Cloud Computing

The tough political bargaining over the federal budget underscored by the recent government shutdown portends a continuing emphasis on keeping the cost of government under control. As federal agencies resume full operations after the budget and debt ceiling hiatus, it is clear that the goal of getti...

Customer testimonials play an odd role in many IT industry announcements. At first glance, they offer proof that technologies are actually being used successfully as advertised, lending credence to vendors' sometimes lofty go-to-market claims. Even the most enthusiastic clients tend to guarded, thou...

While the federal market for cloud technologies promises to be a prime opportunity for vendors, it is becoming clear that providers cannot expect the phone to ring with orders from federal agencies. Instead, vendors will have to make investments in product development, marketing and other activities...

Although the cloud marketplace is growing rapidly, the current rate of growth will continue only if a broader set of strong channel companies emerge to extend the reach of today's cloud leaders into new industries and geographies. I've been suggesting for years that building more channels to market...

As the prolific trend of adoption would suggest, the case for cloud is compelling from both a business and technology perspective. There are a number of reasons for this, but one of the more compelling reasons from a technologist's point of view has to do with the ability to abstract lower levels of...

RealNetworks on Tuesday announced RealPlayer Cloud, a new service that allows users to upload video files to the company's servers and then view and share them across devices. Billed by the company as the first integrated video player and cloud service, RealPlayer Cloud automatically transforms vide...

Adobe will pair hardware devices with its creative software suite next year when it launches a cloud pen and a digital ruler that work with tablets. The company plans to release its Mighty digital pen, a thin-tipped stylus designed to help digital artists have more control over their creativity whil...

Ambitious plans to improve federal information technology systems could easily founder on the shoals of deficient networks. Government agencies currently are striving to meet the challenges associated with initiatives in five major areas: cloud technology; Big Data management; cybersecurity requirem...

I'm not a religious guy, but I've been preaching about the virtues of moving to the cloud. Well before the idea became popular, I saw the potential cost savings offered by the cloud, as well as the opportunities to leverage it to generate new innovations. Now, nearly every industry is recognizing th...

Technology has always enabled the "factorification" of processes and skills for both users and suppliers of IT. The success of early computing solutions rested in replacing hundreds and thousands of Bob Cratchett-like professionals with systems that required few, if any, sick days and no vacations.

Because of the rapid pace of SaaS adoption, many security practitioners have found themselves scrambling to ensure the security of the specific technologies their enterprises want to employ. However, the dynamics of SaaS can make this a challenging exercise. This is because most of the options for s...

Federal spending for information technology has peaked. It will decline at a gradual annual pace for at least the next several years, but cumulatively it will amount to a significant amount of money. However, vendors that can provide the IT services that are moving to the top of the government's req...

Amazon Web Services were impacted in some areas on Sunday, six days after Web stores in the U.S. and Canada went down for about 30 minutes, causing losses estimated at up to $45 million. The latest outage lasted about an hour and impacted Facebook's Instagram, Twitter's Vine and Airbnb, among others...

The U.S. Interior Department has embarked on a major transition to cloud technology that could result in its spending $10 billion on the program over nine years. DOI selected 10 vendors to participate in the program last May, and since then the vendors have been announcing definitive contracts with...

By now, most organizations have adopted cloud. Increased and widespread adoption as well as expansion of existing deployments are reflected in recent surveys. This suggests that if you're a technology pro and your organization is like most, you've already spent considerable time addressing how to fi...