Articles about Cloud

Typing is just so passé; swiping is very much where it's at these days. SwiftKey's latest Android beta adds interesting new cloud features that can be tested for free during the beta phase. What’s new? Backup and sync options mean that dictionaries can be synchronized between multiple devices, and upgrading your phone need not result in having to start from scratch.

But perhaps the most interesting feature is the introduction of trending phrases. Whether you're writing in English, Spanish, French, Portuguese or Brazilian Portuguese, SwiftKey analyzes trending topics on the likes of Twitter to help bolster its dictionary and provide better suggestions.

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Forecasting enterprise cloud costs can be hard to do well but is essential to businesses who want to implement cloud solutions effectively. RightScale announces today that its PlanForCloud product has helped companies forecast $1 billion in cloud spending since its launch last year.

By analyzing data from more than 9,500 cloud deployments, PlanForCloud has revealed a number of interesting trends. For example 70 percent of cloud spending goes on servers, 18 percent on storage and only 6 percent on data transfer, with a further 6 percent accounted for by other costs such as transaction charges and support.

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The release of Windows 8.1, complete with the more tightly interwoven SkyDrive, brings Microsoft's cloud storage service to the fore. In a new blog post, Mona Akmal from the SkyDrive team explains how the service is able to make files available on all of your devices without eating up too much bandwidth. How is this done? It's largely down to "placeholder" files.

The obvious solution to making all SkyDrive files available on all of your devices would be to simply sync everything. But when it comes to tablets and phones, it is entirely possible that the amount of available local storage is far lower than the amount of cloud storage space that has been used. Placeholders are essentially "ghost" files that take up a fraction of the space of the original.

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Tableau Software has launched a SaaS version of its Tableau Server business analytics product. The software allows users to explore and share corporate data in a reliable and secure way without the need for specialist support.

"Tableau Online will allow people to get their analytics up and running in minutes and add users in a few clicks," says Chris Stolte, Chief Development Officer and co-founder of Tableau Software. "It's completely scalable and secure and requires no infrastructure. It's the fastest way to get everyone in your company using powerful analytics to make better decisions today".

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As if moving to shiny new headquarters in Austin, Texas, wasn’t enough to keep the firm busy, Spanning Cloud Apps has just added a raft of features to Spanning Backup for Google Apps, its enterprise-class data protection solution.

The Spanning Backup Summer ’13 Release adds functions designed to help large organizations protect, manage and repair their Google Apps data, handle large user bases, and comply with complex regulatory and policy requirements.

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Microsoft slipped one under the radar for everyone who relies on its Azure service for Windows virtual machines. In a move that even took me off guard, Microsoft has reversed a longstanding policy of not allowing any form of RDS (Remote Desktop Services) on Windows Azure.

Previous policies strictly enforced remote desktop access on Azure only for the purposes of "administration and maintenance." As of July 1, this stumbling block for many Azure early adopters is finally gone, with a few caveats which I'll point out shortly.

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We're used to sharing information via social networking in our personal lives, but in the business world the impact of this has so far proved limited. Enterprise software supplier Deltek hopes to change this with the launch of Kona Business, a premium version of its cloud-based social collaboration and productivity tool.

A cross between a calendar, social network and project management tool, Kona Business brings together all of the interactions between people working on a project, allowing them to get things done more effectively and more quickly, and as it's in the cloud it can be rolled out easily via browsers or through Android and iOS apps.

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BitTorrent has been making waves recently with the release of its Sync client. To its credit, the organization seemed to see the coming privacy apocalypse that we have fallen into over the past few weeks, and built features into the service that it hopes will protect customers.

What began as private testing and entered alpha in April, is finally growing up. Christian Averill, a company representative, told BetaNews "BitTorrent Sync was designed to solve what we see as real, fundamental challenges to data synchronization: limitations on privacy, file security and dependency on cloud infrastructure. Also, limitations on speed, size, and space".

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Analyst group Gartner says in a new report that the global market for IT outsourcing is set to reach $288 billion this year. This though represents an increase of only 2.8 percent and growth is slower than predicted by previous forecasts.

Bryan Britz, research vice president at Gartner says, "Planned new adoption of ITO remains positive in all service line segments. However, constrained IT budgets, an evolving ITO delivery model, economic conditions and cost-focused buyers are limiting the growth potential of the ITO market".

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Acronis International has announced the first public beta of its flagship backup tool, Acronis True Image 2014.

The big addition in this release is fully integrated support for backing up your system to Acronis Cloud, the company’s online storage service. Or some of your system, at least (the trial and full versions come with 5GB of storage space, free for 1 year).

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One of the things that puts businesses off moving their systems to the cloud is the problem of migrating all of their applications and data to a remote platform. Californian company CloudVelocity aims to address this with its launch of One Hybrid Cloud, a package that streamlines the movement of information to Amazon Web Services (AWS).

One Hybrid Cloud effectively makes AWS an extension of the corporate data center, making it possible to run existing Linux and Windows apps in the cloud without modification. It automates many of the processes required to migrate apps to the cloud and in the process the developers reckon it can reduce migration expenses by more than 90 percent.

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Point.io has released its new Baas (Backend as a Service) platform. Aimed at document management and workflow, Point.io's offering is designed to help companies maintain control of their content whilst enabling BYOD (Bring Your Own Device).

The application allows developers to build mobile apps that let users access and share content on any device efficiently and securely. Ron Rock, CEO of Point.io says, "By design, enterprises have been locking down their content for decades, but with the shift in workforce mobility it's become critical that content, and the workflows that thrive on it, are unleashed to devices beyond the corporate firewall".

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When Active Directory first hit the enterprise computing scene over a decade ago, the tech pundits dismissed AD as just another Microsoft sideshow. Something that would never see any widescale adoption in the face of NetWare and other heavy hitters in the LDAP arena. Even longtime Microsoft watcher Paul Thurrott got it wrong and doubted success. Thirteen years later and organizations small and large live and die by their Active Directory domains.

It's funny, then, that AD is the sole dinosaur running atop on-premise servers at corporations worldwide which supposedly "can't" be moved to the cloud. Microsoft has been busily converting its on-premise products into cloud platforms with relatively good results over the last 3-4 years. While Microsoft surely doesn't want to become a has-been within the physical server arena for organizations hesitant to move to the cloud, it no doubt has been playing two face when it comes to on-prem vs cloud-hosted solutions.

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Development company FatFractal has launched its new Cloud-in-a-Box solution to make it easier for enterprises to deploy software in public or private clouds or in traditional data centers.

The company's Platform as a Service (Paas) and Backend as a Service (BaaS) products allow developers to create tailored solutions without the need for repetitive steps. FatFractal CEO, Kevin Nickels says, "We've hit the right balance between out-of-the-box services like security, scalability and performance without limiting the developer’s ability to do whatever they want".

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One man's virus is often another's legitimate program or cookie, so whatever antivirus software you have installed it's always useful to be able to get a second opinion from time to time. There are already a number of online scans you can use for this and BullGuard is the latest to join the party with today's launch of its own free scanner.

Unlike some of the alternative offerings, BullGuard works by adding a plug-in to your browser. This lets you run the scan at any time with just a single click on a toolbar button so you don't have to remember the website address or where you filed the bookmark. It supports all of the popular browsers too. The scan, which took just a couple of minutes using the Chrome plug-in on my -- not quite as fast as it used to be -- Windows 7 laptop, looks for viruses and checks that your current security is up to date.

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