Articles about Cloud

I'll be brief, because I'm seven days now with the flu and don't feel much like writing. But today's "open letter" for global government surveillance reform demands rebuke.

I'm all for curbing government snooping, but what about corporations collecting information? Tech Giant's -- AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo -- reform rally is disingenuous and self-serving. These same companies collect mountains of personal information for profit. So, what? It's okay for them to snoop, but not governments?

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The tech world seems to be slowling down slightly in the run up to Christmas, but there have still been a lot of stories over the past seven days. There are sure to be a whole new raft of sales to look forward to both before and after Christmas, but if the Thanksgiving sales are anything to go by they may not offer as good a deal as first appearances would have you believe. Whether you bag a bargain or not, it looks as though tech presents are going to be as popular as ever this year -- and if you buy a Windows device, you'll get a free gift card.

After Microsoft tried comparing the Surface to the iPad Air, Amazon decided to follow suit  -- guess which was more popular! Microsoft kept its fire trained on Google, taking a swipe at the Chromebook. Tablet makers may be pushing their product in the run up to Christmas, but PC shipments have suffered the largest decline ever. New computers will have an updated USB connection in the near future. USB type C brings to an end a problem that has plagued anyone who has ever plugged in a USB cable -- this generation can be plugged in either way up!

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Last month we reported on research showing that 65 percent of financial professionals were putting company data at risk by using unauthorized apps. New research carried out for anti-virus company McAfee shows that the figure is even higher across the enterprise as whole.

The study finds that of 600 employees surveyed across North America, the UK and Australasia, 80 percent admit to using non-approved software as a service (SaaS) applications in their jobs. These applications are referred to as "Shadow IT", meaning technology that hasn’t been approved by the IT department or acquired according to company procurement policy.

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Most businesses by now will have heard of the Google Cloud Platform which lets developers run applications on Google's servers. The company today announces general availability of its Google Compute Engine offering scalable, secure virtual machines running Linux.

In its preview phase Compute Engine supported only Debian and Centos running with a customized Google kernel. It now supports any out of the box Linux distro so that developers can work with a familiar environment but also support software that needs a specific kernel or file system.

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Increased use of mobile devices by consumers means that companies face challenges in terms of making their services and data available on a range of different gadgets. To give customers a properly interactive experience you need more than just a website. The key to doing this is APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) which allow connections to be established between your data and your customer's devices.

But developing APIs can be a complex and costly process. In order to streamline this StrikeIron has announced the public launch of its new hosted API management tool in the form of IronCloud.

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Apple is a company that, generally speaking, likes to keep itself to itself -- but that's not to say it doesn't like to keep its finger on the pulse and learn about what others are talking about. This is demonstrated perfectly by the company's latest purchase. This time around Apple has invested a reported $200 million in Topsy Labs, a social media analytics firm that specializes in monitoring trends on Twitter.

Topsy has access to every single tweet sent since Twitter inception back in 2006, making it the most extensive database of the micro-blogging service. The information available through Topsy is the sort of data that would prove immensely useful to advertisers, but at this stage it is not clear just how Apple intends to use the information. Topsy Labs' tool can be used to monitor trends on Twitter, check the topics that are being discussed, as well as determining the success and impact of online campaigns.

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U.S. Thanksgiving Day comes late this year for retailers, but makes more time for Google to count its blessings and to offer gratitude for them. Oh, they are bountiful, and there is still another month of them to come. The year 2013 will be remembered as one of the finest in Google history. The company has so much to be thankful for, I could have trebled the list.

But for succinctness, I whittle down to those things that mean more than others or that otherwise would be overlooked in the typical yearly review. The list goes from that for which Google should be least thankful to most. Gobble. Gobble.

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The growth in popularity of cloud-based applications has brought new challenges for system admins. Rather than a single set of systems in one place a company's computing may now be spread across a number of platforms and locations.

With the announcement of its new Advanced Cloud Management product ScaleXtreme aims to give its customers a broad set of server, application and service management tools on a single platform.

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CRM data is the life blood of any sales-based business so it's important to look after it. That's doubly true if you're contemplating moving your CRM activity to the cloud. In order to address this, Texas-based backup and recovery specialist Spanning Cloud Apps is expanding its product range to cover the most popular cloud CRM package Salesforce.com.

Unlike other solutions Spanning Backup for Salesforce is embedded within the main Salesforce user interface. This means that backup and recovery options can be reviewed without leaving the package and key activities shared directly to Chatter feeds.

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Cloud storage locker MediaFire has announced the availability of its desktop sync clients for Windows PCs and Macs. The new apps, currently in beta, arrive alongside a revamped web interface that is designed to make editing, sharing and viewing files much easier. The service is currently offering both free (10 GB of storage) and paid plans (Pro and Business), which can take advantage of the new round of changes.

The base MediaFire Pro account includes 100 GB of cloud storage, and currently costs $24.99 per year (50 percent off from the usual $49.99). The company has given us 15 MediaFire Pro account redemption codes to give away to BetaNews readers, providing each winner with 100 GB of cloud storage for a year.

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While Microsoft has its own mobile operating system with Windows Phone 8, the company generously supports its competitor's products too. After all, with its own OS having such a small user base comparatively, it would be insane not to.

Back in June, the company's flagship non-OS software, Office 365, was released for Apple's iOS to the surprise of many. Today, while less of a surprise, Microsoft announces some major changes to its cloud-storage SkyDrive app.

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I'm a Surface Pro user; that I won't deny. I also own an iPad -- it's an old iPad 2, but it still does the job. It may not have the fancy 'more pixels than you can see without the aid of a microscope' display of newer models, but it's perfectly functional. However I'd still pick the Surface over Apple's tablet for just about everything. I'll admit I was tempted by the idea of an iPad Air when it was launched, but after thinking it over a little, I decided to stick with the old model and continue to enjoy my Surface Pro.

But the time will come when I am in the market for a new tablet. Having had my attention flagged by the iPad Air, it would seem that it would be a toss-up between the Surface 2 (Pro or regular) and Apple's offering. However much I think about it, I still find myself falling on the side of the Surface. Why? Several reasons:

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Dropbox, one of the leading services for cloud storage, has been making recent inroads to become business and IT-friendly. The company boasts that its business user-base has doubled since 2012, and now reaches over four million customers. To keep that fire stoked, Dropbox now announces a new partnership with Salesforce.

"Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with Salesforce to bring great technology to the enterprise and help users connect with customers in a whole new way", says the company's Ari Friedland.

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Email is often cited as being the killer application that made the internet take off, and there's no denying it has changed the way the world does business. But using email for business means keeping an archive so that you have a record of conversations. Over time that archive can become substantial and take up a lot of expensive disk space so storing it in the cloud begins to look like an attractive solution.

To help with moving mail to the cloud Metalogix is launching its Total Email Management and Migration product for Amazon Web Services. It delivers a complete service for mail archiving, backup, security, migration and continuity in the cloud.

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Successful sales strategy is dependent on understanding the customer. But for small and medium businesses building up the kind of intelligence database needed can be time consuming and take staff away from the task of actually selling. It can be many months before the implementation of a traditional sales intelligence platform bears fruit.

Software company InsightSquared has used the Dreamforce 2013 conference to launch the latest version of its analytics tool aimed at helping smaller enterprises stay competitive. Designed to work with the Salesforce CRM application, InsightSquared 3.0 has been put together based on feedback from experienced CEOs, along with sales and marketing professionals, in order to provide best practice reports and drive effective sales management.

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