GMO Cloud

Cloud Communications Solutions Help SMB’s Reduce TCO

A survey recently conducted by Fonality, the provider of Webtorials for VoIP, revealed that small and medium businesses are now easily adapting to the use of cloud-based business communications solutions.

Here are some statistics from the survey:

• 14% more SMB’s understand cloud-based service options
• 25% felt the importance of flexibility and mobility with communications
• +85% need to provide access to communications for remote employees

The findings infer that SMB’s are starting to appreciate cloud’s contribution to an organization’s growth by reducing expenditures and maximizing operations expenses.

To see more findings from this survey, visit Fierce Enterprise Communications now.

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Friday Cloud News Roundup

Cloud is the Answer to Exabytes of Genomics Data

While technology companies like Life Technologies and Illumina have developed instruments that can fully sequence the human genome in one day, the going question is, how can they make it affordable to store, process and analyze all genomic data?

An article in GigaOM reports the introduction of a cloud-based platform for storing and analyzing genomics data by DNANexus. The company’s founder and CEO, Andreas Sundquist believes that cloud computing will directly adress these concerns:

• Keeping up with exploding data volume
• Sending terabytes of data across the internet
• Paying software licenses

With the popularity of human genome sequencing, the projected data volume of data is 1 exabyte or 1 million terabytes by 2014. Sundquist says that aside from its ability to accommodate such a large volume of data, the cloud generally costs less over time.

Read more on the statistics of increasing genomics demand and how te cloud is believed to resolve the anticipated issues, visit GigaOM now.

Cloud Unified Communications Service

Unified Communication (UC) is the going trend for enterprises in their attempt to increase productivity and simplify communications. However, new issues arise, with the adoption of US solutions comes financial and technological challenges.

AT&T seems to have a solution as they announced the release of their Cloud US services in eWeek. This new system eliminates most hardware integration and installation and help organizations control costs and prevent unpredictable expenditures.

Said to have partnered with cloud hosting provides, SoftLayer, the UC cloud is a user-friendly, single user interface for PC and mobile and has the capabilities to integrate multiple communications and collaboration tools such as:

• Instant messaging/ chat
• Email
• VoIP calling
• Web/audio and video conferencing

Read the full article and find out the other advantages that AT&T’s Cloud USC services provide – visit eWeek now.

Audio Books Via the Cloud

An article in Mobiletor announced Audiobooks.com’s new cloud-based audio book service. This step is seen to be revolutionizing the audiobooks industry.

Here are some highlights of the service:

• User-friendly, contractless
• Mobile accessibility
• Cloud-based bookmarking function
• Affordable access to unlimited service

The company is already offering thousands of popular book titles that can be accessed from the internet by Android and iOS devices.

To find out the pricing and other details of this new service, click here.

Cloud Data Storage and Sharing: Alternatives to MegaUpload

With the closure of file sharing site, MegaUpload, users are now looking for replacements. An eWeek article lists down 10 legitimate alternatives that offer the same storage and sharing services.

The list includes:

• Dropbox
• Rapidshare
• Sugar Sync
• Box
• Media Fire

Find out the rest of the sites from the list, visit the article at eWeek now.

Cloud-Based eBook Lending

An article in MPRNews announced that St. Paul Public Library in Minnesota wil begin the formal trial of 3M’s “Cloud Library” system, along with 10 other public libraries in the United States.

This roll-out was inspired by the increasing number of Americans owning e-readers such as Kindle, Nook and iPad. 3M, a company that has a long history of serving libraries will now aid these institutions in building and managing the lending of e-books.

It is expected that e-book lending will eventually account for 20% of book lending in libraries. Here are some advantages of cloud-based e-book lending:

• Cannot be damaged or lost
• No need to physically return the e-book
• No need to physically go back to the library for queued books

Read the rest of the article and find out the other technological initiatives of 3M at MPRnews.

Cloud Computing Survey on SMB’s

A recent cloud computing survey conducted by Business Webhosting Plans to over 500 businesses displayed findings in PRWeb.

Here are the results from the survey:

25% of businesses have been using cloud computing for 2.5 years

75% of businesses have been using cloud computing even longer than 2.5 years

The company said that most of these businesses were already using cloud computing and they were not even aware. Small and medium sized businesses are really the ones that benefitted from shifting a significant workload from their computers to a cloud computing system.

Visit PRWeb to read the rest of the article and find out further results of the survey.

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Cloud Enables Movie Access Anytime, Anywhere

Movie buffs can now enjoy their favorite movies anytime, anywhere.

Recently, Paramount announced through various online media channels, its opening of the first Ultraviolet-based film rental and download service.

The studio is initially offering 60 titles that the public can buy and access anywhere. This initiative is in adherence to the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem’s (DECE) “Buy one, pay anywhere” approach.

The Ultraviolet digital library is a system that allows access to movies and TV shows that are stored in the cloud. From here, users can download or stream media using multiple devices.

To read the full article, view pricing and other details, visit Register Hardware.

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ATM Data Stored in the Cloud for Improved Security

Data breach on ATMs has been quite popular with hackers where they will put card readers on the machines that will store customer data in an encrypted file, which they can access.

Last September, ATM-maker Diebold, addressed this issue when it introduced a virtualized ATM, which stores all customer data in the cloud – as written in an article in Information Week.

The company partnered with VMWare and they came up with a zero-client machine where no customer data is captured and stored in the physical machine. Instead, all data will be relayed to central servers. This way, bank customer data will be more secure as it cannot be accessed through the ATM.

At this point, Diebold is looking for a partner with whom to deploy virtualized ATMs to further prevent the theft of customer data. Find out more on how the cloud can increase the level of security in teller machines, read the full article in Information Week.

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The “RFP” Framework in Cloud Computing Procurement

Dubbed as the “yardstick for technology procurement”, certified infrastructure consultant James Carlini discusses his suggested framework for choosing and purchasing an organization’s cloud computing service.

In his article, he emphasized the need for an evaluation with a good set of criteria in choosing any technology, this includes cloud computing. Carlini gave 12 criteria, which either starts with an R, F or P:

1. Reliability – At what percentage is the reliability of the service, and how is it measured?
2. Functionality – What are its capabilities and can they easily adapt to changes?
3. Personnel – Which people will the user still need to have on premise?
4. Realities – What can be done and what cannot be done?

With this tool, the assessment and selection for a cloud computing service will be much more defined. Read the rest of the 12 criteria in sys-con.com and see how organizations can decide to purchase a cloud computing service based on more than just pricing.

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