March 15th, 2012
More often than not, the healthcare industry is at least a few steps behind technological innovation – cloud technology adoption is not any different.
At this time, where technology is not seen in the industry as a tool to leverage on improvement of patient care, providers and even governments around the world find themselves spending a considerable amount of capital or GDP, which is clearly unsustainable.
In the second installment of healthcare industry blog series in HDS, author Dave Wilson, senior director of Global Health and Life Sciences discusses the top healthcare drivers for cloud technology:
Though these drivers have not been very prominent to be seen as influencing factors in technological innovations in the healthcare industry, though it is undeniable that they are crucial to its development. To read the full article, visit HDS.
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March 14th, 2012
Personal cloud storage and sharing firms Box and Dropbox are hopeful to go public next year as reported in a recent article in USA Today.
How can consumers gain access to documents, photos, music and videos regardless of what device they are using, wherever they are? This was the question addressed by Dropbox despite the presence of larger competitors such as:
The start-up still managed to capture more than 50 million users. Not far from this success story is fellow start-up Box, that has earned more than 9 million users even though it has bigger competitors like:
Though there is the challenge of competing against many “Goliaths” in the estimated $1.4B personal cloud storage market, these start-ups remain optimistic as 90% of Corporate America is projected to use this technology within the next three years.
This projection paves the way for Box to be the next great enterprise software company and for Dropbox to build the next Apple or Google.
Read more about start-ups Dropbox and Box and see how much they have accomplished in their respective industries. Visit USA Today now.
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March 13th, 2012
Most small and midsize businesses opt for cloud adoption without seriously taking into consideration putting up a comprehensive data management or backup plan in place.
ZDNet’s award-winning business journalist, Heather Clancy shares in a blog her learnings on how a cloud adoption’s security is dictated by real business strategy and commitment.
She also partakes 7 ways to make sure that an organization’s cloud-hosted solution is as safe as possible:
To read the rest of the 7 safety measures for cloud adoption, visit ZDNet.
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March 12th, 2012
Another cloud services provider, Parallels rebuts the general assumption that cloud computing is used more by enterprises, as it showed results from a recent research.
As written in an article in MSP Mentor, the firm found that the US SMB cloud market grew by 25% in 2011 or increased to $15.1B.
Going further in their research, they inferred that medium-sized businesses preferred phone conferencing services while micro and small businesses seek cloud-based applications on:
These small businesses were reportedly to double the amount of paid cloud applications in the next three years and that they will be starting to move beyond basic web services. One indicator is the 45% rate of US SMB’s that are promoting their businesses on Facebook, a cloud-based social network site.
Read more about how small businesses can utilize the cloud to expand their operations cost-efficiently, visit MSP Mentor.
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March 9th, 2012
Cloud Council of 7
Though cloud computing is becoming the preferred technology choice, challenge remains that most CIO’s still cannot link the current definitions of cloud computing’s business value.
It is then that a group of business users, policy makers, technology and service providers and academics working with cloud technology have decided to form a non-profit group called Cloud Council of 7 (CCO7). The group, which launched their operations last 22 Feb 2012, aims to find ways to help enterprises make informed decisions when specifying and selecting cloud technologies and services.
Founding members have identified 7 characteristics of cloud technology that need to be taken into consideration. These include:
Visit Brandenton.com now to view the rest of the characteristics and see how this new group can guide CIO’s, CTOs, Tech vendors and senior IT executives in the specification, development and deployment of cloud computing services.
Fed-Initiated Guidance on Cloud Implementation
An article in InformationWeek expressed how cloud computing represents a paradigm shift much bigger than IT.
In the article, it says that the government has the potential to be the cloud market’s single largest purchaser and that this government segment can play a major role in shaping how services are purchased and consumed. Agencies adopting the cloud need to think carefully how they work with the cloud service providers to hammer out the terms of service. Here are some factors that they need to consider:
Visit Information Week to read the article and see how the federal government helps various agencies adopt and address cloud concerns.
