Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Mark Hamblen.

Sprint on Wednesday announced a partnership with Google to offer the Google Apps for Business cloud service, adding that customers of the service won’t be required to use Sprint’s wireless network or Android devices. The partnership helps move Sprint well beyond it’s role as a basic wireless carrier for businesses to one that will bolster basic Google cloud service and access to Google apps with Sprint’s own hands-on professional consulting, much of it free.

The announcement comes amid widespread reports that Sprint is in discussions to buy T-Mobile and just weeks after a six-month study of wireless carrier network performance found Sprint didn’t finish first among national carriers in any of 125 U.S. cities. Sprint’s resale of Google Apps for Business kicks off officially on Aug. 18…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

iCorps Technologies , a leading IT Consulting, Managed Services and Cloud Computing Company, today announced it has been named Microsoft’s Cloud Partner of the year for the Northeast area. The award underscores iCorps’ superior partner performance, delivering Office 365 solutions to small and mid-market clients. iCorps is also leading the adoption and acceleration of the Office 365 platform for hundreds of clients, across multiple industries.

iCorps expanded its business model to include a complete Office 365 practice, focused on delivering new software as a service (SaaS) solutions to clients — enabling email, SharePoint, Lync, OneNote, OneDrive, Yammer and Azure. This cloud solution has significantly accelerated business results for iCorps’ clients…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: David Linthicum.

Legal IT Professionals’ online survey of its readership presented a split decision on about a move to the cloud. “The online news publication covering international legal information technology asked readers: ‘If your law firm’s management asked for your advice regarding moving key applications to the cloud, would you be in favour of this strategy?’

The 438 responses from legal information technology staff, lawyers and paralegals was nearly split down the middle, with 46% opposing and 45% in favour, while 9% had no opinion.” The complete survey report can be found here. The participants of this 2013 survey might be a bit more cloud-oriented these days, as more law firms find a new home for IT in the cloud…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Elastica, the leader in Data Science Powered Cloud Application Security, today announced that it has been recognized as one of 2014’s hottest emerging technology vendors by CRN, the top news source for solution providers and the IT channel. The annual Emerging Vendors list identifies up-and-coming technology vendors that have introduced innovative new products, creating opportunities for channel partners in North America to create high-margin, cutting-edge solutions for their customers: http://www.crn.com/slide-shows/security/300073485/emerging-vendors-2014-security-vendors.htm.

"Solution providers are always on the hunt for the next big technology trend so that they can bring new solutions to their customers before they even know they need them. These vendors are on the forefront of IT innovation and are offering products and services that channel partners can use to stay ahead of the competition," said Robert Faletra, CEO of The Channel Company, publisher of CRN. "We congratulate 2014’s Emerging Vendors for creating the next wave of technology that will drive the IT industry forward and for opening the door to new, unique solutions from the IT channel."…

Grazed from MarketRealist. Author: Anupama Shukla.

Huge investments and differentiated services provided by Cloud leave no doubt that it’s being aggressively used and adopted. However,every business is different and so are its applications, confidentiality, and the level of support required. As a result, cloud computing has different offerings and deployment models to suit varied business requirements.

The previous chart illustrates the cloud service models of IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS that are built on the cloud computing essential characteristics. The cloud service models can be used either individually or in combination with other service models to create the cloud deployment models…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Arkadin, one of the world’s largest and fastest growing providers of Unified Communications and Collaboration services, announced today that it is the winner of The Cloud Computing Excellence Award. Presented by Cloud Computing magazine, the award honors exemplary performance in bringing new and differentiated cloud-based offerings to market. Arkadin won the award for Arkadin(R) Total Connect, a Microsoft Lync hosted service. Integrated into Arkadin ‘as a Service’, Arkadin Total Connect provides a fully integrated UC ecosystem with Microsoft Lync, Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft SharePoint.

"It’s an honor to be recognized for the excellence of Arkadin Total Connect," says Mark Alexander, managing director, Arkadin North America. "Our new cloud-based UC service gives businesses of any size a convenient all-in-one solution to meet all their collaboration needs, including telephony."…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

The platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market is growing considerably, and according to the latest research from MarketsandMarkets, the cloud computing segment is still on track to reach a value of nearly $7 billion by 2018. But for now, the market has already grown since the company released its market data late last year, growing to an estimated $1.28 billion this year from $1.23 billion in 2013.

According to MarketsandMarkets, the expected compound annual growth rate (CAGR) for the global PaaS market is 32.54 percent. Some industry experts say that although software as a service (SaaS) is still the big growth area within the cloud segment, PaaS is the next big up-and-comer…

Grazed from Baseline Magazine. Author: Dennis McCafferty.

Organizations are increasingly moving toward hybrid cloud integration models, according to a recent survey from Technology Business Research (TBR). As a result, the hybrid cloud represents a potential $7 billion hybrid integration market this year, as IT environments are expected to move toward becoming fully hybridized, the findings state.

However, the market is still far from mature, with only a minority of large enterprises currently investing in the integration required to create hybrid clouds. Clearly, the trend creates opportunities for IT professionals who can help organizations move forward with hybrid cloud strategies. "A hybrid IT environment is the end-game for cloud, with the hybrid cloud as a first step," stated one of the reports in the series, "Hybrid Cloud Customer Research."…

Grazed from BusinessInsider. Author: Richard Feloni.

Last year Amazon’s cloud computing business, Amazon Web Services (AWS), brought the company $3.8 billion in revenue. As LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman, along with entrepreneurs Ben Casnocha and Chris Yeh, illustrate in their new book "The Alliance," this multibillion-dollar business wasn’t the brainchild of CEO Jeff Bezos or even an executive.

It came from Benjamin Black, an employee who had been with the company a little over a year. It was 2003, and Black was recently promoted to website engineering manager. As Black explains in a blog post, he wrote a short paper that outlined a way to restructure Amazon’s infrastructure, and at the end "mentioned the possibility of selling virtual servers as a service."…

Grazed from ITWorld. Joab Jackson.

Following through on promises from new CEO Satya Nadella, Microsoft continues to add support for non-Microsoft technologies, allowing them to run well on the company’s Azure cloud hosting platform. "There are a wide variety of platforms and technologies that developers and IT managers like to use.

We’re just trying to assure that regardless of your choice, it will work well on Azure " said Doug Mahugh, a technology evangelist for Microsoft Open Technologies, a subsidiary that develops software and tools for non-Microsoft platforms. "Our decisions about where to invest are very much driven by what is popular with developers," he said…