Cloud computing for business goes mainstream 6 May 2010Last updated at 00:04 By Tim Weber Business editor, BBC News website Investing in the cloud means less capital expenditure. Cloud computing has been an information technology buzzword for many years. Now it is going mainstream. Bryan Kinsella has a problem. Email is a key management tool but as the company grew it found itself with 40 different email systems across 50 countries for 20,000 employees, with another 15,000 staff offline. Setting up a new single email system with a global server infrastructure would have meant a massive capital expenditure. Instead, he settled on a "cloud" solution, rolling out Google's enterprise email across the company. The Cloud explained But what is cloud computing? Cloud fans claim five key benefits: Cheap: your IT provider will host services for multiple companies; sharing complex infrastructure is cost-efficient and you pay only for what you actually use. Bear in mind, cloud computing is not new. Using the cloud Competition boosts cloud computing
Reveals Top Predictions for IT Organizations and Users for 2011 and Beyond STAMFORD, Conn., November 30, 2010 View All Press Releases Predictions Show Clear Linkage of IT Investments and Business Results Becoming an Imperative for IT Organizations Gartner, Inc. has revealed its top predictions for IT organizations and users for 2011 and beyond. Analysts said that the predictions highlight the significant changes in the roles played by technology and IT organizations in business, the global economy and the lives of individual users. More than 100 of the strongest Gartner predictions across all research areas were submitted for consideration this year. "With costs still under pressure, growth opportunities limited and the tolerance to bear risk low, IT faces increased levels of scrutiny from stakeholders both internal and external," said Darryl Plummer, managing vice president and Gartner fellow. Mr. Contacts Christy Pettey Gartner +1 408 468 8318 christy.pettey@gartner.com Laurence Goasduff Gartner +44 1784 267195 laurence.goasduff@gartner.com About Gartner
Cloud Computing by the Numbers: Skyrocketing Growth Wednesday, December 1st, 2010 Do you know what cloud computing is? Have you ever heard the words ldquo;cloud computingrdquo;? I know it might sound a little bit off for most of you. You are maybe wondering what really is cloud computing. Our prospective is that cloud computing is here to stay and that it even might even be the next ldquo;industrial revolutionrdquo; for the technology sector. If you are still not convinced that Cloud Computing is here to stay, you can and should have a look at this video: Measuring the growth of cloud computing, which will provide you with even more mind-blowing stats. Now that you are aware of those numbers and hopefully, you understand that Cloud Computing is most probably going to shape the future of IT, the next question question lying down is: How should you adopt/embrace cloud computing? (Visited 1 time, 1 visit today)
Cloud, mobile and social to ‘coalesce’ Cloud services, mobile computing and social networking will mature in 2011 and beyond before combining to form an entirely new platform, an analyst firm has suggested. These “transformative technologies” will move from early adopter status to early mainstream adoption, said Frank Gens, senior vice president and chief analyst at IDC. “As a result, we'll see the IT industry revolving more and more around the build-out and adoption of this next dominant platform, characterised by mobility, cloud-based application and service delivery, and value-generating overlays of social business and pervasive analytics,” Gens said. “In addition to creating new markets and opportunities, this restructuring will overthrow nearly every assumption about who the industry's leaders will be and how they establish and maintain leadership.” Gens said these technologies were starting to be integrated already, with cloud and mobile linking up, and social networking hooking up with real-time analytics.
Google launches Cloud Connect to sync Microsoft Office with Docs | Technology | Los Angeles Times Google launched a new plug-in for Microsoft Office called Cloud Connect on Monday, enabling Office users to sync and access their documents through Google Docs, free of charge and without leaving the Office interface. Want to share a file with co-workers? Just send them a link to the Google Docs file. Editing a document in Word, with multiple participants? The file will automatically sync to Google Docs each time someone hits "save." A full revision history is kept as documents are edited, so users can refer to earlier versions. The plug-in supports Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and Excel and is compatible with Office 2003, 2007 and 2010, according to Google. "Once synced, documents are backed up, given a unique URL and can be accessed from anywhere (including mobile devices) at any time through Google Docs," project manager Shan Sinha wrote in Google's enterprise blog. This could up the ante in the battle between Google and Microsoft for a share of the $20-billion office software market.
A Million Free Google Books in ePub - for Kindle - UPDATE FROM EPUB TO KINDLE UPDATE2-4, on 2/6/11 - Original posting was 8/27/09, Update #1 was made 4/22/10. This explains how to get and use Calibre to easily convert any free ePub Google file to Kindle format OR use a conversion site to have it done for you if the book is in the public domain. (10/23/11)SEE THE UPDATED VERSION OF THIS OLDER POST, WITH AN ADDED SOLUTION AND CLEARER PRESENTATION AT THIS LINK: (bit.ly/epub-to-kindle ) The below blog article below is now outdated and has too many off-topic sections due to chronological updates about Google Books, not particularly germane to the topic. Original Posting on How to Convert free Google ePub books to Kindle format Aug. 27, 2009 -- Yesterday Google offered over a million free e-books in EPUB format as well as in PDF format. These ePub files are easier to work with than the PDF ones because they involve text-reflow instead of keeping a page exactly as originally laid out and therefore with words too tiny on small screens. So, Calibre it is.
A Kindle World blog Who will build the next enterprise architects? Network World - Bringing the next generation of enterprise architects up to speed won't be an easy task. While most experts agree that the job is a critical one, given the corporate emphasis building business infrastructure in the most technically efficient way, training these future experts has proven difficult. "There is clearly a shortage of qualified enterprise architects and other with a similar perspective in the labor market…even in an economy with high unemployment," noted R. Scott Bittler, an analyst with Gartner who recently penned the "Innovative, new enterprise architecture degree programs are under development" report. 15 genius algorithms that aren't boring There is help on the way though. "The current financial crisis has created a demand for more formal research and education as well as a need for more agile enterprise architects. So will other universities begin offering such programs?
Cloud Management Could Change the CIO's Role It's no secret that cloud computing has been on the minds of a lot of IT executives. Conference agendas are filled with cloud talk and the Internet is abuzz with it. As more enterprise IT departments move to the cloud, it begs the question: How will it affect the traditional role of the CIO. It's fair to say that there will be changes if the department shifts from a service provider to utility model with usage-based metering. This will cause a shift in core tasks from developing applications and user interfaces and so forth, to a new set of tasks involving defining service-level agreements, selecting cloud management tools and understanding customer service. Usage-basedBefore cloud computing came along, the CIO was involved in strategic technology planning for the organization. The new role involves providing the tools and computing power to meet the changing needs of your users in a faster and more efficient manner.