October 13, 2010
Erica Swallow, Mashable

There are a lot of buzz words on the social web these days: group buying, location-based services, SEO, just to name a few. Sorting through the information to figure out what’s just hype and what your business can actually work with can be a daunting task—it uses up resources, including time and money, and sometimes leads you and your social media strategy in the wrong direction. Read the article

January 24, 2010
By Gretchen Grunburg, NewsFactor

SugarCRM CEO Larry Augustin said open cloud innovation will be primary focus for the new year. The company has partnered with Microsoft to provide SugarCRM applications on Windows Azure, Microsoft’s cloud platform. The company also released its Community Edition on Amazon EC2, allowing developers to access, test, and develop Sugar code.

Open-source software-solution vendor SugarCRM appears undaunted by economic uncertainty, announcing that 2009 was a record year for sales, subscriptions and users, and that 2010 holds the promise of global expansion and cloud milestones. Read the article

January 18, 2010
Judy Greenwald, Business Insurance

Cloud computing involves using an Internet browser to access software and hardware on a “cloud,” or network of computers that can be located anywhere in the world, rather than a single, owned computer system.

Businesses can have the power of a supercomputer while no longer having to worry about administering and updating complex computer systems; those duties are essentially outsourced to the cloud computing provider.

Cloud computing also can generate considerable cost savings through economies of scale, observers say. It readily accommodates businesses’ shifting needs because the cloud’s networked servers provide adequate computer capacity whenever necessary. Read the article

January 15, 2010
By Benjamin Pimentel, MarketWatch

Intel Corporation affirmed this week what many analysts have been talking about for some time: That a corporate spending wave is about to hit—and a big part of it will come from the cloud.

After pulling back on IT spending during the downturn, businesses are widely expected to start spending more on their computer networks, and to embrace the trend of cloud computing, in which companies access computing power through a network, instead of in-house data centers.

This push requires new, more powerful, but cheaper and more energy-efficient chips that Intel says—as do many analysts—it is well-positioned to exploit. Read the article

January 14, 2010
By Brandon Bailey, San Jose Mercury News

Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft said Wednesday they will jointly spend $250 million to develop hardware and software products that are designed to work together smoothly in their customers’ data centers and in cloud computing facilities.

“This is all about integrating technology and making things as close to ’plug and play’ as we can,” HP CEO Mark Hurd said during a telephone conference call with Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and other executives, in which they announced a partnership that appears to represent another move toward consolidation in the commercial tech industry. Read the article

January 07, 2010
Dan Morrill, Cloud Ave
If you are in Information Technology (IT) at all, then Cloud Computing is going to be one skill you need to start working on yesterday. As more companies start seeing the economics behind cloud computing, and as computing moves towards a more utility format, this is one skill that if you do nothing else in 2010, is the one you need to learn.

Smaller companies can significantly lower their costs and risks when it comes to trying out new technology and processes for the company. Smaller firms can use the cost savings of cloud computing and dump that into people, programming, and marketing. Utility computing in five years will be a solid business process, and deeply integrated into how people run companies every day. Read the article

January 04, 2010
Charl Dreyer, Doccio
Congratulations go to Nerasha Singh of Maynard Menon Govender, Durban, South Africa who has won a web site and free hosting for a year for her firm, from Doccio.

Nerasha, who was very surprised to hear the news, said that at a meeting earlier in the day they had been discussing how to raise public awareness of their firm.

“This is the answer!” she said.

Thanks to all those who participated in the Doccio ‘win-a-web site’ competition. The response was simply overwhelming. To raise the profile of your firm, get your web site from Doccio.

December 30, 2009
By Buzz, morebusiness.com
Like many business owners, you may be hesitant to purchase a high-line software package with expensive licensing fees, which also require you to hire additional personnel as local network and software administrators.

However, what if your business absolutely needs a specific type of software that just cannot be found on the shelf of Office Depot?

There is good news for small business owners who wish to purchase software packages without the high cost of administration, and it comes in the form of cloud computing, also known as Software as a Service (SaaS). Read the article

December 29, 2009
By Matt Asay, Alfresco
Cloud computing is still more attractive to venture capitalists than it is to enterprise IT buyers, and that’s unlikely to change in 2010. As IT buyers warm to the idea and implementation of cloud computing, 2010 is going to prove to be a very big year for cloud-computing M&A as big-fish vendors like VMWare, Microsoft, IBM, and Oracle round out their cloud product portfolios with little-fish innovators.

Some, like Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, suggest that cloud computing is simply a fad, one that attempts to solve many of the same problems that SOA, EDI, etc. already attempted to fix.

Tell that to the buyers. Gartner expects the cloud-related SaaS market to top $8 billion in 2009, which suggests that real customers [are] paying real money. Read the article

December 16, 2009
By Martin Schneider, CRM Outsiders
It is odd to see a company filled with open source wonks excited about working closely with Microsoft. However, the guys in Redmond have a pretty strong vision for cloud computing in Azure – one that I personally feel is different than anyone making a major play for the cloud today.

Why? Well, for a number of reasons. For one, Microsoft is looking at the cloud as less of a compute power play as many of the early cloud players saw it, and more of a distributed business stack, available at any time and with scale. What I mean is, Microsoft is probably the most application focused cloud player out there. Read the article