Author: David

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Sean Ludwig.

Platform-as-a-Service is part of the booming cloud computing sector, one area of the cloud that some analysts, companies, and developers have overlooked. But recent research shows that PaaS is no longer the ugly duckling of the cloud industry — and that it’s ready to grow quite a bit during the next few years. PaaS will make up barely 1 percent of the overall $109 billion cloud industry this year. But it will likely grow more than 30 percent annually over the next four years, according to research firm Gartner.

This could make PaaS a $2.9 billion market by 2016, or more than 2 percent of the $209 billion total cloud market. While small, it’s the second fastest growing “layer” of the cloud and one that cloud-watchers should be paying closer attention to…

Grazed from InsiderMonkey. Author: Marshall Hargrave.

We believe that a continued rapid consumption of network capacity, driven by a rising use of tablets and smartphones, will propel companies operating in the cloud computing and wireless network optimization space. In the interim, these companies are seeing a slowdown due to uncertainty in the economy, which has led to IT budget cuts. It appears that several funds are making moves into the cloud computing space in preparation for a future shift in enterprise technology that includes data center consolidation and virtualization. The five companies below are some of the top ways to play cloud computing—and include shareholders such as Jim Simons, D.E. Shaw, Steven Cohen and Ken Griffin.

The traditional data networking company, Cisco Systems, Inc. (NASDAQ:CSCO), is in competition with server and computing players for market share in the cloud computing and wireless area network optimization—see our other thoughts on Cisco. Cisco, being a $100 billion market cap company, has attracted some big name interest, including Ken Fisher and D.E. Shaw. Also, as of 2Q, Cisco was an Edinburgh Partners’ Top Pick and saw five funds with over 5% of their 13F portfolio invested in Cisco—see all funds owning Cisco. There have been a round of insider sales of late around $19, which is where the company currently trades. With Cisco’s initiative to focus on data storage partnerships versus acquisitions, the company is expected to grow EPS by only 7.7% next year…

Grazed from CloudPro. Author: Davey Winder.

The Cloud Market Maturity study, a joint effort between the Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) and ISACA, has revealed the major areas where confidence in the cloud is lowest across users in 50 countries. The third biggest concern was international data privacy, followed by legal issues, contractual lock-in and data ownership/custodial responsibility. That I have focused on points three to six in a top ten list is no accident.

For a start, the Corporate Cloud Computing Trends report from The451’s ChangeWave Research, apart from being a mouthful also surveyed more than a thousand business folk and discovered that the most popular use of public cloud services was in the software as a service (SaaS) sector,which should really come as no great surprise, yet it’s exactly this kind of public cloud service usage that could cause problems of across-borders data privacy, legal issues and data ownership…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Derrick Harris.

Seville, Spain-based startup Besol is trying to take on companies like RightScale with a new cloud-management platform called Tapp. The company is currently honing its skills providing management interfaces for European telcos’ cloud offerings, and will start a push into North America in 2013.

It’s a crowded market for companies trying to make a living by adding a uniform management layer over multiple cloud-computing offerings, but Seville, Spain-based startup Besol thinks there’s room for one more. With its flagship product offering, called Tapp, the company — which is presenting at our Structure: Europe Launchpad competition next week — thinks it can compete globally with established players such as RightScale, enStratus and Scalr by making it easy for small and mid-sized enterprises to get started with the cloud…

Grazed from MyDigitalFC. Author: Varun Dutt.

Cloud computing has had a sweeping affect across the IT realm in recent years but there has been hardly any clarity on what it actually is. According to Jonathan Stri­ckland of How Stuff Works? Cloud computing is the use of computing resources that are delivered as a service over a network (typically the internet). End users access cloud-based applications through a web browser or a desktop or mobile app while the business software and user’s data are stored on servers at a remote location. It allows enterprises to get their applications up and running faster, with improved manageability and less maintenance, and enables IT to rapidly adjust res­ources to meet uncertain business demand.

