Articles about Cloud

Another Thanksgiving arrives here in the United States, and some people consider what they have to be grateful for. I celebrate by talking turkey, not just eating it, about the companies I cover. It's tradition, going back to 2006, that I present the things Microsoft should be grateful for.

Last year, 11 items made the list, keeping with the 2011 theme. For 2012, I reduce the list to eight; my hat tip of respect to Windows 8, which launched nearly a month ago. There are many more things Microsoft could be grateful for, but I chose some that might not readily come to mind. The list goes from least to most important.

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Cloud IT management platform Panorama9 on Tuesday introduced Mac patch management to its pay-as-you-go solution, unifying Windows and Mac OS patch deployment in its IT dashboard.

We first looked at Panorama9 in October when the company added Mac and Linux support to its contract-free asset and compliance management platform. The service itself is still very new, and is rapidly growing its functionality in the interest of providing small and medium sized businesses affordable cloud IT services.

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Networking leader Cisco announced on Sunday evening its intent to acquire San Francisco-based cloud networking company Meraki Inc. Cisco will pay approximately $1.2 billion in cash and incentives to acquire Meraki, and the deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2013.

Meraki's portfolio of technologies includes a broad range of networking solutions, including mesh Wi-Fi, switching, security, and cloud-based mobile device management which currently target midmarket companies. In other words, companies with annual revenues between $100 million and $1 billion. In the United States, this market segment is made up of approximately 200,000 companies, and it is looked at as a growth market for tech infrastructure providers.

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Acronis International has released a beta version of True Image Lite 2013, a stripped-down version of its True Image backup tool.

The new release ditches disk, partition, email and file backup types, for instance (there’s non-stop backup and online backup only). There are no full or differential backups (just incremental). No scheduling, no backups to CDs, DVDs or Blu-ray, no option to create a bootable recovery disc, and of course none of the extensive settings you’ll find in the full True Image package.

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This week was big for consumer cloud storage services, Dropbox passed 100 million users, Box rolled out an overhauled Android app, while Microsoft's SkyDrive got new selective sync and simpler sharing functionality.

In addition to all of the news, I had one of those personal moments where cloud storage kind of saved my ass this week. But where the cloud helped me immensely, it didn't save everything.

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This week, Google brought a little something from ill-fated Nexus Q to Google TV. Even my non-techie wife is amazed, and that's the point. This little something is really big, because anyone can use it and get dramatic benefits.

The new YouTube for Android app installed on smartphone or tablet now acts as a remote control to Google TV, taking interaction far removed and clumsy and making it intimate, fun and easy. If Amazon and Netflix operated similarly -- and the set-top box got Hulu Plus -- I'd cancel AT&T U-verse, baby.

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Microsoft has clearly begun to focus more heavily on the cloud for both businesses and consumers. The company has integrated Skydrive into both Windows 8 and Office 2013, and even some recently announced SharePoint features included SkyDrive integration into the social and collaboration app for business. Now, today, it has rolled out two more improvements to the cloud storage service.

Along with the brand new features that were rolled out today, Microsoft's Mike Torres, Group Program Manager for SkyDrive apps, couldn't help tooting the company's own horn a bit by trumpeting that SkyDrive has doubled in usage -- "in the last 6 months, you have doubled the amount of SkyDrive storage being used." This is too vague to indicate any real numbers of storage or users so that will remain open to interpretation for now.

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Enterprise content management application Seismic launched in the Windows 8 app store today, bringing Microsoft's new operating system its cloud-based method of managing branded marketing and sales materials in a single, touchable interface.

Seismic began its life under the name Nu:Pitch last year, and was originally a somewhat humble Powerpoint application that could pull data from Microsoft CRM Dynamics, Salesforce, and other libraries so presentations with live business intelligence could be completely portable.

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Cloud-storage provider SugarSync Inc has launched SugarSync 2.0 Beta, a brand new version of its cross-platform desktop application for backing up and syncing folders between multiple computers and devices.

