Grazed from eWeek.  Author: Nathan Eddy.

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.”…

Grazed from The Miami Herald.  Author: PR Announcement.

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…

Grazed from IDM.com.  Author: Allison Stanfield.

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

Grazed from InformationWeek.  Author: A. Rafeq.

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…

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Stephen Bell.

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…
 

Grazed from Washington Post.  Author: Marjorie Censer.

Verizon and Terremark started as partners on a General Dynamics-led team to provide cloud computing services to the Army. By the time General Dynamics announced the award earlier this month, Verizon had bought Terremark, giving it a larger infrastructure as it pursues more cloud work.

The federal cloud computing environment has become ever more competitive as traditional government integrators and IT contractors go up against commercial providers shifting into government work.

Telecommunications companies are seeking a greater share, making acquisitions designed to boost their cloud computing credentials. Verizon, which has its federal office in Ashburn, bought Terremark — with a federal office in Herndon and a data center in Culpeper — last year in a roughly $1.4 billion deal…

Contributed Article.  Author: Greg Jones, Manager of Solutions Architecture at Quest Software

 

 

When you are moving to Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud offering, choosing the right migration tool to help you get there is very important. It’s a good idea to evaluate third-party migration products that provide the extended functionality, support, and the capabilities necessary to ensure success.

 

Every organization might not require help from a third-party vendor, but, it’s a best practice to calculate the benefits a migration partner might bring to your project and compare them to the needs of your organization. I must caution you, however, to choose your vendors wisely, and be absolutely sure you’re getting the functionality you need.  

Grazed from CTV.  Author: Vanessa Greco.

When virtual clouds first rolled in, there appeared to be little indication that a downpour of privacy concerns would follow.

Web surfers tossed photos into online albums, logged errands on digital calendars and sent work files to personal email accounts. To this day, we continue to fling tidbits of information across the web and into invisible storage lockers.

All this online data hoarding is known as "cloud computing," the process of using the Internet to ship files over to a remote server instead of just saving to a local piece of physical media, such as a hard drive…

Grazed from Bisiness Line.  Author: K. Bharat Kumar and Sachin Sancheti.

Big data is just that – big, and a big opportunity, as well. It may be the first time that the IT industry has finally named a new concept crisply, aptly and lucidly. But, as with all things IT, it still needs explaining.

For instance, what was missing in data-warehousing and business intelligence (BI) that is now possible with Big Data?

Wikipedia, as always, puts it best: big data consists of data sets that grow so large that they become awkward to work with using on-hand database management tools. Difficulties include capture, storage, search, sharing, analytics, and visualizing. This trend continues because of the benefits of working with larger and larger data sets allowing analysts to "spot business trends, prevent diseases, combat crime.”…