid cloud…

Read more from the source @ http://www.firstpost.com/business/vce-partners-global-integrator-ecosystem-drive-converged-infrastructure-adoption-2214374.html

Grazed from Barron’s. Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft reported fiscal-third-quarter results that were well above expectations. The commercial licensing segment appears to be stabilizing, and the company posted very strong results in Office 365. We are increasing our fiscal 2016 estimates and are raising our target to $50 from $48.

Office 365 has over 62 million users, including 12.4 million consumer and 50 million corporate users, which is less than 10% of the Office installed base. Office 365 Home and Personal added 3.2 million subscribers in the quarter, much better than the 1.8 million we were expecting. We estimate that Microsoft (ticker: MSFT ) has over one billion Office users globally…

Grazed from UncoverCalifornia.  Author: Jonathan Clifford.

Online retailer Amazon shared the revenue and profit numbers for its cloud service for the first time and the numbers have caught market analysts by surprise. The Amazon Web Services division has registered revenue of more than $6 billion and profit over $1 billion. The cloud computing market is big but till data Amazon had not shared the details of its cloud venture.

Just when some analysts had started questioning Amazon’s ability to grow quarter on quarter, Jeff Bezos has thrown in a positive surprise for everyone. Investors are happy and many rating agencies will surely rerate Amazon stock in the coming days…

Grazed from CIO.  Author: John Ribiero.

Indian outsourcer Infosys has made an acquisition in the area of cloud computing and invested in a personal health monitoring company as it tries to move into high value products and services.

The transition is, however, taking time and in the financial results the company reported Friday its revenue and profit grew only slightly. The company said it faced pricing pressure in its core outsourcing business, which still largely prices its services around the number of people deployed on a customer’s project…

Grazed from ChannelPartners.  Author: Edward Gately.

The rapidly growing “cloud tsunami" is forcing the MSP industry to completely transform itself, embracing consumption economics, and focusing on sales, marketing and training.  The new MSP Consortium aims to bring together the industry to address challenges and ensure members not only survive, but thrive in this rapidly changing environment. Membership is free.

Amy Rutt, consortium board president and CEO of Ciracom, tells Channel Partners the consortium is moving ahead “with an enormous sense of urgency" and is quickly gaining members…

Grazed from 2Paragraphs. Author: Editorial Staff.

Amazon (AMZN) is surging Friday because it finally let investors see big earnings. The stock is up 15% on the day as of 1pm. Amazon Web Services, the company’s cloud computing business that’s supposed to be in a "race to zero", is racing the other way instead. It’s making money, even in the competition-heavy cloud sector.

Speaking of cloud computing, last year Microsoft selected its cloud computing chief Satya Nadella to run the entire company. Today the stock market is showing its love for Nadella’s vision and Microsoft’s execution. (Positive notes for Microsoft include commercial cloud revenue up 106% and even much-maligned search advertising revenue up 21% over last year.) Microsoft shares were up 10% by Wall Street lunchtime on Friday. Google’s shares were up 3% too. All blue skies for cloud computing…

Read more from the source @ http://2paragraphs.com/2015/04/amazon-microsoft-2-big-bets-on-cloud-computing-paying-off/

Grazed from Computing. Author: John Leonard.

A recent Computing survey of 130 IT decision-makers in companies with 100 to over 5,000 employees, found that organisations using cloud services are now in a large majority. Given that “cloud” covers services as diverse as online storage of personal photos and big data analytics-as-a-service this is perhaps not surprising.

What is unexpected though, is that as many said that they have deployed some sort of private cloud set-up as are using public SaaS, PaaS and IaaS combined. With as many private clouds as public ones, hybrid cloud architectures (currently in 19 per cent of firms surveyed) have emerged as pressures grow to make the platform fit the business rather than the other way round…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

A few years ago, we defined the value of cloud computing in terms of opex versus capex. These days, most people define the value of cloud around agility. Why the change? Because if you define the value of cloud as the ability to avoid buying hardware and software — the capex-versus-opex view — you can’t make cloud computing compelling from a cost standpoint.

However, if you define the value of cloud as the ability to make your business more agile, you quickly get to the value numbers you need. I’ve been shouting about the value of agility and the cloud for years, but I didn’t see the view become common in the IT or vendor community until recently. Now, cloud providers are all about agility, and they use it to sell the public cloud to enterprises…

Grazed from CCI. Author: John O’Keefe.

Wave after wave of technological innovation has crashed over businesses in the last few decades. Gone are the days when having a PC and an up-to-date office suite was the cutting-edge of corporate IT. Of course, some innovations have had bigger impacts than other. Cloud technology is the latest trend reaching the threshold of widespread adoption. The recent IPO of Box attests to the success of cloud storage companies. Much of the excitement around cloud technology is based on the door it opens to the quick adoption of other business intelligence tools. It is clearly one of the main forces driving the explosive growth of productivity software.

The growth of workplace communications

Collaborative software tools, like Slack and Join.Me, which facilitate workplace communications are experiencing unprecedented growth. More established players like Salesforce and Evernote are rapidly growing the services they offer enterprises, such as Salesforce’s analytics cloud Wave…