Author: David

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Quest, a technology management company, today announced it has been named Company of the Year in the Cloud Elite category of the 2013 Solution Provider 500 list, sponsored by The Channel Company’s CRN. The Solution Provider 500 awards span eight categories including Cloud Elite, and recognize those Solution Provider 500 companies that have evolved and thrived in today’s cloud and services driven IT era. Quest ranked 161 on the 2013 SP500 list, up from 192 last year, and received the Company of the Year Cloud Elite award at the 2013 Best of Breed Conference in Tampa, FL which recognizes the nation’s top IT solution providers.

Quest was recognized as a leader in the Cloud category for providing customers with a full spectrum of cloud solutions and services, whether in public, private or hybrid cloud environments. “Our main focus is ‘How can we help?’”, said Tim Burke, Quest President and CEO. “We begin by engaging our customer to determine their overall business objectives and identifying technology capabilities that the customer requires. We’ve been providing cloud and managed services for over a decade and we’re greatly honored by this recognition.”…

Grazed from ComputerWorld. Author: Juan Carlos Perez.

When Google Apps arrived in 2006, it stood on the cutting edge of web-hosted email and collaboration suites for businesses, a bold pioneer clearing a path in the new, wild frontier of enterprise cloud computing. Seven years later, complacency has diluted that innovative spirit, and Google Apps now trails competing suites from IBM, Cisco and Microsoft in areas like enterprise social networking (ESN) and unified communications (UC).

Although Google improves Apps continually, the suite’s main draw remains its Gmail component, as has been the case from the beginning. But, is cloud email still enough to attract prospective customers and retain existing ones? Is Google leaving Apps vulnerable to rivals by taking its time boosting its ESN and UC capabilities?…

Grazed from CloudComputingPath. Author: Pravin Anchan.

Accounting based on clouds has inherent advantages like offering access from anywhere at any time and collaboration. Needs of small andSMBs On Cloud medium business enterprises vary according to the nature of their business and what is good for one may not be good for the other. The most expensive or fully featured one is not necessary if inexpensive cloud based accounting software will serve the purpose. Take a look at some of the cloud based accounting software for SMBs.

Intuit, Sage and QuickBooks have been on the scene since ages and have cloud based offerings but these are expensive. You may want to consider cloud based accounting software that helps you get the job done without leaving you light in the pocket…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: CJ Arlotta.

Zoho CEO Sridhar Vembu accused Microsoft (MSFT) this week in a blog post of having an "oxygen supply problem," claiming that "Microsoft Office has long been the de-facto monopoly." "That is the nice thing about facing a monopoly in an adjacent market – every player other than the monopoly would win if they get a non-zero share of a massively shrunk market," he said.

"If the $20 billion market shrinks to $2 billion, we at Zoho would celebrate it, as long as we can hope to get a share of that shrunken market." Vembu clarified his comments with us in an interview by pointing to how companies can still innovate the office suite market through research and development (R&D) with smaller revenue…

Grazed from NewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

AURA a global provider of Business Process Management (BPM) software, has announced the creation and launch of its sound Cloud Computing structure. This will enable any type of organization, public or private, to undertake BPM implementation projects through the AuraPortal suite without the usual structure and investment concerns inherent in such projects, and with the software licenses included in the service. The idea of the Cloud is simple: It consists of adopting for the computing services the same model used in utilities services.

In the same way that an electricity user simply plugs in a cable to obtain power supply without bothering whatsoever about the cost and knowledge required to build and manage power plants and distribution grids, a company will be able to manage its processes with the AuraPortal BPM suite by simply connecting to Internet from any browser; and what is more, this allows complete mobility as AuraPortal can be accessed from any tablet or smartphone, without having to think about hardware or software requirements…

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: Lee H. Badman.

Networking is changing fast with the rise of software-defined networking (SDN), cloud networking, and highly mobile network clients. Startup Pertino is banking on these trends with its interesting new way of providing connectivity. Pertino’s foundation is in SDN-enabled cloud-based networking primarily aimed at the SMB market, using what it calls its Cloud Network Engine.

Today, the company announced an addition to the cloud service, Network Service Virtualization, which could prove a game changer for networking. However, before we examine what’s new, an overview of the Cloud Network Engine is in order…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Eric Lundquist.

Microsoft gets a lot of justified blame for faltering in smartphones and tablets. However, while the company has a long way to go to catch up in mobile, it is playing a very strong catch-up game in cloud computing. Last week the company touted its cloud success in its quarterly analyst call, published a memo outlining a raft of new features and made an acquisition that didn’t get a whole lot of media play, but will buttress the company’s plan to be an easy on-ramp to the cloud and to deliver applications developed by tying together API-based services.

The company’s Azure cloud service has been enjoying triple digit growth, and the cloud computing unit (which also includes the Microsoft Office 365 line) grew at 103 percent in the past quarter, company officials said during its analyst call last week. Both Azure and Office 365 posted triple-digit increases. Last spring the company said Azure and related cloud software account for $1 billion in yearly revenue…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

Filling prescriptions electronically is one of the demands of IT systems in healthcare and that is fueling cloud computing system purchases, according to a report from Kalorama Information. The global market for cloud computing in healthcare is estimated to reach $3.9 billion for 2013, representing 21.1% growth over the 2012 year, and that storage demands from e-prescribing will create sales opportunities for cloud providers. The finding was made in Kalorama’s latest report, “The World Market for Cloud Computing in Healthcare.”

An e-prescriptions is sent to pharmacies electronically instead of by fax. Re-fill requests are sent to health provider electronically from the pharmacy resulting in faster prescription management. Kalorama notes that the use of e-prescribing technologies has jumped from less than 10% in 2004 to about 35% in 2010. The healthcare market research firm says that hospitals, physician offices and retail pharmacies will adopt cloud computing systems, off-site servers that can store information accessible to healthcare organization employees at a different location…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Peter Waterhouse.

As an impoverished student I owned an old car. By today’s standards it was basic. It had no air conditioning or cup holders and it rusted continuously. Being broke meant I had to perform my own maintenance, which I wasn’t especially good at. But that aside, when I lifted the hood after a breakdown I could normally see and fix the problem. I could repair a damaged hose, change spark plugs, and if I was feeling adventurous, adjust carburettor settings. Sure it burned a lot of oil and the mileage was terrible, but it got me around.

Today in IT, and just like with new cars, if we look under the hood we are confronted with something very different: mass complexity. Worse still, some of it we can’t see. So even if we want to do some "tech mechanics," we can’t because we’ve lost our essential tools: visibility and control. It’s no wonder then that just like with new and advanced cars, we feel less inclined to lift the IT hood. Think about it: how many times have you looked under the hood on the car you now drive? Once, twice, ever?…

Grazed from PRNewsWire. Author: PR Announcement.

Open Data Center Alliance (ODCA), the organization where members work together to advance the deployment of enterprise cloud solutions and services that are interoperable, secure and free of vendor lock-in, today announced that representatives from global IT leaders Infosys and SAP are the newest members of the ODCA Steering Committee and have joined the ODCA Board of Directors. Senior executives from Infosys and SAP join ODCA board members from BMW, Capgemini, China Unicom, Lockheed Martin, Marriott International, Inc., NAB, NTT Data, T-Systems, UBS, Verizon Terremark and The Walt Disney Company in driving the strategic direction and output of ODCA on a global basis.

"The expansion of the leadership team marks the significant momentum ODCA is experiencing in global markets and comes as enterprises worldwide increasingly rely on ODCA usage models and requirements for easing and speeding the migration of data center IT operations to the cloud," said Mario Mueller, ODCA chair and VP of IT Infrastructure at BMW…