Author: David

Grazed from CMSWire.  Author: Marisa Peacock.

We may as well admit it, cloud computing has been changing our lives for some time now. When was the last time you didn’t save something to iCloud, Dropbox, Google Drive or Box? Most, if not all of your information lives somewhere in the ether. Hard drives may come and go, but thanks to the cloud, your life can go on, practically unscathed.

However, if you’re thinking that the cloud is a relatively new phenomenon, think again. Recently, Symantec released an interactive timeline that illustrates the history of cloud computing — highlighting just how far we’ve come…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: Roger A. Grimes.

Whether or not you liked former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, you had to chuckle over his famous "unknown unknowns" quote: There are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns — the ones we don’t know we don’t know. Although Rumsfeld was ridiculed for that statement, it was a case of a politician accidentally telling the truth, and I think anyone in computer security quickly understood what he was talking about.

We are constantly faced with all three types of risks: known knowns, known unknowns, and unknown unknowns. One of the biggest impediments to public cloud computing adoption is the calculation of additional risk from all the unknowns, known and otherwise. I’ve spent the last few years contemplating these issues as both a public cloud provider and user. Here’s a list of five risks any business faces as a customer of a public cloud service…

Grazed from Scoop.nz. Author: PR Announcement.

The recent releases of the Privacy Commissioner’s cloud computing guide and the New Zealand cloud code are welcome additions to assist businesses to navigate their way through a landscape many are still unfamiliar with. Cloud computing is a burgeoning industry and where in only the recent past this technology might have been viewed as niche or risky, it is now forming an integral part of daily business operations.

Just last month, a recent Gartner survey of 2000 CIOs globally ranked cloud computing as third on their top 10 technology priorities (http://www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/2304615). Bruce Aylward, CEO of leading edge Cloud software provider Psoda, says the reasons for the explosion in Cloud computing businesses and software worldwide come back to the basic issues of transparency, efficiency and cost…

Based on its recent analysis of the cloud monitoring solutions market, Frost & Sullivan recognizes CopperEgg Corporation with the 2013 North America Frost & Sullivan Award for New Product Innovation. Unlike competing solutions that mainly focus on monitoring a particular domain, CopperEgg’s advanced comprehensive monitoring solution is unified across servers, applications and websites on a single SaaS platform, creating a huge draw among consumers. CopperEgg’s monitoring solution’s three main modules, server monitoring, website monitoring, and application metric monitoring, can be used in combination for a complete monitoring solution as well as in isolation for specific services.

CopperEgg server monitoring and website application monitoring track performance from inside the server and outside from the end user’s perspective. CopperEgg also monitors custom metrics from Web servers, databases, and the client’s own application performance metrics and displays the data in custom dashboards using a broad array of widgets delivered with the monitoring solution.

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

AVG CloudCare, an antivirus and security management console for SMBs, continues to expand its portfolio of services for VARs and MSPs. The latest offering features a commercial edition of AVG Remote IT and AVG Email Security Services. AVG CloudCare is the free cloud-based administration platform with "pay-as-you-go" services for channel partners and their end customers. More than 1,000 partners use the platform, which launched in October 2012.

In some ways, the AVG strategy resembles that of GFI Software, which develops the GFI Max cloud portfolio for MSPs. Admittedly, the market for cloud-based security services is saturated with rival offerings. But AVG has been busy extending and expanding its own suite of cloud services for partners. The AVG suite now supports:…

Grazed from Business2Community. Author: Lyndsey Nelson.

It’s not just about cutting costs, cloud computing can also help your employee’s productivity and collaboration levels, even if they’re in pajamas. Now I know we all heard about Marissa Mayer’s recent ban on Yahoo employees working from home, but she had the data to support her choice. Please don’t take my comment as accordance with her decision, I firmly believe providing employees the opportunity to work at home is an essential policy companies should have.

However, if you’re concerned about eventually experiencing Yahoo’s low productivity levels, don’t fret too much. If you invest in cloud computing platform for your business and equip your employees with the right applications, you will never encounter the mess Mayer had to clean up. So What Is Cloud Computing Collaboration? Before I launch into the benefits, some of the ways you can use cloud computing for collaboration identified by BizAnytime.com are:…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Joe Panettieri.

AppNeta, which offers a cloud-based IT performance management platform, has raised $16 million in Series C funding. The company’s core goal under CEO Jim Melvin: Empowering partners and customers to monitor end-user experience, network performance and application performance.

AppNeta’s revenues have grown 150 percent in the past year — though the company has not disclosed actual figures. AppNeta’s channel program now includes 400 partners that support cloud services for end-customers. The company claims its cloud platform supports:…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Do you want to get more visibility into how your customers’ end-users are interacting with Salesforce Cloud? A new tool from Knoa Software might be able to help with that. The company launched Knoa Experience and Performance Management (EPM) for Salesforce Sales Cloud and Salesforce Services Cloud, bringing its network, hardware and infrastructure performance management product to the Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) realm.

According to Knoa, EPM provides "a clear view of how users actually interact with the Salesforce Cloud applications," which should provide some insight into how they’re using Salesforce and perhaps give IT administrators or channel partners some idea of how to fine-tune apps or tweak environments to improve performance and apps usage…

Grazed from Foreign Policy. Author: John Reed.

Web commerce giant Amazon is apparently building a cloud-computing network for the CIA. Trade publication Federal Computer Week has reported that the agency will pay the online retail pioneer up to $600 million to develop its own private cloud over the next decade.

This would make plenty of sense. Amazon is well-known for providing cloud-computing services to the private sector, and government agencies dealing with classified information are pushing to adopt cloud services as a way of consolidating thousands of network "enclaves" that are hard to defend. The Pentagon, for example, is building what it says will be a defendable, upgradable network, known as the Joint Information Environment…

Grazed from MarketResearch.com. Author: Editorial Staff.

MarketResearch.com announces publication of "Global Infrastructure: Cloud Computing Insights," a whitepaper that takes a dive deep inside the ever-changing world of the cloud computing industry. "Global Infrastructure: Cloud Computing Insights" is a unique addition to contemporary business How-To literature. In clear, engaging detail, it explores the breadth of capabilities inherent in cloud computing and how a company can integrate them into their business strategy and infrastructure.

With the increase in the number of SmartCloud solutions, the trend is moving toward pay-per-use content delivery. Companies are now in a better position for mining Big Data analytics from electronic devices. From cloud-gaming to mobile platforms, the landscape is wide open and full of growth potential. This whitepaper will provide perspective on the enormous growth potential made possible through cloud computing…