Cloud Computing

With nearly every market forecast and growing anecdotal evidence pointing to escalating demand for cloud-based alternatives to traditional on-premises systems and software, the challenges of integrating the new on-demand solutions with existing applications and data sources are becoming even more cr...

Comcast this week announced new software for its set-top boxes, opening a window into how cable TV companies hope to retain customers tempted to move their eyeballs to online-only alternatives. Comcast X2 blends cable offerings like on-demand movies, program guides and digital video recording with o...

There's no shortage of partner initiatives at most annual IT vendor events, but that was especially apparent at SAP's recent Sapphire NOW conference in Orlando, Fla. In large part, it's simply the nature of the event beast. Vendors work for weeks or even months on conference-related announcements, h...

Organizations of all sizes across an assortment of industries are using a growing set of cloud analytics solutions to address their Big Data, business intelligence and data integration challenges. Escalating competitive pressures and customer expectations are forcing organizations to find new ways t...

Adobe announced major changes to its business model this week and revealed that from now on, it will sell its software via a monthly subscription plan and forgo boxed software and perpetual licenses. The maker of popular creative software such as Photoshop and InDesign unveiled the new policy at its...

Asana on Wednesday announced Organizations, a feature that stakes its claim in the enterprise space. What is new with Organizations is its scalability; it is designed to support companies of 100 employees or more. Asana was launched by Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz and Google and Facebook vet...

The market digested the earnings report Amazon released on Thursday, and toward the end of trading Friday it was clear investors were less than pleased, with the company's stock down by about 6.5 percent. Little wonder: Amazon reported that its net income decreased 37 percent to $82 million in the f...

Salesforce.com expanded its advertising initiatives this week with the launch of Social.com, a platform designed to help brands tie ad campaigns to what's trending on social networks. The new platform bundles Salesforce.com features that resulted from the company's acquisitions of Buddy Media, a pro...

Activist investor ValueAct Capital has invested US$2 billion in Microsoft, according to a report on CNBC Monday morning. Wall Street immediately reacted, driving the company's share price to $31.18 from its usual perch at $30.27 per share. That is the highest level the stock has since in the last se...

Strategic Big Data and Actionable Analytics are two of the Top 10 Strategic Technology Trends for 2013, according to Gartner. Yet only 12 percent have a big data strategy that governs their daily operations, a recent survey of 339 data management professionals by SAS and SourceMedia found. In my vie...

The bulls have been running on Wall Street but every silver lining apparently is cloaked in a gray cloud. In this case, it's the dismal Q3 earnings report Oracle released on Wednesday. Oracle did actually make money. The company reported third quarter earnings of $2.5 billion, or 52 cents a share, o...

A growing number of established and emerging software and technology vendors are seeking to take advantage of the convergence of Big Data and the cloud. None has made a bigger bet than IBM. Since 2005, IBM has spent more than $16 billion on 35 acquisitions to boost its analytics capabilities. The ...

The U.S. government has some unique -- and exacting -- security requirements related to the adoption of cloud technology. These internal government security hurdles have resulted in significant outreach to expertise from commercial information technology companies. The latest example is an invitatio...

Three to five years in the information technology business may seem like a long time, so it may appear that U.S. government agencies have been pursuing cloud technology for ages; incipient projects began as far back as 2008. It was also more than two years ago that the White House initiated a progra...

Information technology vendors who sell hardware and software to the federal market are keenly aware of significant flaws in the way government agencies purchase IT. An effort to reform IT procurement has been conducted by the Obama administration for the last two years -- with some improvement. Som...