Cloud Computing

An 8.9 Richter Scale-magnitude earthquake that hit Japan Friday has technology experts weighing in on the temblor's possible long- and short-term effects on technology in its many incarnations -- from mobile, social networks and cloud computing to WiFi, mainframes and security. Their analysis is cau...

When the Software as a Service idea emerged from the embers of the failed Application Service Provider model of the past, pioneers of the new generation of software solutions pointed to its multitenant architecture as the critical differentiator that would make it more scalable, economical and succe...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. The administration issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with last month's release of the "Federal Cloud Computing Strategy." Offici...

Hundreds of thousands of Gmail users woke up Monday to find their emails had vanished and they had lost their contacts. Initial estimates put the number of people affected at between 150,000 and 500,000. Google's support forums are inundated with messages from angry users. The Internet giant indicat...

Google has released a plug-in that connects Microsoft Office with Google Docs. Google Cloud Connect for Microsoft Office became available for download worldwide on Thursday. The plug-in brings multi-person collaboration through Google accounts to Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel. The plug-in syn...

Technology leaders in the White House have promoted greater use of cloud technology at the federal level almost from the start of the Obama presidency. Now the administration has issued its strongest backing yet for cloud technology with the release of the Federal Strategy for Cloud Computing. Offic...

Major federal agencies in the U.S. are gradually getting the hang of dealing with open source technology -- a situation that bodes well for commercial open source providers. In a recently released "report card," Open Source for America says that a handful of top level cabinet departments have achiev...

When the concept of "cloud computing" first began to gain attention within the technology industry, I have to admit that I was convinced that it was one of the worst terms ever created. What's harder to get your arms, or head, around than a cloud? Talk about an amorphous idea. Don't get me wrong. I ...

Politicians would give almost anything to garner a voter-approval rating north of 75 percent. However, a surprising number of federal agencies are getting much higher marks for their customer-facing websites than the politicians who oversee agency operations from the vantage of Capitol Hill. Citizen...

Recently, HP fully threw its hat into the public cloud-computing ring, joining the likes of Amazon Web Services and IBM, to provide a full range of Infrastructure as a Service offerings hosted on HP data centers. Targeting enterprises, independent software vendors, service providers, and the global ...

In making a case for outsourcing SaaS or PaaS, it's important to have a solid foundation on which to measure and compare and contrast your actual internal costs against the external service provider costs. It is also important to seek Finance's help in ensuring you add one more piece to your model....

As IT attempts to separate hype from reality, finding the real ROI in cloud adoption can prove elusive. Nonetheless, a demonstrable ROI must be developed as the basis and justification of a cloud transition plan. In this article, I will examine a method of valuing IT resources to build a case for ...

Three overarching, interrelated trends -- cloud consumption, virtualization and mobility -- present themselves as key industry themes for 2011. All have been increasing in importance over several years, and this year, all will reach a tipping point for businesses and information security providers a...

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama frequently mentioned the benefits of information technology, touting the contribution of the Internet to economic growth, and the achievement of innovative enterprises such as Google and Facebook. He pledged to submit a budget to Congress des...

Platform Computing last week released Platform ISF 2.1, which improves ease of use and automation for building and managing enterprise private clouds. Platform's cloud management software helps enterprises transition from internal IT to more productive and efficient private cloud infrastructure serv...