Author: David

Grazed from WSJ.  Author: Michael Hickens.

CIOs are beginning — some would say finally — to use cloud computing as a strategic tool. The ability to rent computing and storage capacity as needs arise, as well as applications that can be used to manage sales accounts, deploy field technicians, or just about any other function, gives CIOs the ability to help their organizations seize new market opportunities without making huge up-front investments. Greg Buoncontri, CIO of Pitney Bowes, is using cloud-based systems to insulate the company from a recessionary environment he saw looming in Europe. The systems are intended to lower costs while putting the company in the position to move quickly when the opportunity presents itself.  “For a period of protracted lower growth, you want to make sure your processes are streamlined,” he told CIO Journal in an interview Thursday.

Cloud-based applications don’t offer every feature, and certainly can’t be customized as much, as software installed on corporate-owned servers. But as Google CIO Ben Fried said at a Bloomberg technology conference Thursday, “as a CIO, you have to figure out what is really important to you.”…

Grazed from Thomson Reuters.  Author: Leigh Jones.

Attorney ethics authorities are scrambling to keep pace with the technology of cloud computing, a method for storing volumes of client documents that can be cost-effective to use but vulnerable to hacking.

Bar associations in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Iowa recently issued guidelines for lawyers who use the cloud, and the American Bar Association is considering a proposal to modify its model ethics rules to address cloud computing. Dozens of bar groups across the country are training attorneys on how to use the cloud without tripping over their ethical duty to maintain client confidentiality…

Grazed from The Calgary Herald.  Author: Gadjo Cardenas Sevilla.

Today’s PC makers like Asus, Acer, Apple, Lenovo, Samsung and others understand the value of an ecosystem held together by cloud computing.  Many of these PC makers sell desktops, notebooks and mobile devices but they need their cloud component to hold it all together and build brand loyalty.

Cloud components consist of online storage and synching applications that are accessed and shared across devices.  Well-implemented cloud strategies ensure that users have access to their important documents, photos and music a at any time. These services also serve as backup systems and even add to the security of the devices connected on the network…

Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Robert J. Mullins.

Citrix is launching what it calls Project Avalon to take its virtualization and cloud computing platforms to the next level by delivering a Microsoft Windows desktop and all its related applications as a cloud service.

Citrix provided details about Project Avalon along with other new product introductions and upgrades at the Citrix Synergy 2012 conference here this week. The company also touted product enhancements that are the fruits of recent acquisitions.

Project Avalon is the latest in Citrix’s strategy—as also espoused by multiple technology companies of late—of delivering technology to workers wirelessly, on a wide range of devices, often the employee’s personal devices, across multiple form factors and operating systems…

Grazed from CBR.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Majority of enterprises or 84% across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) consider cloud computing to be a priority and 56% consider it a critical priority over the next 18 months, according to a latest study by VMware.

Nearly 31% of IT budgets in EMEA region are spent on cloud computing, up from 26% in 2010, as organisations look to empower a more agile, productive and connected enterprise.

The findings from its Global Cloud Adoption Study of IT leaders revealed respondents plan to spend almost one-third of their annual enterprise IT budget on cloud computing over the next 18 months…

Grazed from CPA Practice Advisor.  Author: Isaac M. O’Bannon.

Grazed from Computer World.  Author: Patrick Thibodeau.

Grazed from WSJ.  Author: Steve Rosenbush.

The economics of cloud computing are driving down the cost structure of business so far and so fast that it’s scary, Google CIO Ben Fried says.

“It deeply disturbed me … in 2006, 2007 consumer companies were forcing efficiencies on a scale never seen before,” Fried said Thursday during remarks at the Bloomberg Link Enterprise Technology Summit in New York.

At the time, Fried was working in the technology group at investment bank Morgan Stanley, where he was a managing director of application infrastructure, in charge of software development, electronic commerce and knowledge worker productivity. In 2008, he left the bank and headed to Google, which was at the heart of the disruption that was emanating from the consumer market and beginning to spread through the business world…