Innovation Program by the Cloud Security Alliance
The last Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) summit during the RSA Conference discussed the dramatic increase in cloud security awareness as delivered in an article in CFO World.
According to Jim Reavis, co-founder and executive director of CSA, the open market has produced inadequate information security for cloud computing. With this in mind, the CSA aims to have some initiatives in:
In a nutshell, the CSA hopes to identify key issues related to trust security that inhibit the adoption of cloud and those that incubate technology solutions that address systematic cloud computing security gaps.
Read the full article about the CSA initiatives and how this will help eliminate barriers to cloud adoption by organizations, visit CFO World.
Will the Cloud Lead to Software Obsolescence?
An interesting article in Cloud Computing Topics speculates around the concept of software being obsolete because of cloud computing.
As the author sees it, this will rather present new opportunities for business software to reach markets that on-premise versions cannot.
The author also mentioned some instances where there will always be a market for both on-premise and cloud solutions:
At the end of the article, the author suggests that a typical company should adopt a mix of on-premise and cloud-based solutions as appropriate to meet their needs and budget.
Read about the comparison of on-premise and cloud versions and see how the author arrived at this conclusions, visit Cloud Computing Topics.
Cloud Fair 2012
The newest and largest cloud computing conference and expo, Cloud Fair 2012 Cloud Computing Conference and Expo is to be held on April 17-19 in Sherator Seattle.
As announced in Daily Markets, leading cloud companies will be attending to deliver reports, user case studies and hands-on tutorials.
Some keynotes include:
Find out more about the expo and read on the rest of the keynote list at Daily Markets.
Cloud Security Summit 2012
User identity is the next big issue in cloud computing safety, this is according to security company Ping Identity in reference to the 2012 Cloud Security Summit on July 16-20 at Vail Colorado.
The focus of the event would be exploring the central role of identity in enterprise. Much as there are organizations and experts on this matter, there is still no definitive “perfect way” to handle identity in the cloud as the ability of IT to address security issues is still in its infancy.
The main objective of the summit is to establish best practices that can adapt to a rapidly changing marketplace and help limit breaches that stem from shifts such as the trend toward the use of personal technology in business.
Read the full article on this year’s Cloud Security Summit and see what else will be tackled in the event, visit The Info Boom now.
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March 8th, 2012
Some major energy companies such as ExxonMobil and Atmos Energy Corporation are already using cloud computing for geo-imagery or consolidation of operations across business units.
A write-up in CloudTweaks synthesizes a report issued by the Carbon Disclosure Project in June 2011. According to the article, cloud-enabled energy companies can:
… And that by 2020, these companies are estimated to achieve:
Through the new cloud business model and its support tools, companies in the energy industry can definitely improve operational efficiency.
View the link to the report and read more information about how the cloud benefits the energy and utility industry at CloudTweaks.
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March 7th, 2012
A recent release in MarketWatch announced a study conducted by TechAisle in SMB business intelligence adoption and trends.
The study showed that 22% of SMB’s are already using business intelligence (BI) and that 27% are planning to use BI in the coming year.
As the number of users appreciating business intelligence and big data analytics increases, more of them are using various vendors for different type of business intelligence areas:
In studying the trend and the planned usage of the technology, cloud BI shows a lot of promise as usage rate is expected to increase by 59% from its 2011 figures.
While there are challenges to the adoption, benefits such as ease of use, real time analytics and platform integration will accelerate it.
Visit Market Watch to view the whole article and to find out the link to TechAisle’s report.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
March 6th, 2012
An article in ITWorld centers on online marketing firm, Hubspot, and how they realized that they would need additional computing power, hence, CIO Jim O’Neill’s creation of the hybrid cloud where they can keep their important web hosting functions in the private cloud, and use public cloud for flexibility of resources.
In the 2011 Gartner Data Center Conference, 78% of some 2,500 attendees planned to build private cloud services by 2014.
O’Neill emphasized though that creating a hybrid cloud takes careful planning. The challenge remains to be the absence of standards for interoperability between public and private clouds.
