The speed at which companies have adopted cloud services has led in many cases to difficulties understanding and controlling the costs involved.

Enterprise cloud management company RightScale has a solution to this issue with a new stand-alone collaborative cloud cost management and optimization solution.

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Enterprise information management (EIM) and master data management (MDM) have in the past been complex tasks that have meant tight control of data by the IT department.

Now though MDM specialist Semarchy is launching a new intelligent solution called xDM, designed to deliver control of data to the business user.

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As shown by disruptive businesses such as Airbnb, cloud computing is changing the face of business as we know it. Organizations of all sizes anywhere can now harness the power of cloud-based tools to innovate and collaborate faster and more seamlessly than ever before.

Cloud is becoming the foundation for digital transformation, enabling enterprises to manage the pressure of increasing the pace of their production cycles and boosting collaboration throughout the world. McKinsey estimates that by 2018, more than half (51 percent) of enterprises will adopt cloud as their primary IT environment -- up from just 10 percent in 2015. Indeed, it is no longer often a question of "if" but rather "which" cloud services enterprises should use.

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IT modernization is essential to addressing the needs of modern digital businesses, according to a new report by Avanade. The report is based on a poll of 800 IT decision makers in organizations scattered all over the world.

On average, IT decision makers believe that by modernizing IT, they could boost their company’s revenue by as much as 14 percent. That’s almost $1 billion a year, Avanade says.

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Keeping track of software licenses and ensuring that products are kept up to date with the latest patches can prove a chore for businesses.

Software management specialist Flexera Software is launching a new product that integrates asset and security management for better vendor, financial and risk management, as well as operational efficiency and optimization.

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The cost of downtime due to lack of access to systems for customers and employees was the biggest business impact of a ransomware attack according to 59 percent of respondents to a new survey.

The study from cyber security company Imperva also shows that 32 percent of respondents say their company has been infected with ransomware with 11 percent taking longer than a week to regain access to their systems after an attack.

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While large enterprises have the resources to tackle security issues, smaller organizations can struggle. A new survey of more than 150 IT security professionals at small to medium-sized businesses shows a significant drop in respondents' confidence in the security technologies they've deployed.

The study by security as a service specialist EiQ Networks reveals that 86 percent of respondents say their organizations have underfunded IT security initiatives.

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If you are keeping track of Windows 10's adoption, you probably know that the operating system has hit a plateau. According to NetMarketShare, it has been hovering around the 25 percent usage share mark for a few months now. That said, it still remains the second most-popular version of Windows (and OS), coming after Windows 7.

However, if we look at the business space in particular, Windows 10 is actually nowhere near as popular with PC users. Microsoft's latest operating system lags far behind Windows 7 and Windows XP too. One might expect Windows 7 to come out ahead, the fact that Windows XP ranks higher may come as a surprise.

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Organizations are increasingly faced with the need to support a more distributed environment, with employees accessing data on mobile devices and information stored both in-house and in the cloud.

Keeping these systems secure places a strain on traditional gateway security models, but cyber security company iboss is launching a new Distributed Gateway Platform is purposefully designed and packaged to offer today’s distributed organizations advanced gateway security capabilities.

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Many enterprises still rely on mainframes, while these are inherently secure, audits of user activities have historically been limited to scans of disparate logs and SMF data that don’t specifically capture start-to-finish user session activity.

Mainframe software specialist Compuware is launching a new cybersecurity and compliance solution that enhances the ability of enterprises to stop insider threats by fully capturing and analyzing start-to-finish mainframe application user behavior.

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In an increasingly connected world few aspects of our lives exist in isolation. As a result, bad password habits on social networks can put work accounts at risk.

A new study by account management solutions company Thycotic reveals that 53 percent of users haven’t changed their social network passwords in more than a year -- with 20 percent having never changed their passwords at all. This not only means their social network accounts are at risk but if the same password is being used elsewhere, other accounts are vulnerable too.

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Here's a facepalm moment for you this morning -- a quarter of UK businesses stopped preparing for the GDPR thinking the regulation won't apply once the UK leaves the EU.

The GDPR, or General Data Protection Regulation, has been ratified by the UK and will come into force on May 2018 -- which will almost certainly be before the UK leaves the EU.

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Backups aren't something that you should be doing only once a year, even so like most things these days backup has its own day and has had since 2011. World Backup Day is designed to raise awareness among consumers and businesses of the importance of keeping an up to date backup of your data.

Cloud backup specialist CloudBerry Lab is doing its bit by offering free licenses for its Windows, Linux, and macOS products for a limited period.

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The cloud skills shortage that’s omnipresent in British business seems to be forcing companies to turn a blind eye on candidates lacking certification. This is according to Microsoft’s newly released report, entitled "Microsoft Cloud Skills Report: Closing the Cloud Skills Chasm."

Polling UK businesses for the report, 45 percent said certifications are "nice to have," but just 35 per cent said they’re desirable or essential. The report calls this proportion "surprisingly low," questioning if this could "be a further symptom of the challenges of finding people with adequate skills in the first place".

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UK organizations consider cloud skills essential to digital transformation, according to a new report by Microsoft.

Entitled "Microsoft Cloud Skills Report: Closing the Cloud Skills Chasm", it says 83 percent of UK’s organizations consider cloud skills "important" or "critical" to digital transformation.

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