Cloud Computing

A brief stroll through the Google Solutions Marketplace shows you that the search giant is already working and playing well with others when it comes to the business of specialized business software. Need something to give your Google Calendar a little sharing and productivity boost? What about enha...

Following a month of testing at no cost to customers, Microsoft's Windows Azure platform will become a paid service on Monday. The Azure platform is a set of cloud computing services that can be used together or independently on a pay-per-use basis. Originally unveiled in October 2008, the service h...

As the U.S. federal government moves ahead with its cloud computing strategy, it may find that the real bugbear won't be technology but politics. What else would expect on the Hill? Other problems could pop up in the government's approach to security and a lack of adequately qualified staff. Can the...

SaaS and cloud vendors face some critical challenges in 2010: They must deliver strategic value, avoid competing on price alone, convince enterprises to move core business operations, and fend off escalating security threats, to name a few. However, the year also holds the promise of ripe opportunit...

Carbon accounting outsourcing could be the next big thing in the $80 billion business process outsourcing industry. Early out of the gate is FirstCarbon, a carbon data management subsidiary of global outsourcing services provider ADEC Solutions. Launched in June 2009, FirstCarbon is touted as the f...

SaaS has become an increasingly popular model for cloud computing adoption, with 68 percent of U.S. respondents in a recent study reporting adoption of SaaS at some level, and 62 percent of global respondents reporting plans to move toward SaaS in the next year. SaaS and cloud computing represent a ...

Hope was a slogan and a sentiment that played a major role in the U.S. presidential election of 2008, and hope continues to be the mindset of technology advocates pushing for cloud computing in the public sector. As a former government employee with a long history in the intelligence field, I can ea...

HP has significantly elevated its efforts to become an indispensable full-service supplier to cloud computing aspirants, especially telecommunications, mobile and Internet service providers. At Software Universe in Hamburg, Germany, HP this month announced three new offerings designed to enable clou...

Plenty of industry observers are already issuing their predictions for 2010, but I think it is worth taking a look back at the past year's events to see how quickly the Software as a Service and cloud computing marketplace is evolving. So, following are 10 events that I consider bellwethers of the r...

For years, IT departments have had full control over their own infrastructure -- for better and worse -- and are naturally uncomfortable with anything that prevents them from being the sole resource for their own infrastructure. They have been trained to maintain tight control because of the comple...

A trend is not a fad. A fad comes and goes quickly, while trends have staying power. Great ideas become trends when they are widely adopted beyond their original driving force. Such is the case with the marketing trend of direct digital marketing -- relevant digital marketing communications that are...

As we approach the end of 2009, the hands-down winner of the hot IT trends award continues to be cloud computing. Yet the reality is that for many, cloud deployment strategies remain somewhat ethereal -- part theoretical, part vendor/marketing hype, and part vaguely defined future model. At the sam...

After more than two years of crowing about "software plus service" rather than Software as a Service for its cloud computing strategy, the finish line is finally in sight for Microsoft's Azure. The company announced Tuesday at its Professional Developers Conference in Los Angeles that Azure will off...

In a previous column, I described why many IT professionals within small- and medium-sized businesses, as well as in large-scale enterprises, are beginning to embrace Software as a Service, and why managed service providers can't afford to ignore SaaS. A recent industry event brought my previous obs...

By and large, IT favors grand pronouncements and overheated rhetoric, and the industry abounds with "unprecedented" efforts firmly rooted in precedent and "unique" solutions fashioned from the commonest clay. Is that the case with Cisco, EMC and VMware's new Virtual Computing Environment coalition? ...