Grazed from FirstClearing. Author: Dorothy Hinchcliff.

Junxure, a Raleigh, N.C.-based technology firm founded by a financial advisor that now has 10,000 users of its products, is launching a new cloud-based client relationship management platform for advisory firms. How are cloud-based systems different from other platforms? “Cloud computing encompasses any subscription-based or pay-per-use service that, in real time over the Internet, extends IT’s existing capabilities,” says an article on InfoWorld’s Web site.

Attendees at Charles Schwab’s Impact 2012 conference, currently underway, can watch a demo of Junxure Cloud. Meanwhile, today Chicago-based Envestnet Inc., which provides wealth management services for investment advisors, announced that it has agreed to integrate with Junxure Cloud…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

In many ways, the weakest link in cloud computing is the network. No matter how powerful your cloud hardware and software are, they’re useless without a secure and flexible network to hold the different pieces of the cloud together. That’s why it’s unsurprising to see cloud vendors such as Skytap, which has introduced new multi-VPN functionality for its hybrid cloud services, working on next-generation networking solutions for the cloud.

Skytap, which was founded in 2006 (and adopted its current name in 2008), counts about 225 enterprise customers ranging in size from Fortune 500 organizations to smaller companies of a few hundred employees each. They also represent a wide swath of different types of businesses, according to to Brett Goodwin, Skytap’s vice president of Marketing & Business Development…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Rachel King.

Cloud computing has been one of the premier buzz topics in both consumer and enterprise technology, especially over the last two years. But how much of it is real and how much is just a bunch of hype? Some technology journalists would argue it’s a little bit of both.

"Like with any other buzz word, there is some hype around it, but I do think it’s very real," said Michal Lev-Ram, a writer at Fortune during a panel discussion at Egnyte Firestorm on Wednesday afternoon. She acknowledged that some companies are slower to embrace while others do with caution, but Lev-Ram pointed towards recent acquisitions made by larger enterprise players as well as some big IPOs as evidence for the growth in this space…

Grazed from TheVarGuy. Author: Christopher Tozzi.

Why do some cloud projects succeed and others fail? That’s a question undoubtedly on the minds of many IT admins and business executives. And it’s also the focus of a recent IT Process Institute (ITPI) report. I recently chatted with ITPI Managing Director Kurt Milne, who helped prepare the report, to get his views on how to deploy cloud computing effectively in the business environment. Here’s what he had to say.

Milne, who has 20 years’ experience in the IT industry and co-authored a book on building private clouds, knows this subject well. Meanwhile, the ITPI, founded in 2005, is also well-established as a consulting resource for the IT community, counting VMware (NYSE: VMW), Red Hat (NYSE: RHT) and Symantec (NASDAQ: SYMC) among its customers…

Email Reporting in the Cloud

Grazed from CloudTimes. Author: Saroj Kar.

Cloud computing is changing how accountants do their business. It is a fairly simple and straightforward model of how technology continues to find solutions to improve business functions. Cloud computing providers have already provided a lot of services to meet the needs of accounting firms and accountants. Most of these services against internal company applications and accounting solutions that accountant can work with their clients.

According to the 2012 CCH Technology Survey, an independent nationwide survey of more than 400 accounting professionals, conducted by ORC International for CCH, a Wolters Kluwer business, found that cloud and mobile top the lists of emerging technologies benefiting the tax and accounting profession in productivity and the value they can deliver to clients…

Grazed from Genetec. Author: PR Announcement.

Genetec™, a pioneer in the physical security industry and a leading provider of world-class unified IP security solutions, today unveiled its plans for bringing physical security software to the cloud. In conjunction with a strategic multi-year alliance with Microsoft Corp., Genetec is developing true, reliable, hosted security solutions including Video Surveillance, Access Control and License Plate Recognition (LPR) as a Service that will be built on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud-computing platform. The new cloud-based security solutions will combine the strength of Genetec’s unified security platform with the global reach, scalability, and reliability of Windows Azure. Following an aggressive development schedule, Genetec is planning on delivering its first cloud-based service offering in the first half of 2013.

"Just as we pioneered IP video 15 years ago, we are now breaking new ground by using advanced cloud technology to make video and security applications even more accessible and meaningful for companies of all sizes," says Pierre Racz, Genetec’s CEO. "By working closely with Microsoft we are able to take advantage of its robust cloud-based development platform, Windows Azure, as a central part of our strategy to bring market-leading video surveillance, access control and license plate recognition to a broader user-base. As the leader in the world’s largest security surveillance market, we are uniquely positioned to bring a true ‘built for the cloud’ solution to both our existing integrators and users and to a whole new market that is looking for simple, ubiquitous, and powerful security tools."…

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Security remains a chief inhibitor to enterprise adoption of cloud computing resources and one Gartner analyst says the biggest concern should not be that data could be compromised in the cloud, but rather that there may be a cloud outage that could lead to data loss.

There’s a perception, says Gartner cloud security analyst Jay Heiser, that the most significant risk in using the cloud is that sensitive data can be leaked. But there’s been little evidence of that, he says. Sony suffered a compromise of potentially tens of millions of customers in 2011 related to its cloud, and there have been a handful of other breaches of personally identifiable information being leaked from the cloud…

Grazed from Adaptive Computing. Author: PR Announcement.

Adaptive Computing, the largest provider of private cloud management and High-Performance Computing (HPC) workload management software, today announced the release of two new editions of its Moab HPC Suite: Application Portal Edition and Remote Visualization Edition. These two new solutions are designed to leverage next-generation access models to simplify the collection and interpretation of data, improving the time it takes to achieve meaningful results.

Moab HPC Suite – Application Portal Edition

With an integrated NICE EnginFrame application portal, Moab streamlines the process of accessing job information by making it all available from a single point – applications, data, resources and job submissions – thus keeping costs to a minimum throughout the design and research processes. It supports the most common ISV and open-source applications used in a variety of disciplines, including manufacturing, energy, life science, government and education, without requiring users to undergo specialized HPC training. Data is also stored efficiently to minimize the need for file transfers…

Grazed from TopHosts. Author: Cliff Boodoosingh.

Datapipe, a global provider of managed services and infrastructure for outsourced IT and cloud computing, today announced the company has been named a “2012 Cloud Computing Excellence Award” winner by Cloud Computing Magazine. Nominated for the company’s Stratosphere(R) managed cloud computing platform, Datapipe is being recognized by award sponsor TMC — a global, integrated media company.

“Datapipe continues to prove its leadership by bringing innovation and excellence to the market and leveraging the latest technology trends,” said Erik Linask, Group Editorial Director, TMC. “The company’s Stratosphere platform is cloud computing at its best — making their designation as a ‘Cloud Computing Excellence Award’ winner a natural choice.”…