Author: David

When Apple Inc kicks off its annual conference for software developers on Monday, all the power players in the Apple universe will be on hand, save the one that is in many ways driving the agenda: Google Inc.

More than ever, the consumer electronics juggernaut finds itself in a pitched battle with the online search giant – in smartphones, cloud computing and the never-ending competition for the hearts and minds of the best software developers.

Apple on Monday is expected to announce its own mapping application, challenging the position of Google Maps as one of the most-valued features on the iPhone. It will unveil closer integration of its iPhone apps and iCloud storage service with all its devices, the latest riposte in its battle with Google’s Android smartphone software…

These are important questions to consider. Chrome OS, after all, is a platform built around the Web. But whether it’s on a plane or while visiting Uncle Jed’s country cottage, we all encounter times when Internet access isn’t available.

I haven’t seen Uncle Jed lately, but as part of my two-week Chrome OS experiment, I wanted to see how Google’s newly refreshed cloud platform really performed offline. So I took a deep breath, hyperventilated a little, and shut off the Wi-Fi and 3G on my Chromebook for a few hours…

The Blytheco-NetSuite team will bring scalability and reliability to midsize businesses utilizing Blytheco’s proven delivery platform with NetSuite’s dependable cloud computing solution. Blytheco CEO Stephen Blythe notes that the convenience of a fully-integrated business application suite paired with a cloud computing service is a step forward in simplifying the daily tasks of maintenance and troubleshooting that consume such a large number of IT hours. IT payroll expenses can be dramatically reduced through cloud computing, as Blytheco will take responsibility for data storage and protection…

The increased rate of uptake of the cloud is confirmed by the high revenue generated from cloud computing, which is reported to have increased by 15 percent in the last quarter of 2011, compared to 2010. A summary of the key figures from the 2011 research study were published in a news report by Codestone Cloud…

Bayan’s chief-operating-officer Rafael Aguado described their company’s tie up with DataOne as another bold step by Bayan to provide its customers with effective, relevant and affordable business solutions.

"We have chosen to partner with DataOne for the roll out of our cloud services because of our shared mission to deliver to our customers and clients the best enterprise cloud services solution there is today," Aguado said…

The new cloud-based service enables clients to deploy private, public and managed clouds in a traditional information technology atmosphere, helps address the business needs of several existing and prospective clients and is compatible with all the latest technologies used by various companies.

The new offering from the technology major is expected to help the airline industry to develop an integrated platform for airline reservations and travel. Moreover, the “Cloud bursting” capabilities help external clients to access the blocks of external cloud capacity through the HP Cloud System, Amazon Web Services and Savvis. It is also expected to help in arranging new tools to manage technology across various cloud environments. The new offering includes a printing system that enables driverless printing from mobile devices…

Cloud security provider Qualys Inc filed with U.S. regulators to raise up to $100 million in an initial public offering of its common stock.

The company, which provides a cloud computing based platform for companies to secure their IT infrastructure, said it plans to list under the symbol "QLYS", but did not say on which exchange.

Qualys is backed by chief executive Philippe Courtot, who owns about 40 percent of the company, and venture capital firm Trident Capital, which has a 27.4 percent stake…

One of Amazon’s secret weapons is its attitude to profit margins, where it is happy to undercut its cloud computing competitors.

This combines with its economies of scale to make life very difficult for any of its potential competitors, be they small and nimble or large and rich.

When Amazon adds capacity, it has to buy hard drives by the shipping crate and servers by the rackload, according to Carl Brooks, an infrastructure and cloud computing analyst at Tier 1 research. And the low prices that Amazon can command for its equipment due to its size could make it difficult for competitors unless they are well funded and content with entering into a price war.

"[Amazon’s] margins for selling compute and storage are absurd," Brooks says. He notes that a basic EC2 unit — the workhorse of the AWS cloud — is around one half of one modern CPU (a single EC2 unit is roughly equivalent to a 1.0-1.2GHz AMD Opteron or Intel Xeon processor from 2007, according to Amazon)…