Friday Cloud News Roundup

Cloud Business Continuity Planning Webinar Cloud Best Practices will be holding a webinar about Cloud Business Continuity Planning (BCP) this January. One important topic to be discussed is be the cloud-aware applications, or applications that are now engineered for cloud environments. The webinar will also tackle on the primary advantage of the Cloud BCP as against traditional BCP, which is multi-site resilience. In a nutshell, Cloud BCP is described as disaster avoidance, while contrary to that is the traditional, which is defined as disaster recovery. Read more about the differentiation of traditional BCP and Cloud BCP in Cloud Best Practices. To confirm your attendance to the webinar, you may go to this link. Cloud Technology Provides Ease of Access to Legal Documents For the first time in the industry, lawyers will be able to easily access courtroom documents using mobile devices. Magnum Cloud has developed a system that allows users to log in to the cloud anywhere at any time and will be able to keep up to date with courtroom developments, acquire case materials, evidence and case law, all on a secure network. This development has not only eased the acquisition of legal data of lawyers and judges but it has proven to enforce paperless processes as there is a going case that had already saved at least 5 million sheets of paper. To read the full article, you may visit Insight. Cloud Brings Greater Efficiency and Savings to the Healthcare Supply Chain Industry Mckesson Strategic Supply Sourcing, the healthcare services and information technology company focused on improving healthcare businesses, is offering the fist cloud-based supply chain solution that brings the promise of new customer advantages. The system is the first offering in the market that can support materials management information systems (MMIS), and users will have access to data on critical-surgical medical supplies, high cost physician preference items and group purchasing organization through a private marketplace. Ultimately, users can effectively leverage each organization's purchases and choose the better contracts. This solution will aid in the implementation of an effective supply chain management, which will help hospitals improve contract compliance and reduce unnecessary spending. To read more about Mckesson's cloud-based supply chain solution, you may visit their site now. The Newly Improved Cloud This article takes a deeper look on what really is new about the cloud. It discusses that “cloud” per se has always been there, since the 1990's when the term was coined to represent the internet. What is rather new about the concept of the cloud is its significant improvement to deliver ease, convenience and value of using the cloud. Case in point, Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has evolved into virtualization and orchestration technologies, while Software as a Service (SaaS) is continuously improving its connectivity aided with more interactive browser technologies. Read more about what new concepts the cloud has brought to the technological scene at Readwriteweb. Transparency Needed From Cloud Service Providers In the Cloud Fundamentals Video Series, Mr. Mark Estberg, the senior director of Microsoft Global Foundation Services emphasized the importance of a partnership between customers and cloud providers so customers will be ensured of transparency. What is currently happening is that in exchange for the benefits of cloud service such as low costs and increased business agility, some customers are willing to accept a reduced level of transparency. This video says that cloud service providers need to have due diligence and provide transparency to their customers to show that they are being responsible with the applications and data entrusted to them. At the same time, customers also need to be aware of the requirements and whether these requirements are matched with deployment models. Mr. Estberg says that until the industry is able to provide a richer automated reporting system, it may help to have periodic audits by trusted auditors with some level of automated reporting. To view the full video, you may visit the Microsoft Development Network Site.  

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