Version 2.0, which comes with 5GB free storage as well as paid-for plans, has been redesigned from the ground up, ostensibly to make sharing and syncing quicker and easier. It also provides direct access to the cloud storage via Windows Explorer and Finder for the first time, plus introduces a new cloud-wide search tool.

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Following the foray into Windows 8/RT territory, cloud storage service Box announced an overhauled app for Android devices today. Box for Android 2.0 delivers a number of new features such as document preview and offline folders on top of under-the-hood changes. But even though the name might suggest otherwise it is not limited to Eclair green droid users.

One of the most noteworthy features added to Box for Android 2.0 is document preview. Similar to other green robot competitors like Google Drive, it can render more than 75 types of files within the app without having to resort to third-party solutions. For working outside the grid, the updated Box can now also save folders in encrypted form for offline use on top of individual files. Outdated content will be reported after changes are performed.

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Users are becoming accustomed to Adobe security flaws these days. After all the company did occupy five of the top-10 spots in the recent Kaspersky report. While the "occasional" Flash bug can be dealt with, having one's user information stolen is a whole different story, but that is exactly what sources are claiming and Adobe is confirming by shutting down the service in question.

"Adobe is currently investigating reports of a compromise of a Connectusers.com forum database. These reports first started circulating late during the day on Tuesday, November 13, 2012. At this point of our investigation, it appears that the Connectusers.com forum site was compromised by an unauthorized third party. It does not appear that any other Adobe services, including the Adobe Connect conferencing service itself, were impacted".

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We already know that Facebook is a pretty popular social network and Windows 8, if Steve Ballmer is to be believed, appears to be off to a good start, but what if you combined that cool new Start screen with the Facebook timeline? Then you would get the new Cover Creator just released by Microsoft.

The company posted the new app today accompanied by a very brief description -- "It’s a new Facebook app from the Windows team that connects to your social stream to create a new Cover Photo. It’s fast and easy and has a degree of customization so you can pick and choose which photos and apps appear in certain tiles."

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Popular cloud storage service Dropbox has surpassed 100 million users in its five years of activity. To celebrate the event, the company will give 10GB of extra storage to users that post 160-character stories about how they use Dropbox. The company will pick a hundred of its favorite ones to be declared as winners.

Apart from the publicity generated by this promotion, there is another side of the coin. Users that post their stories provide an interesting insight on how cloud storage integrates with different types of lives and professions. Obviously Dropbox is used for sharing files, right? Right. So how are people using it differently?

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You may know Citrix for collaboration and support software like GoToMeeting and GoToAssist, but the company is a lot more than just those two apps. It also is into virtualization services and has even got into the cloud business recently with services like XenServer, CloudGateway, CloudPortal and more. Back in 2011 Citrix purchased the domain Cloud.com. So far the company has quietly sat on the URL, but now it appears the company has something in mind.

The domain was created way back in 2000 and is currently registered through 2017. For now, Citrix isn't giving much information about what it has planned and the site's Twitter account has been silent since April 3rd. At that time, Citrix proclaimed: "We're hiring Ruby on Rails Ninjas for an awesome new product. Any candidates out there? Drop us a note". Citrix is tweeting through their @cloudstack address, indicating that Cloud.com may have something to do with that service.

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Google Play Music launched last year, beginning its life known simply as Google Music, growing up quickly since its humble private beta beginning. The app and web service officially launched in late 2011 and have grown quickly since then. Now the latest update has just been pushed out today to Google Play. The search giant also recently announced availability of the store and also Nexus devices in Europe and Australia as well as in the United States directly from Google and T-Mobile.

First, as for the brand new Play Music update, Google has added several features that should enhance the user experience. The update rolled out quietly without any official press release or even a post to their Android blog where these announcements frequently appear. So what is new in version 4.4.811H you ask?

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