Grazed from CNet. Author: Donna Tam.

Amazon Web Services, Amazon’s cloud computing arm, on Thursday launched a new cloud storage and sharing service, signaling the company’s first steps into territory dominated by tech titans Google and Microsoft. The service, called Zocalo, allows users to share files between desktop and mobile devices, and collaborate by highlighting content and adding notes.

It’s also integrated into Amazon Workspaces, a virtual desktop Amazon launched in March. These are enterprise cloud tools a company implements for its employees. Cloud storage and collaboration have become popular services in recent years, with startups like Box and Dropbox leading the charge for working in the cloud, often painting Microsoft as a dinosaur with outdated office tools…

Grazed from New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.

Cloud computing and mobile technologies change more things than you think. Besides connecting people and devices, or making software operate together more efficiently, they give companies new ways to seek dominance. On Thursday, Concur, which sells expense-accounting software for business, said it had entered a partnership with United Airlines to enable direct travel bookings on United’s website. Book a flight for work, and it will automatically be entered on your expense form.

Any corporate travel site that connects to United’s system also will offer whatever preferred rates the company has negotiated, and not United’s published fares. It is the kind of thing Concur and other cloud-based expense systems, like Oracle’s PeopleSoft product, already do when an employee makes a purchase on a corporate credit card…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

NephoScale is excited to announce its new SSD/10 Gbps Hybrid Compute™ cloud service. This service is breaking new ground in IaaS with a combination of higher levels of performance and lower pricing than currently offered by competitors. "With the addition of this new innovative cloud service NephoScale is changing the game in IaaS cloud computing with an unmatched combination of price and performance," said Bruce Templeton, CEO of NephoScale.

"By developing our own advanced software-defined-networking (SDN) and Hybrid Compute™ technology, and extensively leveraging open source software and commodity hardware, NephoScale is continually pushing performance levels up while driving costs down, thus giving our customers the best of both worlds in cloud computing," Templeton adds…

Grazed from Neptune. Author: PR Announcement.

In the first Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) "Amazon City on a Cloud Innovation Challenge," Neptune Technology Group Inc. (Neptune) has been named as a grand prize winner for its N_SIGHT™ IQ intelligent analytics software for utilities, which runs on the Amazon Web Services cloud computing network.

The Cloud Innovation Challenge recognizes applications that contribute to helping solve local government challenges. Accordingly, N_SIGHT IQ provides water utilities with the ability to store and analyze up to 10 years of homeowners’ consumption data, along with advanced analytics based on historical trends and flagged consumption events…

Grazed from TheStreet. Author: Kathryn Myklesseth.

IBM is pumping $3 billion into hardware innovation – trying to jump ahead of the pack in cloud and cognitive computing. Serving as a testament to Big Blue’s commitment to get on the leading side of cloud innovation, the company announced it will invest $3 billion over the next five years in two broad research and early stage development programs for chip technology.

The research focuses on making semiconductors more efficient for cloud computing and Big Data systems. IBM is taking the first in a series of steps in changing up the hardware. The areas focused on in the funded studies include, carbon nanoelectronics, silicon photonics, new memory technologies, and architectures that support quantum and, no surprise here, cognitive computing…

Grazed from IBM. Author: PR Announcement.

IBM has announced it is investing $3 billion over the next five years in two broad research and early stage development programs to push the limits of chip technology needed to meet the emerging demands of cloud computing and Big Data systems. These investments are intended to push IBM’s semiconductor innovations from today’s breakthroughs into the advanced technology leadership required for the future.

The first research program is aimed at so-called “7 nanometer and beyond” silicon technology that will address serious physical challenges that are threatening current semiconductor scaling techniques and will impede the ability to manufacture such chips. The second is focused on developing alternative technologies for post-silicon era chips using entirely different approaches, which IBM scientists and other experts say are required because of the physical limitations of silicon based semiconductors…

Grazed from BibeyPost. Author: Chris Bibey.

Microsoft Corporation is always looking for ways to fly past the competition, and it may have found its ride: the cloud. At the upcoming 2014 Worldwide Partner Conference, Microsoft will have the chance to discuss a variety of new cloud based services and technologies, all of which are going to make life much easier on its partners.

As the shift to cloud computing continues to ramp up, some companies will find themselves in position to provide their customers with the infrastructure and technology necessary to stay in the game. Microsoft Corporation is definitely one of these companies…

Grazed from FierceGovernmentIT. Author: Henry Kenyon.

The Drug Enforcement Administration is planning to make its first tentative steps into the federal cloud computing arena as it seeks a solution to store sensitive crime data. In a request released July 7, the DEA is surveying cloud providers for the most cost-efficient way to shift data to an agency-wide hybrid cloud. One of the major nodes in this proposed cloud architecture will be the DEA’s Sterling Park Technology Center, or SPTC.

The agency wants to move its eGIS capability – a Google Earth-based crime information system that uses geospatial mapping data to tag crime and suspect location data – to the cloud. eGIS is currently hosted at SPTC, but the goal is to create a secondary site hosted on a Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program-compliant government community cloud run by an authorized commercial cloud service provider…

Grazed from FierceCIO. Author: David Weldon.

Cloud computing is becoming a game changer for many organizations, and that means the IT manager of the future needs to be well-versed in all things cloud. That is the clear message from a recent article at Tech Page One, which examined current trends in IT, and what they mean to the skills required of IT leaders.

"Transition can be a rough time for any company, no matter the reason," the article notes. "With the constant development and implementation of new technology, company IT departments are almost always in a state of transition, adapting to major changes and making sure things run smoothly. IT managers need to be ready, particularly for the big changes happening in the near future."…

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Alistair Blair.

Google Wednesday fired another shot in the price wars for cloud-computing services, offering businesses more free storage in an effort to compete with industry leader Amazon Web Services. Google Cloud Platform offered two terabytes of free storage for a year, through one of its partners, a startup called Panzura.

The move highlights the battle among Google, Amazon and Microsoft MSFT -0.26% to provide companies with remote storage, computing power and other technology services, which reduce companies’ need to buy and run their own equipment. Some industry insiders predict storage will soon be free…