Category: News

Grazed from MergerTech. Author: Editorial Staff.

With more companies relying on cloud computing for everything from daily operations to storage and backup planning, it is essential that businesses in those areas can offer clients the very best. A recent technology acquisition could help businesses operating in this space.

The iomart Group announced this week that it will acquire Backup Technology for $37 million. The latter company is a cloud backup and disaster recovery services provider. According to its website, iomart is one of Europe’s largest cloud computing providers…

Grazed from MarketWired. Author: PR Announcement.

PiiComm Inc. (www.piicomm.ca) Canada’s premier Managed Mobility Services (MMS) provider, has teamed up with Mobile Computing Corp (www.mobilecom.com) a leading full service provider of mobile field force automation and optimization solutions that enable businesses to dramatically improve customer service and retention and reduce operating costs in real-time.

Shawn Sicard, PiiComm’s CEO said, "Mobile Computing Corp. (MCC) is helping best-in-class service companies manage stronger, leaner, more profitable operations. Since 1986 MCC has been providing leading edge wireless field service and distribution mobile computing solutions. By leveraging the synergies of our respective companies, customers are now able to deploy fully-managed, end-to-end, workforce solutions with the cost-effective, mobile point-of-sale functionality that accelerates productivity and delivers a faster return on investment."…

Grazed from FCW. Author: Frank Konkel.

The federal government’s first cloud-based identity management pilot will be hosted by HP Enterprise Services. Toronto-based SecureKey Technologies, which the U.S. Postal Service selected in August to develop the Federal Cloud Credential Exchange, tapped HP Enterprise Services on Oct. 2 as its subcontractor to host the exchange.

Under the subcontract, HP Enterprise Services Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) for U.S. Public Sector will provide the cloud computing horsepower necessary to offer millions of users and organizations secure online access to multiple federal agencies and online services through existing, approved third-party digital identification credentials…

Grazed from MSPMentor. Author: Editorial Staff.

The 4Ps – Product, Place, Price, and Promotion – are well known by marketers as the fundamental building blocks of marketing mix. While the 4Ps have served consumer marketing well, some have said that a new model is required for marketing B2B services.

Harvard Business Review published the results of comprehensive study and suggested that SAVE – Solution, Access, Value, and Education – is a more appropriate approach for B2B. But in today’s competitive environment, marketing cloud services is challenging, no matter what terms you use…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Amy Larsen DeCarlo.

In less than a decade, cloud computing has grown from an intriguing niche to a mainstream market segment. Future expectations are high, with Morgan Stanley projecting Amazon Web Services will hit the $24 billion revenue mark in 2022. Of course, how successful any single provider is in growing its cloud business depends on its ability to help dispel the cloud security worries that still sideline some on-demand deployments.

The presumption that a highly virtualized, multi-tenant environment is intrinsically more susceptible to attack is a byproduct of the belief that the level of accessibility and flexibility that makes the cloud so appealing to customers also opens the door to opportunistic hackers who are ready to capitalize on the many points of entry…

Grazed from Diginomica. Author: Jon Reed.

The hype about cloud job growth is in full swing. Exhibit A: in a June 2013 report, IDC predicted 14 million new cloud jobs by 2015. But what do these numbers really mean to the enterprise? After taking a swing at a couple of simplistic pieces on cloud jobs in last week’s hits and misses, it seemed a good time to hold my own feet to the fire and see what I could dig out. Aside from Amazon’s recent announcement of the planned hire of 70,000 seasonal full time employees, I don’t see many large companies in bulk hire mode of any kind – cloud-related or not.

Hiring news – mixed at best

A cynical reader commented on Joe McKendrick’s Forbes piece on IDC’s cloud jobs numbers: No technological advance creates more jobs than it eliminates. It’s impossible because the very point of a technological advance is to increase productivity…

Grazed from InformationWeek. Author: Kristin Burnham.

Western Digital Wednesday unveiled My Cloud, a new personal cloud device that lets users organize, centralize and secure digital content from their computers and mobile devices and access those files from anywhere.

An alternative to pricier cloud solutions, the My Cloud drive is available in three capacities: 2 TB for $149.99; 3 TB for $179.99 and 4 TB for $249.99. In comparison, 2 TB of storage on a personal Google Drive account will cost you $100 per month. "We believe that there’s no place like home for the cloud," said Jim Welsh, executive vice president and general manager of WD’s branded products and consumer electronics groups. "Everyone is inundated with thousands of digital files scattered across multiple computers and mobile devices, and controlling that chaos is a challenge."…

Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Editorial Staff.

Once a catchy PR buzzword, the cloud has become a very real and vital element of the modern technology landscape. But as with every technological step forward, the cloud has brought with it some unintended side effects. In the case of enterprise cloud technology, those side effects include concerns over loss of control and security risks.

That’s especially true since revelations were made earlier this year about mass data surveillance programs, such as the National Security Agency’s PRISM project. If you host your company’s data in a public cloud, such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure, what assurances do you have that government agencies aren’t monitoring — or may subpoena — your data? Cloud providers have stated unequivocally that they do not give direct access to the NSA, FBI, or other organizations — but it’s also widely known that the these agencies have broad access to many data sources once considered private…

Grazed from PRWeb. Author: PR Announcement.

The federal government has embarked on an ambitious plan to transform IT acquisition and management by implementing cloud computing in every federal agency. WSO2 Federal Systems Director of Solutions Adam Firestone will explore the factors in making cloud computing a reality for defense, intelligence, and homeland security in his talk at the Cloud Computing & Network Symposium for Defense, Intelligence & Homeland Security. The conference runs October 8-9, 2013 at the Holiday Inn Rosslyn at Key Bridge in Washington, D.C.

The Governed Cloud

Through carefully governed cloud computing, the federal government aims to provide on-demand access to a shared pool of configurable resources that can be quickly established and quickly dismantled. The resulting savings in IT spending within the Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and intelligence community could total more than 20 percent of operational costs. However, with these benefits come risks in maintaining security and assurance of services in highly mission critical business and tactical applications…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Josh Manchester.

What is SaaS? The ability to store data easily on third-party servers and access it quickly via the Internet creates the possibility of delivering software over the web. This is precisely what is meant by the phrase “software-as-as-service,” frequently abbreviated as “SaaS.” Indeed, this is the second half of cloud computing: if your computing is in the cloud, then your software is almost by definition delivered as a service over the Internet.

Some History and Evolution

Over the past twenty years, before the advancement of cloud computing, the process of developing, deploying, and using software was both long and expensive. Historically, the software development cycle underwent multiple stages. In the past, enterprise software businesses developed their products for installation on desktops or servers; this required a large expenditure in order to purchase the necessary hardware for the software’s operation…