Grazed from InformationAge. Author: Ben Rossi.

Cloud computing has completely transformed the way organisations operate, redefining traditional business functions in the process. In no department has this been more evident than marketing.  For CMOs, cloud is being positioned as a much-needed central platform to control and align the raft of new marketing opportunities that have surfaced from other emerging technologies in recent years.

Innovations driven by analytics, digital, search and social media have given brands new ways to connect with consumers, revolutionising conventional marketing techniques in the process…

Grazed from SeekingAlpha. Author: Daniel James.

Cisco, once regarded as a one-trick-pony capable of little else than manufacturing routers and switches, has with its most recent earnings report clearly proven it is becoming something much, much bigger. In fact, the report managed to silence or least give pause to most if not all of the company’s critics. Beating soundly on revenue as well as earnings, all of the company’s segments saw sales grow for the period. After three years of heavy investments in software and new technology, Cisco is starting to emerge as a major all-round tech powerhouse.

CEO Swagger

Although it’s not at all unusual for CEOs to strike a confident tone when presenting strong results, CEO John Chambers laid it on a bit thick for his company’s second quarter earnings call. With all the swagger of a pirate captain who freshly captured a Spanish treasure galleon, Chambers had the following to say about the company’s competitive position:…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM, CenturyLink and the State of Louisiana today announced an innovative public-private partnership that will create high-value, high-tech jobs in Louisiana and fuel the talent demands of the digital economy. As part of a 10-year business transformation agreement between IBM and CenturyLink, IBM will open and staff the new applications development innovation center in Monroe, creating at least 400 new roles for experienced professionals and drawing heavily on graduates from the state’s colleges and universities.

The rapid adoption of mobile and social technologies over recent years is driving fundamental transformations to business processes and applications. The center will provide IBM’s clients with services that address the increasing demand for flexible software services to create value from big data, cloud computing and mobile-led business transformation…

Grazed from Wired. Author: Cade Metz.

Pivotal—the rather ambitious business software outfit spun off from big-name tech companies EMC and VMware—is open sourcing three of its key products, sharing the underlying software code with the world at large. Today, the San Francisco-based company announced that in the coming year, it will open source GemFire, HAWQ, and GreenplumDB, three “big data” tools designed to help businesses analyze large amounts of digital information.

“Our customers are starting to look to open source, and they’re looking to projects that have communities around them,” says Pivotal’s Sunny Madra, who oversees the company’s data work. “Customers want a say in the direction of software.” The move is yet another sign that the world of business software is changing, moving away from proprietary software built and licensed by individual vendors like Oracle and Microsoft, towards open source tools that anyone can freely use and modify…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Alison Diana.

As open source becomes increasingly important to enterprises and consumers, a growing number of educational institutions are adding classes or programs that focus on this discipline. Yet some channel executives worry these initiatives are inadequate to meet business needs and are concerned their companies will continue to carry most of the technology’s training burden.

Nobody debates the need for more education on open source. Almost a year ago, more than half businesses surveyed used and contributed to open source, according to a Black Duck Software report. About one-third make it easy for employees to begin or join their own open source projects, the study said…

Grazed from PCWorld. Author: John Ribeiro.

Microsoft has adopted a new standard for cloud privacy that commits the company to protect the privacy of customers’ data, not to use it for advertisement purposes, and to inform the customer of legal requests for personal data. The company said Monday it was adopting the ISO/IEC 27018, published last year by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), which outlines a common set of security categories and controls that can be implemented by a public cloud computing service provider acting as a processor of personally identifiable information.

Microsoft said the British Standards Institute had verified that both Office 365 and Dynamics CRM Online, in addition to Microsoft Azure, are in line with the standard’s code for the protection of personal data in the public cloud. Microsoft Intune was similarly certified by testing company Bureau Veritas…

Grazed from Bloomberg. Author: Alex Barinka.

IBM is introducing new storage software as the company tries to boost sales for higher-margin technology products. International Business Machines Corp.’s new portfolio, called IBM Spectrum Storage, lets customers use a single dashboard to manage massive amounts of information across existing storage infrastructure, including data centers and the cloud.

IBM also has pledged to spend about $200 million a year in the next five years on developing new storage offerings, the company said Tuesday in a statement. IBM Chief Executive Officer Ginni Rometty has been trying to entice customers with new products, such as software-defined storage, to help reverse falling sales. After 11 quarters of declining revenue, she’s still trying to find growth from higher-margin software and services delivered online via the cloud…

Grazed from CCSKGuide. Author: Editorial Staff.

The DoD’s new Cloud Computing Security Requirements Guide (SRG), released by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), replaces their previous Cloud Security Model. The guide outlines an overall “security posture” that directs cloud service providers (CSPs) seeking to work with the DoD. This article is a continuation of a previous one, which introduced the four new information impact levels. Here, we will examine the DoD process of risk assessment of cloud service offerings, as defined by the SRG.

Risk Assessment Process

Shifting to cloud computing means that risk management processes must change as well. The goal is to address requirements and controls, relative to the criticality of DoD information in the external cloud, in a cost effective way. At the same time, it is also to assure the security of DoD core missions and networks in accordance with the DoD RMF…

Grazed from iMarketReports. Author: Clint Boulton.

The benefits of shifting business applications to Web-friendly cloud services is proving far more complex than lining up a partner and flipping a switch, say executives who have made the transition. Absent proper expense controls, they say the cloud can be exceptionally wasteful of expensive resources.

What to watch for? Experts say always keep future costs in mind when planning the shift. Some common mistakes include ordering too much computing power, failing to program software shutdowns in off hours, not using monitoring tools to keep tabs on wasted computing cycles, or allowing programmers to believe cycles are free…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Nathan Eddy.

AppDirect announced $50 million in Series D funding led by Mithril Capital Management. New investors Henry Kravis and Paul Fribourg join existing investors Mithril, Foundry Group, iNovia Capital and StarVest Partners to bring the cloud commerce compay’s total capital raised to $110 million.

"This new funding will enable us to continue our growth and further drive innovation and redefine one of the fastest- growing sectors of cloud computing, cloud service commerce," Daniel Saks, CEO at AppDirect, told eWEEK. "Over the next year we’ll expand geographically to increase our global market share in Europe, Asia and Latin America regions."…