Articles about Cloud

The prospect of cost savings is touted as a significant benefit of cloud computing, but a new study disputes that argument. More than one-third of US businesses employing the cloud save less than $20,000, according to the study commissioned by IT consultation firm CSC. Nearly one-quarter saved nothing. Going to the cloud does not reduce the size of IT departments generally: only 14 percent report a reduction in tech workforce, while one-fifth actually expand the number of employees in IT through the hiring of consultants.

Cloud computing was recently touted by former US chief information officer Vivek Kundra as a method to save the federal government some $5 billion annually. If CSC is right, Kundra's claims are way off, and actually may cost taxpayers far more.

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As long as you have a fast Internet connection, then nothing quite beats the convenience of online backups. There are no network issues to worry about, no discs to prepare: just set up the backup client and it’ll automatically transfer whatever files you’ve specified at the appropriate time. And better still, by backing them up offsite you’ll guarantee their survival, even if your home is hit by a disaster like a burglary, or a fire.

Of course most online backup services fully realise their advantages, and so will charge sizeable amounts of money to open an account for anything other than the most trivial amount of server space. But it doesn’t have to be that way. And if you’re looking for an online backup bargain, then we just might have one in the shape of AVG’s LiveKive 2012.

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IT solutions leader Hewlett-Packard has been very deliberate about its belief in Hybrid cloud solutions; that is, solutions that integrate public and private cloud solutions into a single, more controlled package. It was one of the top three company priorities erstwhile CEO Leo Apotheker outlined earlier this year, for which the company has set aside $2 billion in financing.

This week at HP Discover 2011 in Vienna, Austria, HP announced a series of additions to its cloud solutions portfolio many of which utilize this hybrid architecture and integrate solutions from HP's partners, as well as logistical solutions such as consultation, education, management, testing, and training.

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If you live in Seattle, it's hard not to think about clouds. The mean number of cloudy days a year is 255.5, with another 81.6 partly cloudy. That's a whole lot of overcastness (go ahead, tell me that's no word). Perhaps the skies above remind Microsoft employees below about the importance of "the cloud" to the company's future. Today, Microsoft reminded everyone with some stats on its cloud computing progress and updates to Office 365 and SkyDrive. However, beneath today's announcements there are signs of drought, with only a small number of enterprises embracing Microsoft's cloud.

The Redmond, Wash.-based company is enhancing both services and has broadened availability, 22 more countries -- including Argentina, Iceland, Indonesia, South Africa and Taiwan -- for Office 365. SkyDrive gets a modern makeover, including HTML5 enhancements that are in line with broader Microsoft development objectives for Internet Explorer 10 and Windows 8.

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Ashampoo’s Burning Studio has never made quite as many headlines as the big disc burning suites, perhaps because the program concentrates on ease of use rather than forever adding unnecessary "bonus"features that you’ll never use.

The package still manages to include interesting capabilities that you won’t always find elsewhere, though, like the ability to create interactive autostart menus for your data discs. And the latest release, Ashampoo Burning Studio 11, continues this tradition with easy and time-saving integration for your Facebook, Dropbox, Picasa and Flickr accounts.

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By now, we all can see that the Internet will become the dominant media distribution platform.
We can easily imagine (and expect) that all content will be digitized and distributed online. Every song, every movie, every video game, every software program, every live television event, every business document and more will be instantly searchable and retrievable via a range of connected devices. It will all be magically available to stream or download on-demand through "the Cloud".

This was the dream when I started my first Internet business in 1995. Now, people think it is the reality. And, while we are making great progress towards such a future, unfortunately, we are not there yet. The demand for online media consumption is simply too great and is growing even faster than we can deploy cloud services to meet it.

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"Beginning this week Acer and Samsung Chromebooks will be available starting at $299", Googler Venkat Rapaka blogs today. Is that price low enough for you or perhaps as present for a relative? For $100 more than Kindle Fire, you get a keyboard, double the storage (16GB vs 8GB), similar cloud connected benefits, comparable battery life and bigger display. Well, I had to ask.

If you want to answer, fire off in comments. This is a serious question. Because there is a right price, one making Chromebook an appealing alternative to a new laptop or tablet. Before the price cuts, Acer and Sumsung models started at 349.99. Some commenter surely will claim price cuts are sure sign Chromebooks aren't selling well. Oh yeah? Consider this: Samsung is releasing a black Series 5 Chromebook (to go alongside grey and white ones) and prices fall for lots of reasons, such as economies of scale when products sell well, lower component prices or holiday prices. Reasons aside, is $299 low enough for you?

