Cloud Computing Boosts Building Performance, Collaboration
Grazed from GlobeStreet.com. Author: Jacqueline Hlavenka.
To those in the design, construction and building operations industry, the concept of cloud computing can have many different meanings, from servers to code to different devices – even the kitchen sink. But panelists at the 2012 Buildings NY conference agreed that the new technology could have a major impact on property performance and employee productivity as the workplace continues to evolve in the digital direction.
“It also facilitates greater levels of collaboration between users, which could be beneficial to multidisciplinary teams, which are very common in our industry, and particularly common when looking to build high-performance buildings as well,” said panelist Matt Ostanik, president of Submittal Exchange, a provider of integrated project collaboration software for design, construction communications and LEED project management…
Less than a week until Cloud Computing World Forum Africa
Grazed from ITWeb. Author: PR Announcement.
There are only five days until the highly anticipated Cloud Computing World Forum Africa opens its doors, on 8 May, at the Sandton Sun Hotel, Johannesburg.
This is the first time that the Cloud Computing World Forum has been held Africa, and interest in the one-day conference and exhibition has been high, with over 400 senior IT decision-makers registered to attend.
Africa has experienced an increase in both infrastructure and broadband in recent years, leading to many businesses and organisations across the continent looking for new ways to integrate the use of cloud services into their IT operations…
Salesforce.com Announces Cloudforce London 2012 – The Largest Social Enterprise Event in Europe
Salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced it will host the largest social enterprise event in Europe, Cloudforce London 2012, on May 22nd at the ICC London ExCeL. More than 14,000 people are expected to register to learn how their companies can use social and mobile cloud technologies to transform into social enterprises. Cloudstock, Europe’s first ever social enterprise developer event, will be co-located at Cloudforce London and allow developers to get hands-on, and start coding the next generation of social enterprise apps.
Free registration to attend in person is available at www.salesforce.com/uk/cloudforce or watch the keynote online and join the conversation with Salesforce Live! beginning at 10:00 a.m. BST at www.facebook.com/salesforce…
Enterprise Applications: IBM Impact 2012 Focuses on the Mobile Enterprise, Cloud Computing
With innovation as the overall theme of its Impact 2012 conference here, IBM (NYSE:IBM) unveiled its first-ever Mobile Foundation, a comprehensive portfolio of software and services designed to help organizations capitalize on the proliferation of mobile environments, including laptops, smartphones and tablets. Building on its recent acquisition of Worklight, the new foundation further expands IBM’s strategy to provide clients with a mobile platform that spans application development, integration, security and management.
For example, using the IBM Mobile Foundation, an airline can transform the way it interacts with its customers by establishing a secure two-way relationship with mobile applications. Airlines can use these new types of applications not only to keep customers apprised of their travel plans and current weather conditions, but also to send push-notifications to alert them if there are changes or opportunities for upgrades…
Cloud Computing: How to Launch a Billion Dollar Startup on a Shoestring
Christian Gheorghe hates spending money if he can avoid it. As a teenager in Romania in the 1980s he replaced vacuum tubes to keep his television running and subsisted on a used laptop computer with a busted keyboard. Even after immigrating to the U.S. his frugal habits persisted.
In 2005 Gheorghe seethed at the expenses involved in building OutlookSoft, a business performance company where he was chief technology officer. It cost more than $600,000 to get rolling, buying dozens of servers, hiring support staffers to run the machines and acquiring costly licenses from the likes of Microsoft and Oracle. “You linger over every single penny,” Gheorghe recalled. “I kept needing to pay for another license. It never stopped.”
Gheorghe isn’t grumbling anymore. He now runs Tidemark Systems, a maker of business-analytics applications that is a penny-pincher’s delight. His corporate e-mail is free, via Google. Other open-source programs take care of databases and word processing. As for computing power, that’s not his headache anymore. He rents access to a constantly changing array of offsite servers, paying as little as 12 cents an hour for such cloud computing…
Cloud Computing Gains in Federal Government
The federal government may not be renowned for its operational speed or agility, and certainly IT is no exception, but federal agency CIOs and their employees have gradually been warming to the new model of cloud computing, according to a panel of industry executives speaking at a conference here on Wednesday.