Gartner researcher Thomas Bittman shares that while this is the case, there are four centers of gravity for hybrid cloud environments:
These centers have particular characteristics that can help organizations in choosing the right hybrid for their business.
Read the description of each center in ITWorld and see how any of the four can be combined to maximize an organization’s cloud interoperability requirements.
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March 5th, 2012
A fresh point of view on cloud computing for small businesses written by a marketing consultant for a web hosting company was delivered by Small Biz Bee.
The description of development started in a Forrester research in 2010 showing that 84% of companies admit that technology is critical to their operations. However, small businesses do not have the budget to acquire sufficient IT resources. This was until they discovered the cloud.
This article showed a very basic explanation of how the cloud works and how much a company can save on costs. In the article were also the top reasons why businesses should switch to the cloud:
Read more on this article about “Cloud for Dummies”, visit Small Biz Bee now.
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March 2nd, 2012
Cloud Computing’s Maximum Capabilities
A survey recently conducted by the Economist magazine entitled The Power of the Cloud: Driving Business Model Innovation, was the subject of an article in Information Week and how it is observed that cloud computing is not being used to its full potential.
The IBM-sponsored survey was conducted during the last quarter of 2011 to 572 business and IT managers. Results showed that only 13% have substantially implemented cloud computing in their whole organization but this figure is projected to increase to 44% in three years time.
According to Saul Berman, global strategy consulting leader for IBM’s global technology services, too many companies are experimenting lightly with cloud computing. Instead of using the technology to discover how it can reinvent the fundamental way to sell their goods and services. They are only using it to tweak existing operations.
Business strategists at IBM said that the cloud provides a broader opportunity for business model innovation and that it needs to be a top management priority.
Read the whole article to find out more results from the survey, visit Information Week now.
Another Cloud Adoption in the Transport Industry
The transportation industry continues its cloud technology adoption as another North American railway company moved its SAP landscape to the cloud.
This initiative was done for:
All in all the migration is expected to reduce hardware costs and increase flexibility of the company’s operations.
Visit Timesunion to read the full article.
Popular Cloud Acquisitions
With the rise and popularity of cloud technology come the acquisitions. Mid-size cloud companies are attracting prominent players in the IT industry.
Last January, Cloudtweaks released an article about cloud acquisitions late last year, particularly citing SAP’s acquisition of California-based web services company, Success Factors and IBM’s acquisition of analytics company, DemandTec.
Recently, the site released another set of acquisitions. This include:
Big firms believe that these smaller companies will aid their grow in various aspects of cloud computing.
Find out more cloud-related acquisitions, visit CloudTweaks.
Rapid Migration to the Cloud
Undeniably, there is a growing cloud interest and adoption by small to medium, to large enterprises, but the market is still confused about what cloud/SaaS and Business Intelligence analytics are and what they can deliver.
This observation was made after a report from Gartner was released. Three trends that are beyond the rapid move of business intelligence to the cloud were also identified:
In deploying business intelligence to the cloud, companies need to assess the risk and ensure the skills of their chosen cloud provider.
Read the full article at Formtek and see the full explanation to these trends.
Department of Defense Cloud Computing Market
A release in Marketwatch announced the launch of a study indicating which aspects of cloud computing products and services spending in the Department of Defense is emphasizing. This was done mainly so firms will find out growth areas and see where they can invest in.
The market research report entitled, Analysis of the US Department of Defense Cloud Computing Market contains:
Visit Marketwatch to get a copy of the full market report.
RSA Conference 2012
The almost-concluded RSA Conference this year focused greatly on three areas:
Most of the forums in the conference pertained to big data and how it can help firms to be smarter about how they can defend and identify malicious activity.
Mobile security was also given much attention as it is seen as a big problem for management and scalability issued.
Visit the official site of the RSA Conference and find out the advantages and challenges of the inevitable shift in IT security.
You may also visit the security section of Techtarget to read some articles about the cloud computing trend and how to address its going and anticipated security issues.
Our articles are written to provide you with tools and information to meet your IT and cloud solution needs. Join us on Facebook and Twitter.
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