Author: David

Grazed from Wired. Author: Zvi Guterman.

Cloud computing has enabled companies to realize new levels of infrastructure scalability and efficiency. Beginning with Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), which provides access to generic components for complex infrastructures, cloud computing then graduated to Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS), which makes available pre-packaged environments for specific use cases that still require IT skill and expertise plus changes to internal processes.

These evolutionary steps in cloud computing have enabled an explosion of new use cases for the cloud throughout the enterprise. As more business users began tapping cloud-based resources for a wider range of use cases, however, demands on cloud computing have revealed a gap between the availability of these resources and the ability to manage them…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Jordan Novet.

Like other industries, call centers and their contact-center relatives have been looking more to cloud computing and relying less on on-premise gear. One of the beneficiaries of that trend is Five9, which makes software for call- and contact-center employees that runs on Five9 servers in colocation facilities.

Five9 was founded in 2001 “as a pure-play Software as a Service (SaaS) back in the ASP (application service provider) day,” said Mike Burkland, the president and CEO. Over the years, the San Ramon, Calif.-based company has moved from doing business mainly with small and medium-sized businesses to large companies, too. It claims more than 1,800 customers…

Grazed from DataCenter Knowledge. Author: Jason Verge.

Cisco is acquiring JouleX, a provider of enterprise IT energy management for data center assets, for approximately $107 million. The acquisition enhances Cisco’s software-as-a-service offerings with energy management, fitting particularly well with Cisco EnergyWise. The acquisition is expected to be complete in the fourth quarter of this year.

Joulex developed an agentless system that detects devices on IP networks and tracks their power use. The combined solution will provide customers with a way to measure, monitor and manage energy usage for network and IT systems without the need for device side agents, hardware meters or network configurations. It uses capabilities of the network to gain visibility into and control of energy usage across global IT environments. JouleX previously raised $17 million back in 2011…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: James Sterling.

Business intelligence (BI) and analytics company Information Builders has launched a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering to help customers benefit from the flexibility of the cloud while using its products. Dubbed Cloud Hosting Services, the offering includes over 10 datacentres, which according to Information Builders span every geographic region.

The organisation claims it is tapping into enterprises’ desire to take advantage of the flexibility and cost efficiencies offered by cloud computing by enabling companies to use its information management system on a public or private cloud platform…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Cloud software developers and ISVs look for ways to speed up their development and integration, and so the current trend is all about creating pre-built elements to accelerate that process. The latest entrant into this space is Cloud Elements, which is aiming to extend Cloud Foundry’s PaaS offering and help developers build apps on top of it.

The company’s pre-built "Elements" are intended to save developers and integrators hundreds of hours per engagement. They’re built as an extension to Cloud Foundry’s PaaS and enable developers to leverage the pre-built integrations to develop cloud apps faster. Cloud Elements offers a console developers can use to select, provision, monitor and maintain cloud service APIs integrations in much less time and with a much smaller budget, according to the company…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lyndsey LaManna.

While the benefits of cloud such as, improving data access, freeing up internal IT resources for more strategic tasks, cutting costs, and increasing flexibility, versatility, efficiency and economies of scale, are compelling – the risks make many businesses stray away from cloud computing. Perhaps the biggest concern with the cloud is the security of cloud infrastructure. Well naysayers, no need to fear, a reliable cloud security plan is here! NaviSite developed a tested and manageable process and checklist on how to develop a successful cloud computing security plan.

This plan is outlined in the whitepaper 7 Steps to Developing a Cloud Security Plan. According to Navisite, “In many cases the cloud provider can achieve better security results in a virtualized environment than enterprises can achieve internally.” However, even if you choose a cloud service provider with strong security capabilities, it’s important to take an active role in securing your data. Working together with the cloud provider is the best way to ensure the enterprise resources are protected and the cloud is being securely leveraged. So without further ado, here are 7 steps to a safer cloud:…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

It’s 2023, and you’re going to lunch with a former colleague in your new flying car. The two of you wonder, "Whatever happened to cloud computing?" As a buzzword, like buzzwords of the past, cloud computing will eventually be baked into all our technology and barely discussed as a concept. Cloud computing in 10 years will have gone off in various directions, all systemic to how we handle enterprise computing in the future. Here are just two paths:

In 10 years, pervasive cloud services will be the standard for assembling business solutions. We will leverage core services that either exist within our enterprise or from public cloud providers to assemble and reassemble business solutions. These services will be utility-based, perhaps primitive storage and compute or security and governance or more sophisticated business uses, such as market forecasting services…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Katelyn Roberts.

The cloud is quickly becoming a go-to resource for a variety of computing needs, thanks to the ablity to cut down on IT expenses while expanding your capabilities at the same time. Instead of increasing spending on hardware, storage solutions, bandwidth, and applications, virtualization through cloud computing continues to gain popularity. However, with its popularity lays the increased risk to protecting your company’s important information through increased exposure.

Increased Risk Brings a Change in Focus

With past conventional means of computing, a user on your company’s network would connect to your internal network to access information through a managed infrastructure. This network would have been normally protected by firewalls and software such anti-virus or anti-spam applications. The responsibility of protecting the network for the most part fell on the shoulders of the IT department…

Grazed from CRN. Author: Rick Whiting.

Lars Dalgaard, who has overseen SAP (NYSE:SAP)’s expanding cloud computing efforts since the company acquired SuccessFactors early last year, is leaving SAP following a reorganization of SAP’s research and development efforts.

SAP is creating a single development organization it said would put development operations under the direction of Vishal Sikka, a member of the SAP Executive Board and head of technology and innovation. Sikka has been highly visible at such events as SAP’s Sapphire Now conference earlier this month, where he touted the company’s HANA in-memory database technology…

Grazed from Business Insider. Author: Scott Maxwell.

Every expansion-stage SaaS company wants to dominate its market, but most founders don’t build and execute a market-dominating strategy. The problem is that they want to win the entire market so they don’t start by getting clear on the market targets that they want to dominate. Since they don’t have the right focus, they can’t build the right product or go-to-market strategy to dominate their market.

This post is all about narrowing your focus and aiming at the right customer segment(s). If you do this, you will have a much better chance of dominating your markets and becoming a great, large company!…