Grazed from MidsizeInsider. Author: Shawn Drew.

The cloud is an established technological force, recognized for its superior ability to transform a business. Help desk software and CRM solutions have both proven to be powerful tools, yet new research shows that the uptake on cloud-based help desk solutions remains slow. IT managers at midsize businesses are beginning to understand just how effective a cloud-based help desk solution can be and look beyond the market trends to find ways to better deliver technological assistance to their employees and customers.

The State of Help Desk Software

A new report from Software Advice finds that ticket management, reporting and analytics and chat integrations all rank highly as critical functionalities driving businesses’ investment in modern help desk solutions, according to Biz Report. Despite these needs, investment in the help desk appears to be somewhat stagnant, with half of the survey respondents claiming they have no plans to alter their current help desk investment…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Jack Clark and Sarah Frier.

A creator of Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud-services operation has joined Twitter Inc. to help keep its website running smoothly. Chris Pinkham started as a vice president of engineering at the social-media service in January. San Francisco-based Twitter has been reworking its engineering department to help the company expand and release products more quickly.

The company promoted Alex Roetter last May to be head of engineering with a mandate to improve the site’s performance. Twitter used to crash so often that it had a Fail Whale icon, an image of little birds attempting to lift a large cetacean, it could trot out with an apology to users when their pages wouldn’t load. Pinkham led cloud development at Oracle Corp. after the database company acquired his startup, Nimbula Inc., in 2013…

Grazed from WhaTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

In a relatively short span of years, the concept of cloud computing services received high attention as an integral part of an enterprise’s IT strategy. The global cloud computing services market was once valued at US$79.60 billion in 2011 and was further projected to grow at a CAGR of 23.21% to reach a market value of US$148.9 billion by 2014.

These services have revolutionized and introduced new ways of how IT delivers services and how the customers access applications, information, and business services. A cloud computing service is the most popular buzz in the internet market today. Known to deliver hosted services through internet, the concept is still considered as naïve – but is so far generating tremendous interest and growing business among several users in the world…

Grazed from InfoSecurity. Author: Andy Kimble.

As technology advances, companies are increasingly turning to cloud-based solutions to solve the challenges posed by the increasing costs of traditional infrastructure. However, cloud-based solutions pose their own challenges, particularly where personal data is being stored or accessed from the cloud.

The Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA) governs the processing of personal data in the United Kingdom by data controllers. A data controller is an organization that (either alone, jointly or in common with other persons) determines the way in which personal data is, or will be, processed. A data processor is an organization that processes personal data on behalf of a data controller…

Grazed from CCI. Author: Paul Evans.

Cloud backup has been around for more than a decade. It’s one of the most mature applications of cloud technology and has become a common feature of the business landscape due to its reliability, efficiency and automation capabilities. Today, the cloud backup market is fairly saturated, offering businesses and consumers a wide range of services to choose between. Consequently, there are a number of factors to take into consideration when choosing a backup services provider. Asking the right questions will help you to differentiate between consumer-focused and business grade services and will ensure the service chosen meets your own specific needs.

1. Performance and Versatility

Contrary to popular belief, implementing an enterprise cloud backup service will enable a business to reduce its backup times by minimising the total volume of data being transferred to the backup platform on a daily basis. Advances in file scanning, data compression and deduplication, driven by competition, means that today’s leading cloud backup service providers are able to offer businesses much faster backups and often more rapid restores than traditional methods such as tape…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Dan Kobialka.

Cloud-based video conferencing services are becoming more popular worldwide, according to a new Global Industry Analysts (GIA) report. And as a result, the cloud-based video conferencing services market could be worth $2.9 billion by 2020. In addition, GIA found that the increasing use of video conferencing in the government, healthcare and education sectors could drive the cloud-based video conferencing services market’s growth over the next few years.

Other report results included:

• The United States is the largest market for cloud-based video conferencing services. However, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to be the fastest-growing market with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 13.5 percent through 2020.
• Key market players include Applied Global Technologies, Blue Jeans Network, BT Conferencing, Level 3 Communications (LVLT) and NTT Communications.
• The rising demand for enterprise mobility and the ensuing increase in the number of mobile workers could lead many businesses to pursue cloud-based video conferencing services…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing-vertical-markets/rising-demand-cloud-based-video-conferencing-services-study-says

Grazed from ChannelPartnersOnline. Author: Ken Mercer.

Cloud computing is catching the attention of CFOs, COOs and CMOs across the country, and that equals opportunity for informed VARs. The key to success? Bring to the table a deep understanding of how various cloud options map to business priorities. A few questions will help determine whether customers are best served by a public, private or hybrid cloud architecture as the network foundation for critical services and applications.

On a high level, when engaging with line-of-business execs, focus on enabling growth and the potential manpower benefits of cloud computing scenarios rather than just selling the cloud to replace private infrastructure 1:1. For example, say the CMO is worried that a marketing campaign might work a little too well. A hybrid-cloud (virtual server) option can help her sleep better at night by providing the on-demand flexibility needed to manage peak server usage caused by demand spikes. Hybrid cloud approaches can also help by providing geographic diversity for disaster recovery applications…

Grazed from CFO. Author: David M. Katz.

In a February editorial about the buildup of cyberattacks between the United States and Iran, The New York Times quoted President Obama’s observation that, compared with conventional weaponry, cyberweapons provide “no clear line between offense and defense.” Thus, getting into the enemy’s networks to exploit its weakness and disable its ability to attack you is both offense and defense.

Citing “major banks, Sony Pictures Entertainment, [and] an electrical utility,” the newspaper observed that such recent examples reveal that even corporate computer systems once considered impregnable are vulnerable to attack. In the borderless world of information technology, in fact, computer-security specialists and corporate risk managers have begun working on the assumption that it’s impossible for companies to keep their networks completely free from penetration…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: Adam Spearing.

Let’s face it – until very recently big data has been a big letdown. Data warehouses and data analytics tools have historically proven difficult to design, build, and maintain. How much storage space will be necessary? How much data is there? What data management tools can the organisation afford and, just as important, what expertise is available in-house to build and run the data warehouse or data analytics platform?

InformationWeek recently outlined eight reasons why big data projects often fail. The article cited a survey from Gartner that found an astonishing 92% of organisations are stuck in neutral when it comes to their big data initiatives. Why? Because enterprises are spending a lot of money on big data technologies, or plan to, but don’t have the right skills or strategies in place to drive the initiatives forward…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Mike Vizard.

Now that Apple Watches that are set to arrive in April has everyone thinking about the potential of wearable device, it’s only a matter of time before solution providers across the channel are asked to develop applications that actually make use of these devices. With that in mind Salesforce.com unfurled Salesforce for Apple Watch when the devices were first launched. But Adam Seligman, vice president of developer relations for Salesforce.com (CRM), said the more interesting thing will be to see what applications developers create for the Apple Watch and other wearable platforms using Salesforce.com cloud platforms and application programming interfaces (APIs).

At the price points that the Apple Watch has been introduced at applications used by sales people and senior business executives are likely to be among the first to gain traction in the market. But Seligman notes that there will soon be a raft of wearable computing devices that can run applications built using the Saleforce1 software development kit (SDK)…

Read more from the source @ http://talkincloud.com/cloud-computing/03302015/when-wearables-meet-cloud