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IObit has launched version 5 of its all-encompassing PC maintenance, optimization and security suite. Advanced SystemCare 5 sees the debut of ActiveBoost technology, a background process that aims to keep the computer running smoothly through intelligent management of system resources.

Advanced SystemCare features a new cloud-based database for up-to-the-minute updates, redesigned user interface and enhanced Quick and Deep Care modules. The system tool has also been rewritten with a brand new architecture and source code to extend compatibility to both 32- and 64-bit operating systems.

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In `80s classic movie "Back to the Future", young George McFly approaches Lorraine Baines and flubs his introduction. Meaning to say "I'm your destiny", McFly nervously utters: "I'm your density". For business of all sizes, density is their destiny as they look ahead to the post-PC era and either acquiring or outsourcing massive datacenter capacity.

The three years ahead will be tumultuous, as businesses look to balance converging and contradictory priorities as they rush to the cloud, or sometimes not. Any organization offering connected services -- whether to employees, business to business or business to consumer -- must think about expanding density as their destiny. Should they consolidate server capacity through virtualization, build datacenters or outsource capacity to cloud providers such as Amazon and Microsoft? There is no stock answer, because businesses' different sizes, global or local reach, IT budgets or operational needs vary so vastly. But there are trends that will hugely affect decision-making.

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There is no shortage of cloud file sharing and sync services today, and most of them focus on mobile accessibility: Dropbox with Dropsync, Box.net, SugarSync, YouSendIt…there are tons of options.

As a user, strong competition among service providers is a wonderful thing, so it's a great time to be a user of cloud file management systems.

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Apple has pushed out the latest version of its media player and management software -- iTunes 10.5.1. The latest version of the app is not big news in itself, but the release coincides with the much anticipated launch of iTunes Match, in the US market at least. The service has been expected for some time, but a series of delays pushed the release date back slightly. Now, at long last, iTunes Match is here.

The subscription service will set you back $25 per year and enables you to access your entire music collection in the cloud. The latest version of iOS has seen Apple expressing a greater interest than ever before in life in the cloud and this foray means that it will now be possible for those willing to stump up the annual fee to access their music collection from any internet connected device without the need for manually copying of files.

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Online storage services can be a great way to share documents or back up key files. Of course they all have their own interfaces and clients, though, so if you use more than one then you’ll have plenty of software to install and master.

But maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. Cloud Turtle (from Genie9, the company behind the Genie Timeline backup package) doesn’t only work with Genie9′s own Timeline Cloud service, where it enables you to search your backed up files, restore any you need, stream music and videos, and more. It also delivers equally strong functionality with both Amazon S3 and Nirvanix accounts.

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Cerulean Studios has updated its Windows cross-network IM chat tool, Trillian for Windows, to version 5.1. The major new addition to this multi-platform social-networking tool is support for Skype, which joins other notable networks such as Facebook, Windows Live Messenger and Twitter in being supported.

Trillian provides a one-stop shop to all your major chat accounts as well as social-networking sites. Skype support extends to chatting and voice calls only; video chats aren’t (yet) supported.

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Network security company Palo Alto Networks on Monday introduced a new anti-malware product for on-premises firewalls known as WildFire, which vets new and unknown files in a virtual sandbox to see if they're a new piece of malware, and then creates a distributable signature if they're determined to actually be bad files.

With the WildFire engine in place, a firewall will submit (either manually, or automatically based on policy) new and unknown .EXEs and .DLLs to a virtual cloud-based environment, where they are modeled against 70 different behavioral profiles to determine if they're malware.

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That's my response to the question "Does the Siri outage reveal its success?" posed by Darrell Etherington at GigaOM today. Etherington's post will be one of many Apple apologies that you'll read, following Siri's collapse yesterday. There are conflicting reports about timing, but five to six hours is fairly consistent.

I expect the typical fanboy comments to this post -- like those yesterday to my "Why can't Apple get iPhone's design right?" -- accusing of linkbaiting and being an Apple hater. Not so. In the Apple crowd, no one can hear you scream because they're all shouting you down.

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