Cloud

A huge proportion of us are now multi-device users. In addition to our home computers, there is also a work machine to think about and to this you can add other mobile devices such as iPads and Android phones. Almost without realizing it, we have become used to living in the cloud and web-based email services such as Gmail, and online office tools such as Google Doc, have made it possible to access our emails and files on any device with an internet connection.

There is no reason that the same philosophy should not be applied to files, and this is something that SugarSync aims to address. The latest version has been redesigned from scratch, bringing a new look and ways of working for anyone who managed to get their hands on a new iPad.

We gave you the weekend to ponder the significance to your business. Now it's time to ask: Will you deploy Office 365 (or additional seats), following last week's price cuts? Are you now more likely to adopt cloud-based productivity apps?

Four days ago, Microsoft cut Office 365 prices by up to 20 percent, depending on the plan and number of seats. It's a hefty cut coming at a time of increased Google Apps acceptance among enterprises. Microsoft's calling card is familiarity -- cloud apps connecting to Office on the desktop while providing anytime, anywhere access.

Today, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft reaffirmed its commitment to bring business process software to Azure. Kirill Tatarinov, president of the company's Business Solutions group, promises that Dynamics NAV 2013 and Dynamics GP 2013, which are separately set to be available in calendar fourth quarter, "will run on Windows Azure in an elastic Microsoft cloud". Dynamics AX 2012 R2 is on track for similar release.

Dynamics NAV and GP are designed for small-to-midsize organizations. SMBs looking for an early taste of NAV 2013 will get their chance when a beta becomes available in May, says Tatarinov, during Microsoft Convergence 2012. The next AX version, which looks to be v2014, will evolve into an enterprise cloud service.

Protection software is something that most people will most readily associate with desktop and laptop computers, but even owners of mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets have to take care. It is not just viruses, something that can affect Android users, that mobile device owners have to worry about. It is the risk of losing a device or having it stolen.

Besides the value of the device itself, there is also the data it contains to consider. If you have concerns in any of these areas, AirCover is a free tool for iOS and Android that could help to give you peace of mind.

Is Microsoft's Bing having a meltdown? One of my colleagues just alerted me to troubles accessing Bing Maps. He gets an error message, as do two other BetaNews staffers. We're located in different parts of the country using various cable or DSL services. This is not a localized problem.

The outage appears to be broader than Bing Maps. I also can't get to Bing News, while someone else couldn't get Search, which works for me. Colleague Tim Conneally pinged Bing Maps while I wrote the first paragraph and got repeated timeouts. Are you having Bing troubles today?

Who says Android device diversity is bad for developers? There has been lots of blabbering on the InterWebs about fragmentation and how it hurts Android compared to iOS. Not at Netflix, which claims support for about 1,000 different Androids. Yowza!

Fragmentation is real. As of March 5th, 93.9 percent of the install base was on Android 2.x -- 62 percent on Gingerbread (v2.3.x) and 25.3 percent on Froyo (v2.2). Newest version, Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.x) accounts, for just 1.2 percent, and that's nearly six months after release.

Though it doesn't identify exactly what "cloud computing skills" actually are, business intelligence firm Wanted Analytics on Tuesday said more than 5,000 U.S. cloud computing job openings were listed online in February alone. This is up 92 percent from February 2011, and an impressive 400 percent from February 2010.

Software Engineers, Computer Systems Engineers and Architects, and Network and Computer Systems Administrators are the three jobs that most commonly listed cloud computing skills. However, Wanted Analytics said 2011 job listings weren't just in the engineering and administration sector. Jobs in marketing, sales, and financial and marketing analysis also demanded experience with cloud computing at much greater rates than previous years.

Today, Gartner made a bold prediction about changing computing eras, claiming that the cloud will replace the PC as the "center of users' digital lives" by 2014. Welcome to the cloud-connected device era.

The implications are staggering, if Gartner is right, and keep in mind the firm's core customers are enterprises not consumers -- hence the audience for this staggering prediction, which isn't so unbelievable. Computing and informational relevance has been shifting away from the PC to cloud-connected devices for nearly a decade. I started earnestly talking and writing about it in 2005, when still an analyst at Jupiter Research. Like other trends, this one started slowly and now accelerates quickly.

There are a ton of companies jockeying to become the "Dropbox of the enterprise world," with a managed solution for cloud file sharing, storage, collaboration, and backup with cross-platform mobile compatibility.

Monday, file sharing and collaboration solutions company Accellion Inc launched its own take on this popular niche with Kitedrive, which it bills, predictably, as "Dropbox for the Enterprise." The cloud file sync service first saw the light of day about four months ago, at the tail end of 2011, and it is now integrated with Accellion's mobile file sharing solutions.

Security firm Bitdefender has launched Safebox, a new cloud-based backup, sync and share solution. Safebox, which is currently available for Windows and Android, with an iOS version in the pipeline, offers users 2GB free online storage space, with the option to upgrade to 30GB and 60GB packages.

Like competing products, Safebox allows users to back up selected folders to the cloud where they’re encrypted for storage, synchronizing with other devices and sharing with selected users.

Microsoft's silent Nokia takeover, which started with last year's Windows Phone agreement, is starting to pick up momentum. This afternoon Nokia emailed that Ovi Share will close up, effective the last day of May; I signed up for the service three years ago (gasp, or was it longer).

It's just one of the many Ovi services headed for that great graveyard in the cloud, as Windows Live replaces each and every one. Well, that is until Microsoft officially rebrands Live services some time before Windows 8 launches.

In the United States, unemployment and the scarcity of new jobs is continually a hot-button issue, especially now in the Presidential primary season. But job creation is a topic of special importance all over the world and residents of countries like Nigeria, South Africa, Canada, Ireland, and Singapore are all doing far more searches on "job creation" than U.S. residents.

So is a global shift to the cloud a good thing for job creation? Market intelligence company IDC on Monday released the results of a four-year, Microsoft-commisssioned study (.pdf here,) that says it is. The study predicts the number of jobs that will be created by a widespread shift to cloud computing, and where those jobs will be created.

Panda Antivirus has announced a maintenance release for Panda Cloud Antivirus 1.5.2, promising better performance, a new search engine for its toolbar add-on and a wide number of bug fixes.

Panda Cloud Antivirus is designed to minimize its impact on system resources by tapping into cloud-based processing power to do much of the security tool’s leg work in analyzing, blocking and attempting to remove malware infections. This makes it especially suitable for deployment on low-spec and older PCs.

AVAST Software has released the final builds of its avast! 7 Free, Pro Antivirus and Internet Security packages, each of which include some interesting and welcome new features.

The first you’re likely to notice is the ability to install the programs in Compatibility Mode, which aims to ensure that you can run them alongside other security tools. We’ve yet to test this to see how well it works, but any attempt to address these conflicts is a step in the right direction.

There is some truth to Microsoft's "Googlighting" video -- that somehow every Google product feels like a work unfinished. Good Example: Google Docs for Android, which today got some features that should have been there in the first place. Collaboration is one of Google Docs headline features. But that feature lacked for something on Android phones or tablets. Today's update essentially brings more parity between the desktop and mobile clients.

"We want to give everyone the chance to be productive no matter where they are, so today we’re releasing a new update to the Google Docs app for Android", Vadim Gerasimov, Google software engineer explains. "We've brought the collaborative experience from Google Docs on the desktop to your Android device. You'll see updates in real time as others type on their computers, tablets and phones, and you can just tap the document to join in". Well it's about time.