Articles about Cloud

Cloud, cloud, cloud. This is a word that is prevalent when describing modern services, and one that we hear all too often nowadays. The premise is simple: move stuff somewhere you cannot control and leave it to someone (or some company) to do the backend work for you. For CRM software this approach appears to be ideal, as both the developing companies and their clients seem to embrace it.

CRM software used to be associated with on-premise solutions, but this approach has failed to integrate well into the new computing landscape where mobile devices are used increasingly around the office and on the go. A mobile-friendly philosophy is key. I chatted with Pipedrive, a company that makes cloud-based CRM software, about how it leverages the cloud and what the benefits are for its 30,000 users.

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Earlier this month, I delivered a keynote at Gartner's annual symposium and published a blog post about the rapidly evolving landscape of business technology. The rise of cloud computing and ubiquitous, powerful mobile devices means that organizations can reduce their IT bills significantly while boosting employees' productivity and collaboration. Moving to the cloud is no longer a questionable proposition -- it's inevitable.

This led some of the organizations I work with to ask: "That all makes sense, but how do we actually get started?"

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Amazon has continued to roll out its Cloud Player application with the release of Amazon Cloud Player for Mac 2.0 (despite the version number, this is the first release on the Mac platform). The new player is practically identical to the Windows build, which debuted in May.

Amazon Cloud Player, also available for iOS and Android, allows Amazon users to access all music stored in its Cloud Player service.

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Unless you're heavily into the world of data storage you probably haven't heard of Ceph. It's an open-source distributed storage system for Linux platforms designed to deliver performance, reliability via a software defined system that's also very scalable. It's self-managing and self-healing and can be accessed via big data tools like Hadoop and Samba.

Now that you know what it is you'll be interested to learn that Inktank, the company behind Ceph, has launched Inktank Ceph Enterprise. This is a subscription product that builds on Ceph's open-source roots to provide the most stable version of the product with a new graphical management console and a suite of support services.

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Google is in the process of rolling out a series of new features to Google+ Hangouts and Photos, many of which have been designed to save users time. Hangouts gains a new option that enables broadcasters to schedule Hangouts On Air, while a management page in the form of the Control Room can be used by moderators to eject unruly participants should the need arise.

Video call quality sees improvements not only to quality, but also to automatic lighting adjustment. It doesn’t end there for Hangouts. The chat tool also gains the ability to send and receive SMS as well as location sharing. But it is Photos that sees the largest number of changes and additions. Something that will please mobile users who have enabled the autobackup feature is the introduction of full sized backups (rather than scaled) and background syncrhonization.

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Plex brought media server and end-client apps to the masses, making the process easy for even the average computer user. Install the server app on a computer, walk through the simple setup process and then enjoy your music and videos from other computers, mobile devices, consoles and set-top boxes.

Now the company has unveiled its latest improvement to this system -- Cloud Sync. Plex Sync was unveiled last November, and the company claims it has been a major success, stating that "users have synced hundreds of terabytes of media to their iOS and Android devices, and we’ve heard stories from people using it to make their plane trips less boring, vacations more fun, and long commutes more palatable".

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Organizations face a constant challenge to balance keeping their systems secure against the time taken to maintain that protection. Security specialist Sophos has announced an answer to this problem in the form of a product that can be managed from the cloud, providing a simplified approach combined with protection from the latest threats.

Sophos Cloud provides endpoint protection for all sizes of enterprise but because it's cloud-managed it can protect users regardless of physical location. This makes it attractive for companies that have multiple sites or a home-based workforce.

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CAPTCHA are a thorn in the side of web users. Those almost indecipherable string of letters and numbers that are meant to help websites determine that you are a human rather than a spambot often cause more frustration for users than anything else, and they have now been cracked.

Vicarious, a California-based AI team, reveals that it has been able to develop algorithms that can successfully solve CAPTCHAs from the likes of Google, Yahoo and PayPal.

