Author: David

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: PR Announcement.

RBA, a Minneapolis-based technology firm and a Microsoft Partner, is deploying Microsoft’s cloud-based Office 365 more and more for businesses looking to capitalize on the cloud’s efficiency. Cloud technology, an unproven concept until recently, has become commonplace in the modern information technology landscape.

RBA employees are finding that their “Cloud Computing 101” conversations with potential customers now frequently begin at a much higher knowledge level.

“It’s definitely settled more into, ‘I’m understanding the technology, it’s been proven and now I’m ready to think it through for my organization,’ ” said Karl Populorum, RBA’s vice president of sales and marketing…

Grazed from Network Computing.  Author: Steve Wexler.

EMC has kicked off its customer and partner event with 42 product announcements across its storage, backup, virtualization and management portfolio, and a major push into cloud computing. Along with the usual storage and backup rollouts, the world’s largest storage vendor says it’s accelerating the journey to cloud management by helping IT departments store, manage, protect and analyze information in a more agile, trusted and cost-efficient way.

Running this week in Las Vegas, EMC World is playing host to more than 13,000 customers and partners, who were introduced to a new suite of enhancements to the Atmos Cloud platform. According to the company, the changes transform the way service providers and enterprises manage big data in large, globally distributed cloud storage environments. EMC also announced new Atmos Cloud Accelerators, and the DataBridge infrastructure management tool…

Grazed from Computer Technology Review.  Author:  Tom Leyden.

At the NAB 2012 show last month, the storage industry was more visible than ever, and the buzzword emerging from the event was ‘object storage.’ The term is inextricably tied to storage clouds and certain kinds of Big Data applications. And it’s becoming increasingly relevant for private clouds as well as for service providers.

The cloud industry has been on steroids lately – moving from adoption of virtualization to more cloud-friendly architectures with the hypervisor support, control panels and Web services-based interfaces that are increasingly the norm. Industry analysts agree that cloud computing will continue to stimulate the astronomical growth in storage requirements…

Grazed from Wired.  Author: Jacques Pavyenli.

IBM and many others have been extolling the real business benefits of Enterprise 2.0, or more recently, social business, for several years: improving customer engagement; increasing workforce productivity; and speeding and improving product and service innovation. Lately, though, I and my colleagues have seen social business adoption move from “nice to have” to a strategic imperative. There are three intertwined trends that seem to be supercharging social business adoption:

The growth of social networks for business. Social networking account for 22% of all time spent online. Real business is taking place today in public and private social networks. It has moved far beyond using LinkedIn for recruiting, or Facebook for consumer marketing outreach. The benefits accrue quickly from being able to communicate and collaborate easily with extended networks of employees, partners, customers, across internal and external social networks…

Say you’ve got an application that’s been running in-house but is now nearing end of life. You find a cloud service that can achieve the same result. You evaluate the vendor’s infrastructure and security mechanisms, processes and procedures and determine that they’re sufficient to meet your needs. You’re looking forward to outsourcing this to the cloud and relieving yourself of all the associated responsibilities. It’s all smooth sailing ahead, right?.

Maybe, but unfortunately, there’s one more thing: You can’t outsource your compliance obligations to a cloud vendor.

If you move a function to the cloud that’s governed by legal or regulatory requirements and later your company falls out of compliance due to an error on the cloud vendor’s part, the law won’t go after the vendor – it will come after you. So you need to ensure that the cloud vendor can fully comply on your behalf…

Grazed from Information Management.  Author: Mark A. Smith.

The company’s new leader in cloud computing is Lars Dalgaard, previously CEO of SuccessFactors and now part of the executive board of SAP. I assessed SAP’s acquisition of SuccessFactors when it occurred. As part of the combined organization, SuccessFactors continues to conduct semi-independent in marketing, sales and product development, but now it has more applications and people that were part of SAP’s cloud computing efforts. SAP unveiled its global payroll software, which is now part of its Employee Central suite, and both of these can operate as software as a service in the cloud.

The company boasted about its 200-person localization team deployed around the world to bolster international efforts. SAP is making progress on expanding its portfolio, including its human capital management applications. Many companies that use SAP HR applications on-premises should look at SuccessFactors for the future, since its software leaps past the older SAP software in many capabilities, including usability and capability…

Grazed from PRNewsWire.  Author: PR Announcement.

At EMC World 2012, EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) today introduced its largest-ever wave of new transformative products and technologies–42 in total. Today’s announcements mark the company’s most significant single-day launch of new capabilities for customers and partners, delivering a sweeping refresh that spans key products across its entire information storage, backup, virtualization and management portfolio. As a result, EMC is taking IT efficiency and agility to new levels within both traditional and virtualized data centers.  Through its market-leading and enhanced information infrastructure portfolio, the company is making it easier for customers to more quickly take advantage of the shift to Hybrid Cloud computing with data at its core, and implement the changes needed as they transform their IT, their business and their talent base…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Robert J. Mullins.

As the Open Source Business Conference gets underway in San Francisco, a survey shows that open-source software is contributing to development in some of the top IT trends of the day.

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Appcore, an Infrastructure-as-a-Service company, today announced their partnership with IP-Converge, a telecommunications and IT provider and data center facility operator in the Philippines, to deliver cloud hosting services in the region.

The solution chosen for deployment was Appcore Onsite(TM), an IaaS solution which incorporates hardware, software, networking and support into a single cloud computing on-site platform. Appcore Onsite’s easy-to-use software modules include Launch to Cloud(TM), a one-step process which enables users to provision servers in five minutes and select from a comprehensive store of applications…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

The Financial Executives Research Foundation (FERF) and Intacct today announced the availability of a new cloud computing research report, titled: "Building the Business Case for Cloud Computing." FERF, the research affiliate of Financial Executives International (FEI), the leading advocate for the views of corporate financial management, conducted all the research behind the report – including interviewing CFOs from a diverse array of industries. The announcement was made from the 2012 FEI Leadership Summit, taking place this week in Orlando, Florida.

 

The new FERF report takes a broad look at the motivations for choosing a cloud-based system, the tangible benefits of the cloud, and the impact of cloud computing in transforming the finance function. William Sinnett, senior director of research for FERF, conducted a series of interviews with CFOs and included their commentary and profiles on their use of cloud computing in the report…