"We’ve seen movement both in private cloud and public cloud," says Susie Adams, chief technology officer for Microsoft’s federal business.
Adams and others noted that government clients are increasingly looking to commercial cloud services both for infrastructure functions like computing power and storage, and applications such as email and collaboration or CRM-like tools to deliver better citizen services…
StillSecure Unveils Public Cloud Security Suite
Cloud computing adoption is gradually picking up steam, yet legitimate concerns about security, data portability, auditing, compliance, and other issues have kept some IT departments on the sidelines. Security solution vendor StillSecure hopes to tackle some cloud security concerns with their new Cloud Network Security Appliance (NSA).
"Security in a cloud environment can be both a black box and a minefield of risk at the same time. Most people aren’t prepared to cope with the kind of exposure and weaknesses that used to be hidden behind a firewall," said Carl Brooks, an infrastructure and cloud computing analyst at The 451 Group that was quoted in the StillSecure NAS launch announcement. "Fear of the unknown and having to rely on the ‘just trust us’ model are a bad combination. That’s why security remains one of the key factors preventing cloud adoption."…
Onit to Discuss the Convergence of Legal Technology and Cloud Computing at Managing Litigation Forum 2012
Onit, a leading provider of business productivity and process management apps, today announced that Paul Zengilowski, Customer Development Executive, and John Gilman, Director of Products, will present at the Managing Litigation Forum 2012. The duo will focus on the benefits of cloud computing and how law departments can leverage the increasingly app-centric approach to technology deployments in a session scheduled for May 3.
Based in New York City, Managing Litigation 2012 will host hundreds of corporate counsel interested in litigation readiness and how to put project management principles into practice…
How Mobile Operators in Europe Monetize Consumer Cloud Computing Services
Mobile operators are able to capitalize on demand for cloud services by bundling those services with their mobile data plans, according to a new report from Pyramid Research ( www.pyr.com ).
How Mobile Operators in Europe Monetize Consumer Cloud Computing Services analyzes the pricing models for cloud services launched by mobile operators in Europe. It begins by reviewing the existing pricing models and highlighting their limitations for telecom operators. Then Pyramid Research provides examples of how data plans evolve in order to address three key objectives of operators: increasing spending from existing users, retaining customers and attracting new users. Finally, Pyramid’s outlook on emerging models that will enable operators to make the most of their investments in deploying cloud-based services for the consumer market is presented. The report includes case studies of three operators: Telecom Italia Mobile (TIM), Orange Romania and Vodafone Portugal…
The Rise of The Vertical Cloud
While some are happy to debate definitions of cloud computing, I prefer to focus on the characteristics that make successful companies, successful. Lately there seems to have been a shift from the anything for anyone cloud to the industry or vertically focused cloud. Adding to this is today’s piece of news from Zynga who announced what they describe as "the beta release of Zynga.com, a new service enabling third party developers to create and publish games on the Zynga Platform." Yes, that company that brought you farmville is now going to be a cloud service provider enabling a whole new crop of game companies, which I can only assume they will acquire when the time is right.
So why is this news important? It’s another great example of a trend in the cloud computing sector of "Vertically focused" cloud products and services. In the early days, there was this mentality of just build it and they would come. Problem was that for most, they never really came. Instead you had a handful of very large players and everyone else fighting over the table scraps. What those who survived learned, is that in order to be successful it isn’t about being the best funded or even the best performing, but instead it is about being the most focused on the needs of a particular customer vertical. Those who focus on a particular problem, be it for a particular enterprise sector, application or customer need will have a clear and distinct differentiation in a market dominated by me-too cloud services…