Category: News

Grazed from ComputerWorld.  Author: Mikael Ricknäs.

Companies worried about their bills for cloud services have a new — and free — option: Apptio’s Cloud Express, which can track usage and costs for cloud services from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft and Rackspace.

IT departments are increasingly being asked to adopt cloud computing, but they often lack the necessary data and analysis required to make informed decisions, according to Apptio, a company that specializes in tools to help CIOs determine the cost and quality of their IT systems.  Gathering cost information on use of public cloud providers is today a labor-intensive process, but Apptio wants to change that with the introduction of the free Cloud Express tool…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Barb Darrow.

EMC has joined the OpenStack open-source cloud effort. The news hits three months after VMware — 80 percent owned by EMC — signaled its intention to back the initiative. EMC joins as a corporate-level member while VMware is a higher-level gold member…

Grazed from Silicon Republic.  Author: Editorial Staff.

A key barrier to the uptake of cloud computing technologies is reassuring and convincing IS/IT managers that their jobs would not become obsolete if they shifted to the cloud, a major study by Lero involving 170 pages of interview case notes has revealed. It also found that the word ‘cloud’ actually scares some people.

According to Dr Lorraine Morgan and Dr Kieran Conboy, who conducted the Lero research at NUI Galway, the key barriers to cloud assimilation can be grouped across six headings: (i) Perceptions of the term ‘cloud’, (ii) Convincing IS/IT management, (iii) Persuading employees to use cloud systems, (iv) Security and privacy issues, (v) Integration, and (vi) Bandwidth and connectivity…

Grazed from MarketWatch.  Author: PR Announcement.

Today, GlobeRanger announced iMotion Stratus, the cloud-based version of its award winning iMotion Edgeware Platform. It delivers the features of the proven iMotion server-based platform from the cloud, easing deployment and enabling global capability. Stratus provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) avenue for companies to begin utilizing RFID technology without the upfront costs of RFID software and the servers to run it. It allows for economical small initial deployments with ability to scale up as needed. Deployments can scale from a single location to thousands of locations globally.

iMotion(TM) Stratus(TM) complements GlobeRanger’s premise-based iMotion Edgeware Platform and Edge Controller platform. Stratusintegrates seamlessly with iMotion server-based and network appliance-based deployments to allow the best-suited technology for the specific application to be used, whether an on-premise server or cloud-based…

Grazed from GigaOM.  Author: Derrick Harris.

Crowdsourcing is a great idea in theory, but it hasn’t really lived up to its potential, says Alegion CEO Nathaniel Gates. He thinks with some fundamental tweaks, Alegion can change all that for the better.  There’s man and there’s machine. And then there’s Alegion. The Mill Creek, Wash.-based startup launched at Amazon Web Services’ Re: Invent conference in late November with a business model that aims to turn crowdsourcing labor into the perfect blend of human-machine interaction.

Crowdsourcing hasn’t really taken off, Alegion Co-founder and CEO Nathaniel Gates told me, because it’s too complex to do correctly. This is especially true on Amazon’s Mechanical Turk platform, atop which Alegion has built its business. Conceptually, he thinks it’s amazing, but the answer to the question of “Why hasn’t it taken off, why hasn’t it revolutionized labor?” is that compared with the rest of the AWS platform, Mechanical Turk is a bear to use…

Grazed from Economic Times.  Author: Peerzada Abrar.

Technology investors are raising the tempo of investments in cloud computing startups buoyed by strong returns and growing customer demand for software as a service.  This week, venture funds closed two more deals in the sector with Norwest Venture Partners putting in $6 million (about Rs 32.6 crore) in first-round funding for Attune Technologies. The Chennai-based startup uses cloud technology for scheduling, billing and management of patient data with a base of 2 million patient records.

Angel investment network Mumbai Angels has made a seed investment of under Rs 5 crore in Pune-based startup MaxiMojo, which provides cloud-based distribution and revenue management solutions for hotels…
 

Grazed from Computing.  Author: John Leonard.

Just a couple of years ago, some prominent analysts would have had us believe that cloud computing was poised to sweep all before it. Firms would be queuing up to fill roadside skips with newly-redundant hardware, and IT staff would be rede-ployed as strategic information workers, while server rooms would be refitted as high-tech breakouts or Google-esque “snugs”.

While there have been major advances in the use of the cloud, even its most ardent advocates would admit that take-up has not been as rapid or as far reaching as most had imagined…

Grazed from Midsize Insider.  Author: Alex Keane.

The original aim of service-oriented architecture (SOA) was to prevent vendor monopoly, whether in software or underlying hardware, allowing greater user freedom when choosing applications for various business or personal applications. However, many vendors try to tie users to their products, preventing the mix and match of applications on demand and making it difficult to link to existing legacy applications and platforms.

As reported on ZDNet, Tom Nolle, president of CIMI Corporation, believes that current trends contradict the original objectives of SOA and as cloud computing advances, SOA alternatives will become more popular, allowing competition from small and midsize companies and thereby encouraging innovation from entrepreneurs rather than a monopoly from major players in the industry…