Author: David

Grazed from New York Times. Author: Quentin Hardy.

Two of the buzziest competitors in cloud computing are settling into coexistence — and maybe figuring out ways to take on the giant in the market, Amazon.com.
Aaron Levie, the chief executive of Box.David Paul Morris/Bloomberg NewsAaron Levie, the chief executive of Box.

The online data storage company Box announced on Tuesday that it was getting $125 million in new financing, which the company’s chief executive, Aaron Levie, says will be used to expand internationally and invest in consultants for big corporate clients. General Atlantic, a large private equity firm, is contributing $100 million of the investment. Gary Reiner, the former chief information officer of General Electric and now an operating partner with General Atlantic, will join Box’s board. Mr. Reiner is also on the board of Hewlett-Packard…

Grazed from Wall Street Journal. Author: Editorial Staff.

A computing lighthouse for over two decades, the Midwest-based KiZAN is a proven business solutions integrator and trusted Microsoft partner. Robert Steele, KiZAN’s co-chair and managing partner, says 95 percent of the information technology solutions offered by the company and chosen by its clients, come from Microsoft.

No wonder, then, that KiZAN is positioned to ride the cloud computing wave.

“Our cloud business has grown from basically having no cloud practice to being one of our main offerings when we talk to customers about solutions,” said Bill Rieger, KiZAN’s principal go-to-market architect…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Jamie Brenzel.

In the first quarter of 2012, FEMA reported 12 natural disasters throughout the country, including tornadoes, flooding, mudslides and severe storms from Florida to Alaska. The threats to your data are limitless – natural disasters, fires, water damage, equipment theft and hardware failure to name just a few. In the event of a disaster, if you don’t have access to an offsite copy of your data, or if you are unable to replicate it, the chances are it will be gone forever.

Deciding on the Right Provider Should Be No Different Than Buying a Car
Many businesses are opting to move their data to the cloud, citing benefits in time savings/automation, cost, security and access; however, some SMBs still maintain reservations about keeping their valuable data offsite and beyond their control. A recent Information Week Report indicated that only 23 percent of business technology professionals use cloud computing services as part of their application and data recovery strategies. Many others are confused by the number of online cloud backup companies and "free storage" offerings that are flooding the market; while others are concerned about those data storage companies who have proven to be "fly-by-night" entities that are here today, gone tomorrow…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Pete Chadwick.

Agility, flexibility and customization. They’re the “big three” buzzwords companies cite to justify their investments in cloud computing. But while today’s leading cloud players have the best technological interests in mind, financial interests are prohibiting them from delivering an open environment for cloud computing.

Open source, particularly Linux, has based itself upon these three benefits since its inception. And after 20 years of Linux success, we’re at a historical inflection point when openness is not only accepted, it is demanded. First the operating system and then virtualized environments – where in each case, after an initial wave of proprietary options came an emergence – and then acceptance – of open source solutions. And now, history is repeating itself yet again with cloud computing, as projects like OpenStack, a community software project to build private and public clouds, have burst out this year with the backing of thousands of developers and technological minds. OpenStack now has the support of over 180 public and private organizations worldwide…

Grazed from TechInAsia. Author: C. Custer.

Baidu and Sina, two of China’s biggest internet powerhouses, are teaming up again to work on mobile projects that will apparently include “search, content, platforms, technology, and resources” cooperation, although exactly what forms that all will take is not yet clear. At present, Sina has already integrated Baidu’s search function into its Sina mobile sites, with Baidu aiding in optimization. At the same time, Baidu has added Sina Weibo integration to its own cloud computing services.

We’ve gotten in touch with Baidu to ask for more details on exactly how this collaboration will work, and will update this post when we hear back…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Joe McKendrick.

For small to mid-size businesses, the cloud represents opportunities to level the playing field with larger companies with tremendous IT assets. Cloud computing is a natural solution for smaller businesses that can’t make the investments in rooms full of servers, development teams, and data center infrastructure.

Are SMBs jumping on the opportunity yet? Two recent surveys suggest they are embracing cloud for both end-user applications at a rapid clip. And they love the productivity potential cloud-based applications offer. But it’s still uncertain how deeply they are employing cloud solutions for more enterprisey applications.

In a survey of 323 SMBs just released by Spiceworks, a social business site, and sponsored by storage management vendor EMC, 62% report they are using some type of cloud application, up from 48% at the beginning of the year and 28% a year ago. Most of this growth is coming in online file-sharing services (such as Dropbox), but haven’t moved into online productivity offerings in a big way just yet…

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Apple has quietly offered to buy publicly held AuthenTec Inc for roughly $356 million, according to an SEC filing discovered last Friday.

Fourteen-year-old AuthenTec does sensor-based fingerprint authentication, encryption and identity management for mobile devices.

Two weeks ago AuthenTec signed up Samsung, which Apple is suing for patent infringement, to use its VPN widgetry in its new Android-based Galaxy smartphones and tablets. There was speculation the alliance provoked Apple to act…

Grazed from TalkinCloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Hadoop is one of those hot topics in cloud computing right now, and if industry experts are to be believed, there will be a huge channel opportunity in Hadoop going forward — particularly related to big data in the cloud. Now, Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HP) and Cloudera are partnering to simplify the management of Hadoop Cluster environments while also speeding up deployments.

The two companies plan to jointly develop a set of open standards-based reference architectures for simplifying management and accelerating deployment of Hadoop Cluster environments. That should come in handy for Cloudera and HP partners that are helping customers deal with Big Data in the cloud using Hadoop. With the growth and adoption on an upward curve, the channel can use tools that make it easier to get Hadoop solutions up and running faster and with minimal fuss.

Under the terms of the agreement, Cloudera Enterprise and future products from Cloudera will be available from HP or bundled in HP AppSystem for Apache Hadoop…

Grazed from RestaurantNews.com. Author: PR Announcement.

ManageXpress, a cloud computing business enterprise that includes the following modules: accounting, sales, inventory, help desk, hotel and a restaurant, all fully integrated.

The restaurant system supports most types of sales such as walk-in, catering, room service, airline catering and more. It is fully integrated with other optional modules: accounting, customers, vendors, inventory, hotel management module and help desk.

All restaurant sales will be automatically recorded in the daily general ledger. Your balance sheet and income statement will be ready to be generated on a daily basis…