Grazed from CMSWire. Author: Noreen Seebacher.

Marc Benioff-backed Cloudwords is continuing its quest to help global marketers manage multi-lingual content. The cloud-based translation management application today announced Campaign Manager, an enterprise-ready solution designed to help marketers "plan, execute and track" the localization and translation of marketing content for global campaigns.

Benioff, the CEO of salesforce.com, was one of the original investors in the San Francisco-based company. Cloudwords was founded in 2010 by "individuals who gave birth to cloud computing," including Scott Yancey, a key architect on the salesforce.com platform, and Michael Meinhardt, a consultant who advised numerous enterprise customers on their global translation strategy, including Cisco Systems, Hitachi Data Systems, Apple and Symantec…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Editorial Staff.

SMEs (Small/Medium Sized Enterprises) make up the bulk of businesses today. Most cloud based applications created today are geared toward the SME market. Accounting, Storage, Backup services are just a few of them. According to the European Commission, cloud based technology could help 80% of organisations reduce costs by 10-20%.

This infographic provided courtesy of Towergate offers insights into the uses and benefits of cloud computing, as well as tips for a successful implementation…

To see infographic and read more from the source, visit http://cloudtweaks.com/2014/07/cloud-infographic-cloud-computing-smes/

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Fortinet — a world leader in high-performance network security — today announced enhancements to its existing FortiWeb-VM Web Application Firewalls (WAFs) for Amazon Web Services (AWS) to include on-demand, pay-as-you-go offerings. FortiWeb-VM for AWS helps AWS enterprise customers secure their cloud-based Web applications and meet PCI DSS compliance requirements.

FortiWeb-VM for AWS can now be utilized seamlessly on an hourly or annual subscription basis, complementing existing Bring Your Own License (BYOL) options. When procured via AWS Marketplace for on-demand delivery and integrated metering, billing, and payments, AWS customers can now consume "security-as-a-service" in the same simple and elastic manner as they would with the AWS infrastructure itself. A significant benefit of the new on-demand, pay-as-you-go model is scaling the solution to meet immediate needs, while still offering predictable cost models. The new AWS Marketplace annual subscription options potentially allow CAPEX savings of up to 40 percent when compared to hourly pricing over the same 12 month period…

Grazed from PCMag. Author: Michael J. Miller.

As we’ve moved into a "cloud-first, mobile-first" world, corporate programming has changed. But I would argue that the change depends on the kind of cloud computing we’re talking about and that the long-term implications could be very significant. If we’re talking about moving from individual data centers to private clouds or even to Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), I don’t think the change in corporate programming is necessarily all that significant.

Sure new tools will be used—Open Stack, Amazon services, new mobile-centric frameworks, and languages such as Node.js, Angular, Swift, and Python. But programming is still programming. But when you think about moving from big monolithic corporate applications to using more Software as a Service (SaaS) services working together, that’s a completely different model. And I see that happening in a lot of places…

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Itron, Inc. announced today its intent to use Microsoft Azure as its preferred cloud platform for Itron Analytics. The cloud computing and infrastructure platform will provide a secure, reliable and cost-effective option for hosting Itron Analytics, Itron’s analytic application that harnesses the value of the data generated by utility smart grid and smart distribution investments.

With Microsoft Azure, Itron will have access to highly-available, scalable and durable cloud storage, backup and recovery capabilities. Microsoft Azure maintains the infrastructure and performs routine maintenance, patching, load balancing and health monitoring for continuous availability. This will allow Itron and its customers to focus on running Itron Analytics rather than upgrading and maintaining hardware. Itron Analytics can either be installed locally, run by the utility in the cloud environment or operated and managed by Itron as a part of its Itron(R) Total Services…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

Red Hat has been on an acquisition run with the aim of building an open source stack that leads the hybrid data center. The primary rival: VMware. How the Red Hat vs. VMware duel plays out remains to be seen, but Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, argued that open source will ultimately define the enterprise IT architectures of the future. I caught up with Whitehurst to talk cloud, open source and Red Hat’s master plan. Here’s a look at some of the key themes from my conversation with Whitehurst:

Recent acquisitions and the big picture. Red Hat recently acquired OpenStack integrator eNovance and Inktank, a software defined storage company known for Ceph, an enterprise platform. Whitehurst said that Red Hat "is looking to create an open source stack for infrastructure and platform as a service." Red Hat makes acquisitions not based on intellectual property as much as people and involvement with innovative open source projects like Ceph, an object and block storage platform…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Is cloud computing finally a bona fide business strategy, versus an IT optimization strategy? It may well be, a new survey suggests. But this new second phase of cloud means things are going to be tougher to measure, define and conceptualize in the big picture. Business agility has become the primary advantage being delivered by cloud, says a new survey by Harvard Business Review Analytic Services of 527 HBR readers in large and mid-size organizations finds. The study was underwritten by Verizon Enterprise Solutions.

Business agility leads the list of drivers for adopting cloud computing, with nearly a third of respondents (32 percent) saying it was their primary reason for pursuing cloud. This was followed by increased innovation (14 percent), lower costs (14 percent), and the ability to scale up and down in response to variations in business demand (13 percent)…

Grazed from ITWire. Author: Editorial Staff.

Acronis, the global leader in new generation data protection, announced sponsoring new research from IDC that identifies complexity and data growth as key data protection challenges for small-and medium-sized businesses. The findings show that more and more organisations are dealing with simultaneously needing to back up physical, virtual and cloud environments, reveal varying levels of cloud backup adoption across different geographies, and bring to light the cost of downtime for SMBs.

The findings are based on a worldwide, cross-industry survey of small and medium businesses (< 1,000 employees) concerning their evolving data protection and disaster recovery needs. Respondents were from eight countries, including: France, Germany, Japan, Korea, Russia, Singapore, the UK and the US…

Grazed from ARN. Author: Mike Gee.

The announcement, a year after the company globally launched the Fujitsu Cloud Initiative, is aimed at strengthening the company’s commitment to unlocking the business innovation, cost efficiency and agility benefits of Cloud for its customers. Fujitsu said in a statement that it is well on its way to building a broad portfolio of Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS); Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Cloud Integration Services. Having commited to a two-year investment of about $US2 billion in business innovation, social innovation and strengthening global delivery capabilities, the company has been bringing to market new offerings, deepening its deployments, and growing its customer base.

Fujitsu executive vice-president, solutions, global delivery, Cameron McNaught, said, ”Fujitsu has a vision of a Human Centric Intelligent Society, one where social and business innovation is driven by the intelligent use of information and communication technologies. "We see Cloud as the natural platform for delivering these new types of applications, which is reflected in both the increase we are seeing in cloud adoption and how it is becoming a standard part of IT service delivery models for many CIOs today…

Grazed from BoxFreeIT. Author: Sholto Macpherson.

The North American arm of financial services giant Zurich is the latest insurer to introduce a plan for companies that use cloud computing services. The property coverage for mid-market companies protected against business interruption or extra expense in the case of a cloud computing service failing.

Niche insurers have popped up targeting risks in cloud computing, including local providers in Australia. An alliance of cloud computing providers launched an insurance package to provide protection for cloud services providers in April last year, but insurers had dragged their heels on releasing plans for business customers…