Author: David

Grazed from CNBC.  Author: Bob Pisani.

The hot IPO this week is — what else — another cloud computing-type company, ExactTarget, looking to price 8.5 million shares from $15-$17 tonight (Wednesday), for trading tomorrow.

It will certainly price above that, and open in the $20s, if recent history with cloud computing companies hold.

I’ve used "cloud computing" as a generic term, but companies like ExactTarget are really about interactive marketing, specifically cross-channel interactive marketing…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Cloud computing end-users and technology thought-leaders will be gathering at the Downtown Miami Hilton, April 16-17 at the Cloud Computing Association’s (CCA) two-track conference focusing on Cloud Computing in Healthcare ( http://cloudcomputingassn.org/hCLOUD ) and Cloud Computing in the Public Sector ( http://cloudcomputingassn.org/publicCLOUD ).

According to a recent Wall Street Journal review of Abundance: The Future is Better than You Think — a new book by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler — "if every image made and every word written from the earliest stirring of civilization to 2003 were converted to digital information, the total would come to five exabytes… or one billion gigabytes."…

Grazed from PRWeb.  Author: Robert J. Scott.

“Cloud computing is exploding. Its advantage are many. There’s another aspect to the cloud, and it is the numerous legal issues cloud computing presents to businesses,” said Robert J. Scott, Managing Partner of Scott & Scott, LLP, an intellectual property and technology law firm.

On the surface, cloud agreements are similar to traditional technology licensing and services agreements; however, cloud computing engagements expose both the client and the service provider to risks not present in more traditional technology transactions. At the top of the list of unique cloud risks are the legislative topics-du-jour: privacy and security regulatory compliance…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft is one of the largest enterprise software makers and almost completely dominates the office productivity software market with the Office software suite. It was relatively late to the cloud computing party and launched a cloud based version of Office – Office 365 – to compete with offerings like Google Docs, Zoho Office etc. Office 365 has seen a lot of traction, especially when it comes to small businesses.

Microsoft has been expanding its Office 365 customer base consistently since the launch and has signed up a lot of enterprise giants as well as SMEs for Office 365. Office 365 offers much better features than Google Docs and is also compatible with the traditional Office suite, which is one of its main selling points. Though Office 365 has lower operating margins than the traditional packaged Office software suite with increasing scale, Microsoft has been able to continually reduce its hosting costs by spreading them out over the larger user base…

Grazed from The Var Guy.  Author: Editorial Staff.

VMware vs. OpenStack: Plenty of pundits are debating the merits of each platform for cloud computing. Now for a twist: Within the cloud storage market, the recent hot rumor involves VMware (VMW) potentially buying Rackspace (RAX) in order to disrupt potential competition from OpenStack, the open source cloud platform. Here’s a reality check from The VAR Guy.

Over time, some pundits believe, OpenStack could potentially upend VMware’s core virtualization business — which is the underlying platform for many public and private cloud initiatives. The big question: Would VMware really consider buying out Rackspace (promoter of OpenStack) just to gain control of OpenStack?…

Grazed from TechZone360.  Author: Erin Harrison.

After years of speculation and forecasts by industry analysts, the cloud computing era has arrived, according to the National Inflation Association, which predicts that by 2013, the cloud computing boom could surpass the dot-com boom of the early 2000s.

Cloud computing, which has started to become widely adopted worldwide, is currently a $74 billion industry that accounts for 3 percent of global IT spending, but in 2013 cloud computing is expected to become a $150 billion market, according to the NIA…

Grazed from The Var Guy.  Author: Editorial Staff.

Microsoft (MSFT) and Cisco Systems (CSCO) continue to work more closely on cloud computing, data center and application optimization — even as the two technology giants continue to compete on some fronts. The latest Cisco-Microsoft synergies include a data center channel initiative with NetApp and Avnet, plus a joint focus on the upcoming Microsoft Management Summit 2012. Here’s the back story, from The VAR Guy.

As you may recall, Cisco Systems’ Unified Computing System integrates network, computing and virtualization resources under one roof. But for Cisco to maximize UCS’s success, the networking giant needs to work closely with application partners. Plus, Cisco is striving to maintain an open approach in the data center, working with such companies as EMC, VMware and NetApp to optimize customer performance…

Grazed from Sys Con Media.  Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Proving again that it leaks like a sieve press reports have Hewlett-Packard folding its printer division, whose ink used to be the source of all of the company’s profits, into its margins-cramped PC division and putting the combined operation under PC chief Todd Bradley, who wanted to run the PC unit if it was spun out.

Bradley will now get to run what will be HP’s singularly largest business, since the units last year represented $65 billion in sales or 51% of the company’s overall sales returning $6.3 billion to its bottom line…

Grazed from Forbes.  Author: Editorial Staff.

How are governments around the world planning for and adopting cloud computing, and how much progress have they made?

A recent study by Forbes Insights, in conjunction with KPMG International, “Exploring the Cloud: A Global Study of Governments’ Adoption of Cloud,” examines those questions. The study surveyed 429 government executives in 10 countries—Australia, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, the U.K. and the U.S.— about their cloud strategies. Responses from the global business survey of 808 executives (“Clarity in the Cloud: A Global Study of the Business Adoption of Cloud“) were referenced for context and to provide public- versus private-sector comparisons…