Author: David

Grazed from Channel Economics.  Author: Larry Walsh.

The Los Angeles cloud adoption of Google Apps was intended to clear the way for more efficient and cost-effective use of technology. Instead, it’s turned into a smog bank and now serves as a lesson for how security and compliance issues could hinder the adoption of services provided by Google, Microsoft and other cloud providers.

Beginning in 2009, Los Angeles intended to improve collaboration and reduce communication costs for its 30,000 municipal employees by replacing its legacy Novel GroupWise email system with Google Apps. Google reseller partner Computer Science Corp. (CSC) led the deal, which was heralded as the model for government cloud adoption to come.

Novel didn’t take the lost account lying down and sued. That’s when the real problems came out. The lawsuit had a minimal impact, but it did force all sides to review security and compliance requirements. As it turns out, Google Apps does not comply with the FBI’s security requirements for connecting to the Criminal Justice Information System (CJIS), a clearinghouse of law enforcement data administered by the Department of Justice…

Grazed from CodeStone.  Author: Victoria Browne.

Firms will increasingly use cloud computing solutions via their mobile devices over the coming years, it has been predicted.  Independent information provider Visiongain believes some $45 billion (£29 million) will be generated in revenue by mobile cloud computing products by 2016.

It suggested the market is now starting to evolve and is due to undergo a "rapid growth stage" shortly…

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

Expecting high growth, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal and Kingdom Holding Company (KHC), the investment fund he largely owns, have put $300 million in Twitter.

A canny investor, the insanely rich prince, a nephew of Saudi King Abdullah, bought into Apple when it was down on its luck and the newly returned Steve Jobs was borrowing money from Microsoft to keep the lights on. He also bought into Citigroup, when the bank needed it, on a cold call from the Carlyle Group and owns a piece of General Motors.

The announcement Monday said the investment in Twitter was the "result of several months of negotiations and comprehensive due diligence." Described as a "strategic stake," it is thought to amount to 3.6% of the company based on an assumed valuation of $8.4 billion, but nobody knows…

Grazed from New York Times.  Author: Quentin Hardy.

The hard-nosed competition for billions in corporate software spending is heading for an improbable showdown: Will the boss “like” that product prototyping cost projection?

Last week Salesforce.com, a leader in cloud-based corporate software, bought Rypple, a little-known outfit that specializes in creating and observing what is called “the social enterprise” — which uses things like Twitter posts, status badges and Facebook-esque likes to set goals, manage teams and recognize performance.

Rypple is at the far end of a movement to sell companies on the idea that the modern worker, armed with a cellphone and a tablet computer, having access to a nearly infinite amount of computing power in the cloud at all times, is a new kind of beast. Just as our social lives have changed because of Twitter and Facebook, the argument runs, so too must our working lives change…

“Last year, we witnessed a growing number of applications – from enterprise back-office systems, to mobile and social gaming – begin to utilize the scale and resilience that cloud technology offers,” said Ed Laczynski, Datapipe’s vice-president for cloud strategy and architecture. “As a direct result of proven use cases seen in the past year, 2012 will see more businesses embrace this new class of efficient, flexible and reliable products and services.”

Datapipe predicts the following three trends will appear in 2012 as companies continue to turn to the cloud to safeguard valuable information:..

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

GlobalOne, a leader in Cloud Computing, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Social Collaboration professional services for the enterprise, today announced GlobalOne Mobility, a new practice that will offer professional services for building, deploying and maintaining mobile cloud apps for both consumer and enterprise environments. Doug Maloney, former General Manager Innovation and New Business at Vodafone Hutchinson Australia, will lead the new practice as Vice President Mobility at GlobalOne.

Grazed from Business Cloud News.  Author:  Andy Brewerton.

Is your business considering a switch to cloud computing in the New Year? If so, you might want to take note of the following best practices from Andy Brewerton, Country Manager for cloud back-up specialists, EVault.

According to a recent Forrester Research report, about half of all midsize companies are either pursuing cloud-based services as part of their business practices, or they’re in their near-term implementation. Why? The realised benefits are clear– reduced infrastructure costs, pay-as-you-go services, flexibility, agility, and significantly reduced IT management and oversight.

Yet despite the massive migration to the cloud, businesses are still confused when it comes to data ownership, data privacy, data location, and cloud IT governance oversight…

Grazed from Proformative.  Author: Editorial Staff.

The agreement to acquire SuccessFactors, a provider of cloud-based human resources applications, was announced earlier this month. SAP expects it will close in early 2012.

In recent years, SAP hasn’t been able to settle on a cloud strategy. The application vendor’s cloud-based Business ByDesign ERP suite was pulled back in 2008 and reworked. The much-hyped offering was finally released this year. SAP claimed to have 650 Business ByDesign customers in October and projected reaching 1,000 by year’s end.

Along with the ERP services, SAP is developing a series of on-demand applications aimed at specific enterprise functions, some of which appear to significantly overlap with SuccessFactors products…

StillSecure’s strategy is based upon two premises: 1) the industry is seeing a fundamental shift to outsourcing IT functions and 2) soon, enterprises will be looking to services providers, hosting companies and telecom providers for secure, well-managed environments in which to host their important workloads. Based upon those premises, StillSecure has been building tools and offering services to mid-market companies in the hopes of making their journey into the clouds safe.

To that end, StillSecure is offing the following products to service providers and services to end user organizations:…