Cloud Computing

Business IT solution development generally follows specific trends and overlapping eras. The first, calculation, occurred as digital products and services wholly replaced adding machines and other mechanical business devices. The second, computation, mirrored the evolution of digitized solutions for...

One of the age-old challenges that has plagued the software industry, like many others, is how vendors can reach small- and mid-sized businesses with their software products. Although today's Software as a Service model eliminates many of the distribution challenges of the past, it hasn't overcome t...

After years of being one of Microsoft's biggest supporters in the Windows-based laptop market, HP has officially released its first Chromebook: the Pavilion 14 running Google's Chrome OS. Now that HP has followed Samsung, Acer and Lenovo in jumping on the multi-OS bandwagon, the question is this: Ca...

The definition and makeup of the "personal cloud" are areas of intense debate. A variety of companies with a stake in cloud-based engagement have very different perspectives on what is and is not included as part of a consumer's personal cloud. "The cloud" broadly refers to the content, services, ...

Microsoft this week announced the worldwide availability of Office 365 Home Premium, a cloud-based subscription version of its flagship Office productivity software. It will include all Office applications and work on Windows tablets, PCs and Macs. Pricing for most consumers is $99.99 a year or $9.9

The cloud may be the future, but it's not a bed of roses. The Amazon Cloud had a meltdown on Christmas Eve, affecting many customers who use the service. Companies that use Amazon as their cloud, their customers and workers were all affected. What should we learn from this high-profile meltdown? It ...

Some Netflix customers found themselves without service on Christmas Eve -- an unpardonable lapse on a day when many are snuggled in their homes and eager for entertainment. The streaming video provider has caught its fair share of flak for the outage -- but it was not solely to blame for its servic...

Google is heading into the new year with a new set of enterprise customers, the result of moves made this year to revamp its cloud-based productivity applications. For years, Google has been infiltrating areas beyond its core search business. This was the first year it was able to make real headway ...

SaaS has become an accepted alternative to traditional on-premises enterprise applications, and a broader set of cloud services is becoming a viable option for businesses seeking more flexible, economical computing capabilities. Adoption of these services is accelerating rapidly, because they are de...

Google is integrating its Google Drive cloud storage service with Gmail, letting users send files 400 times larger than previously allowed. Gmail now will send links to files up to 10 GB stored on Google Drive from inside the Gmail interface. Additionally, since the file itself isn't transferred but...

Google is stepping up its game in the battle for cloud supremacy by slashing prices and beefing up the services it offers with Compute Engine. The Infrastructure as a Service product was first announced at Google's I/O show in June and is currently available in a preview version. Google hasn't set a...

Adoption of cloud technology at the federal level is still far from routine -- but cloud transactions continue to emerge on a regular basis. The deals range in value, demonstrating that cloud migration can be applied for relatively small deployments or for huge networks. In the latest major deal, HP...

THINKstrategies, the Cloud Computing Showplace, and Rising Tide Media hosted our second annual Cloud Channel Summit earlier this week, giving executives from leading cloud and channel companies a peer-to-peer networking forum where they could share perspectives on how to forge successful partnershi...

It is that time of year again -- namely, prediction-making season. Gartner is the first out of the gate with its top 10 strategic tech trends for 2013 and a few years beyond. Among its forecasts: dominance of mobile devices; shift to HTML5; growth of the personal cloud; growth of private enterprise ...

In commercial IT, "enterprise systems" have long been defined as the technologies that provide large organizations the highest levels of compute performance and critical attributes such as reliability, availability and scalability. But enterprise IT infrastructures have never been about technology a...