Author: David

Infinitely Virtual, a leading provider of virtual server cloud computing services for businesses, today announced it has added Microsoft’s SQL Server 2012 to its menu of servers from which customers can choose to meet their specific business needs.

In the first major upgrade since 2008, MS SQL Server 2012 introduces "Always On" data protection, and provides more rapid query performance and faster data discovery, among other key enhancements.

"Our customers are increasing their investments in the cloud and upgrades such as Microsoft SQL Server 2012 help us give them the most advanced hosting capability, with the latest enhancements in data management, business intelligence and protection," said Adam Stern, founder and CEO, Infinitely Virtual…

A San Francisco court has spent the past few weeks considering a copyright question that could weigh heavy on the future of cloud computing.

It’s part of a high-profile lawsuit between Oracle and Google. Oracle says that Google violated its copyrights and patents when it wrote its own version of Java for the Android mobile operating system. Part of what the court is trying to figure out this week is whether Google wronged Oracle by writing software that mimicked the Java Application Programming Interfaces (APIs are coding standards that let programs communicate with one another).

The conventional wisdom in the coder community has been that it’s fine to reproduce the interface of someone else’s APIs, so long as you don’t actually copy their software. So if the court finds that APIs are copyrightable, it could have major implications for any software that uses APIs without explicit permission — Linux for example. But it could affect things in the cloud, where there are several efforts to clone Amazon’s Web Services APIs…

Global Net Access (GNAX), a leading cloud computing and cloud storage provider will present its cloud computing and cloud storage solutions at Interop technology conference and expo in Las Vegas, Nevada. GNAX will be located in the Cloud & Virtualization Zone, booth 909.

"We are excited to return to Interop this year," explains GNAX Vice President of Marketing, Matt Mong. "Interop is a leading business technology event that enlightens attendees and helps drive adoption of innovative cloud solutions like ours."

Through in-depth educational programs, workshops, real-world demonstrations and live technology implementations in its unique InteropNet program, Interop provides the forum for the most powerful innovations and solutions the industry has to offer…

Midsize businesses are looking to specific IT investments to boost their businesses, and the larger the organization, the more likely it is to cite technology as having the greatest potential to increase productivity, according to the findings of a new survey of midmarket companies by Deloitte.

The study shows cloud computing emerging as an investment priority. When asked what types of investments companies were likely to make in technology, 40 of the respondents cited cloud computing. That’s close to automation of business processes (46 percent) and data analytics (41 percent).

“Interestingly, there seems to be a greater recognition of the benefits of cloud computing," the report stated. "In our September 2011 survey, it was recognized as a distant fourth as a means to increase productivity. In this survey, it nearly equaled data analytics and business intelligence in terms of likely investments.”…

While the rapid advance of technology continues to aid the North American airline industry, those same advancements are making timely and accurate communication challenging for some airlines. The pace of change is challenging the continual transmissions that occur during every flight such as relaying key modifications in flight plans or weather and airport updates.

Technology advancements often require the use of disparate or incompatible communication formats that don’t allow airlines to efficiently share information with key aviation agencies around the world. Xerox business cloud services are solving this problem by helping airlines share critical information, such as their flight plans and passenger details, with aviation agencies of destination countries. By blending its cloud capabilities with the data expertise of AvFinity, Xerox is allowing disparate communications systems to work seamlessly…

The benefits of cloud computing must be considered in light of some of the potential risks writes e.law founder Allison Stanfield.

Cloud computing  is rapidly emerging as the next big IT service for its pay-as-you-go model and is a key enabler for  all enterprises, but especially for small and medium enterprises as it makes available computing power on demand as a utility by drastically reducing investment in IT infrastructure. The growing shift to cloud computing can deliver significant value—but most enterprises have little knowledge of the perils of transferring IT decision making away from technology specialists to business unit leaders.

Eliminating oversight and governance from cloud computing decisions can create significant risk to organisations, effectively undermining any benefits of moving to the cloud and, at the same time, potentially creating serious issues for organisations. Before jumping into the bandwagon of the cloudy way, it is important to adapt examine how to use the cloud to create value for the enterprise…

Ultra Fast Broadband has the potential to convert New Zealanders from a purely downloading online lifestyle to full-hearted participation in the cloud, says InternetNZ CEO Vikram Kumar.

The bottleneck now represented by New Zealand’s restricted bandwidth will be dramatically cleared and there will be much more movement of data in the upward direction, particularly in the use of cloud services.

This makes it urgent to pay attention to the risks entailed in moving data to and from the cloud, he says…