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Google Docs and Google Drive were all I knew when it came to personal cloud document storage until this summer. I never got on the Dropbox bandwagon, and was so entrenched in the Google ecosystem that SkyDrive didn't interest me at first when it came out. While I have nothing personally against Google Drive, as it has served my company and myself quite well, I had to take a deep dive into SkyDrive territory to prepare for an Office 2013 class I taught this past summer. I was pleasantly surprised with the service, so much so that I began using it side by side next to Google Drive for my personal needs.

Fast forward to when Windows 8.1 went RTM, and I subsequently moved my primary Thinkpad X230 Tablet over to the new OS. One of the least publicized aspects of 8.1 has to be hands-down the tight integration between the OS and SkyDrive, meaning you didn't need a standalone app anymore to save/open files on the service. Some have called it Microsoft going too far, but I completely disagree. The service is 100 percent optional (you can still save locally as you would expect) and if you are using a local account instead of a MS account for your computer login on 8.1, the service is a moot point at best.

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The latest web service to fall victim to a hack attack is Buffer, the social sharing tool that can be used to schedule posts to multiple social networks. Although it looks as though customers' passwords and billing details are safe, the problem was noticed late Saturday morning when spam type posts started to appear on users' Facebook and Twitter accounts. The Buffer team has been quick to take action and notified users via Facebook.

Buffer co-founder Leo Widrich posted saying "hey everyone! We greatly apologize for this big mess we've created. Buffer has been hacked." Shortly after this Facebook postings were disabled in a bid to stop the spread of spam and Buffer assured users that "We're continuing to work on this and trying to investigate and fix".

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It is now four months since Google Reader shut up shop. At the time, Google cited a declining interest in the product and many people were quick to suggest that RSS was a technology past its sell-by date used by very few. But this seems to be contradicted by the staggering number of Google Reader alternatives that popped up to cater for the large numbers of RSS fans who bemoaned the loss of Google's tool.

One tool that quickly gained a large following is Feedly. In fact, so many people switched to Feedly that servers were unable to cope, and the service briefly collapsed under the weight of its own popularity. This was a temporary blip and things were soon back up and running. I was one of thousands of people who made the jump -- in fact I had a period of crossover using Feedly and Google Reader simultaneously to help ease the transition -- and things went fairly well.

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We've seen a raft of tools in recent months that seek to combine business intelligence with elements of social networking. Bloomfire's USP in this field is that it seeks to capture the knowledge that already exists within an enterprise and use it to deliver improved employee engagement and ultimately better customer service.

Bloomfire has a clean interface reminiscent of Google+ and it works by dividing content into "feeds". These are designed to deliver content that’s relevant to the individual whilst filtering out noise so that people can find the information they need to do their jobs. Notifications can also be customized so that relevant notifications and tags aren't missed. The result is more time spent on the actual task and less managing the system. In any case it's designed to be used by business people rather than technicians.

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Migrating existing applications to the cloud can be a major headache for companies. Extensive testing is needed to ensure everything works as it should and without it the process becomes something of a leap in the dark. In a bid to help with this Boston based Cloud Technology Partners has produced its PaaSLane product, released today as a free public beta.

The idea behind PaaSLane is a simple one, automatically analyzing the code of an application before migration in order to cut down the amount of manual effort required. Out of the box the software is tuned generically to work with all cloud platforms, so it's compatible with Azure, Google and Amazon Web Services. However, users can define their own rule sets to take account of special requirements or non-public clouds.

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In a bid to foil plans to create a backup of the site, isoHunt closes its doors ahead of its planned shutdown. On 16 October, isoHunt founder Gary Fung struck a deal with the MPAA, bringing to an end a series of court battles that have waged for several years.

Fung agreed to pay damages of $110 million and to shut down isoHunt -- along with TorrentBox, www.podtropolis.com and www.ed2k-it.com -- within seven days.

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Comodo has launched a revamped version of its cloud-backup and sync service with the release of cCloud 3.0 and Comodo Backup 4.3. Part of the service’s unique offering is support for a generous 10GB free storage space, with the ability to potentially double that based on user referrals, with 200MB additional space being granted per successful signup.

The update is accompanied by a complete revamp of the cCloud website as well as support for free home and business user accounts with different feature sets.

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