Strickland argues that buying computers for everyone in an organisation can be costly in terms of both the hardware and software but cloud computing provides an impressive alternative: Instead of installing a suite of software for each computer, one just needs to load one application which would allow workers to log into a web-based service hosting all the programs…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

KANA Software, Inc., a global leader in customer service solutions delivered on-premise or in the cloud used by more than 900 organizations worldwide, including half of the Global 100 and 250 government entities around the globe, today introduced Lagan Express, a knowledge-centric multi-channel cloud customer service solution delivered via the Software as a Service (SaaS) model to meet the constituent service needs of mid-market public sector organizations, here at the 98th Annual Conference of the International City/County Management Association in Phoenix, Ariz.

Lagan Express provides a complete suite of integrated multi-channel contact and knowledge management capabilities to support improved customer service quality, accuracy and response times. A single, integrated platform ensuring consistent customer service across all channels including phone, email, chat, web self-service, virtual assistant and social media, Lagan Express unifies customer contact records and knowledge resources and automatically delivers contextual help and information when and where it is needed…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

Many organizations are still in the early stages of their cloud computing journeys, and the reports are: so far, so good. No major flaws or “gotchas” have emerged in nascent cloud engagements, and CIOs are saying full steam ahead. Still needed, however, are more security assurances, and more vendor flexibility.

That’s the key takeaway from a new report just published by Navint Partners, LLC, which finds large companies are seeing mainly positive results from their cloud computing efforts. The consulting company convened a roundtable with 20 CIOs from Fortune 500 companies to discuss their progress and concerns about cloud computing. Nine out of 10 respondents, for example, say they have received 100% of the savings they expected from their cloud computing projects. In addition, four out of five say their cloud efforts have helped their organizations achieve some sort of competitive advantage, and two-thirds say cloud has helped their organization’s efficiency and effectiveness…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

InfoStreet Inc., Cloud Computing pioneer and provider of Cloud Apps, is being featured in Merrill R. Chapman’s newly published book, "SaaS Entrepreneur, the Definitive Guide to Success in Your Cloud Application Business." The new book features an interview with InfoStreet’s CEO, Siamak Farah, and focuses on his knowledge of the Channel Partners market in the chapter titled SaaS Entrepreneur Case Study InfoStreet: An Interview with Siamak Farah.

"The principal reason I profiled Siamak and InfoStreet in ‘SaaS Entrepreneur: The Definitive Guide to Succeeding in Your Cloud Application Business’ is that when Softletter first began its SaaS University series in 2007, I turned to Siamak to present and explain the role of resellers and channels in SaaS," Chapman said. "Siamak has tremendous experience in the area and can talk knowledgeably about channels in SaaS from aggregators to OEMs. Since that first session in Santa Clara, Siamak has attended other SaaS University in venues such as Boston and Denver and lectured on ongoing developments in SaaS channels. When I began work on the ‘Channels’ chapter in SaaS Entrepreneur, he was one of my principle resources. InfoStreet’s development of its SkyDesktop aggregator marketplace concept is part of the ongoing development of SaaS channels and we’ll be hearing more about it."…

Grazed from CloudTweaks. Author: Luchi Gabriel Manescu.

The increased security risk of having your files and programs on someone else’s server is one of the main reasons why so few people and businesses are making the move to cloud computing. And while hackers serve an essential role of showing programmers the fragile spots in their security systems, it is never a good feeling when they do so by accessing your data.

Still, truth be told, many times hackers do not need to crack the security systems of cloud servers,—those are very well protected and have a team of experts keeping an eye on them 24/7—instead they will go for the weak links that the users themselves create. So here are three essential security concepts that you need to keep in mind whenever accessing your cloud data…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Larry Dignan.

Appirio on Monday said it will acquire Knowledge Infusion in a deal aimed at implementing cloud-based human capital management software at a broader scale. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The news, which should be good for companies like Workday and Salesforce, will create an organization with 600 consultants. Appirio has specialized in cloud and software as a service deployments. Knowledge Infusion has primarily focused on the HCM market. Systems integrators such as Accenture, Deloitte and others have been rapidly building up cloud computing practices. Appirio and Knowledge Infusion both would have had to bulk up to compete…