Changing Channels
For some time, there has been debate over exactly how to define "The Cloud." There's This-as-a-Service, That-as-a-Service, Something-Else-as-a-Service, Can-We-Deliver-This-as-a-Service? Each has a different purpose and is actually more different than similar - the similarity is they are all delivered from somewhere else (a.k.a., the cloud).

Cloud is Here to Stay
I came across a Forbes article recently, which was essentially a compilation of some of the most memorable quotes about cloud, like this one: "Ultimately, the cloud is the latest example of Schumpeterian creative destruction: creating wealth for those who exploit it; and leading to the demise of those that don't," - a decidedly insightful quote attributed to Joe Weinman, senior VP at Telx and author of "Cloudonomics: The Business Value of Cloud Computing."

Metaswitch Asks: Are You Ready to be a Software Telco?
In a recent conversation with Steve Gleave and Carol Daniels of Metaswitch at Mobile World Congress 2013, I learned the company is taking the move to virtualization seriously and their recent product launch of 19 months ago - the SBC, which was developed to run in a such an environment.

The Cloud: The Great Equalizer for the Small Contact Center
Good news. This is changing. Market leaders are now offering powerful, simple and cost-effective cloud solutions designed specifically for small contact centers. And not surprisingly, these offerings are inherently more mature and scalable. Small centers no longer have to settle. They now have access to the same cloud platforms as the big boys. The cloud is the great equalizer.

Open Projects Drive the Open Cloud
Open source software is licensed via an open source license, examples of which include Apache, GPL, GNU and MIT licenses. The copyright holder is usually a foundation established for the purpose, and licenses generally cover rights to study, change and distribute the software at no charge and for most any purpose. The code is developed in an open, collaborative manner by volunteer developers and by commercial entities interested in leveraging the software for use in their own products.

The New World of Hyper-Scale Unstructured Data
Such rich media represents a unique and rapidly proliferating type of Big Data best characterized as "Big Unstructured Data." Usually the term Big Data refers to analytics performed on relative small structured data files. In contrast Big Unstructured Data refers to massive size files as typified by HD video and other video files that are each hundreds of gigabytes. In media and entertainment (M&E) specifically, the advent of High-Frame Rate (HFR) movies, at 48 frames per second, and soon in 60 frames per second and even higher, easily will be generating10's of Terabytes of digital file content per hour. Imagine the countless hours of video that will eventually be captured and maintained across the world.

Shared Infrastructure, Shared Options
Deciding whether to invest in a cloud offering or not on the surface seems to be a simple financial exercise. The ability of the provider to share the cost of what would otherwise likely be expensive infrastructure across many customer benefits everyone with lower costs. And it's not just the capital investment that's shared, it's the ongoing operating expenses associated with maintenance that gets shared, too. But sharing network infrastructure means sharing network infrastructure everything - including configuration options that may or may not be appropriate for your application, and the risk that goes along with it.

The Year of the Hybrid Cloud for the Enterprise
The challenge for enterprise-scale companies is in making hybrid cloud as reliable and as manageable as their time-tested data center systems. To achieve the increased flexibility and cost savings that cloud deployments offer, application management and cloud service vendors are stepping up to provide increased visibility into cloud-based application performance. As IT operations teams realize this shift in management capabilities, they will quickly move to deploy applications in hybrid cloud environments.

Critical Data and the Secure Cloud
Primarily, breaches of cloud data could prove devastating and costly, with any breaches sparking downtime. Still, for increased security, you may want to consider the cloud. While this goes against conventional wisdom, there are reasons it makes sense. One, partnering with a vendor with a dedicated data center and one that follows a holistic approach to serving customers can alleviate security concerns. Why? Because of the single-minded obsessiveness that these vendors must bring to bear.

UCaaS: Recognizing Favorable Shifts and Their Implications for Service Providers
It's undeniable that the unified-communications-as-a-service (UCaaS) space is kicking into high gear. Recently, its growth has been the subject of deep analysis and reports that have confirmed expedient growth for the market over the next several years. In fact, UCaaS subscriber numbers are forecasted to grow sixteen-fold over the next five years, and UCaaS revenues expected to grow almost as quickly, according to Synergy Research Group.

If You Don't Trust the Cloud, Don't Go
Security. Reliability. Functionality. Flexibility. Most of the questions about the cloud have been answered to the point that contact centers are turning to cloud solutions en masse. And yet, among certain decision makers in the business, IT, and the contact center, there are still those that are reluctant to move operations to the cloud.

Five Trend-Drivers for Cloud Security in 2013
What's ahead for the cloud in 2013? You can expect a growing recognition of the ROI-driven value of investments in cloud security. Once considered relatively small, the global cloud security market is projected to reach more than $6 billion in revenue by 2016, according to Transparency Market Research.

Securing the Cloud: Reaping the Rewards of BYOD
The Mayans predicted that the world as we knew it would come to an end on Dec. 21, 2012. However, since this first quarter of 2013 issue of Cloud Computing has found its way to you, we are obviously still here.

Is Cloud Adoption Dissipating?
When you look at what's happened in the cloud computing space in the last 12 months, it's nothing short of remarkable. A year ago, I noted that the increase in mobile app usage in the consumer segment, as well as enterprise adoption in a range of use cases, would help sustain its growth.

Who Should Buy Linksys? And How Does the Cloud Fit In?
Cisco recently appointed Barclays to help it auction off Linksys - consistent with the company's move to exit low-margin consumer businesses as it looks to invest in high-margin areas like software and services. But as the saying goes, one man's garbage is another man's gold. Linksys is indeed a treasure to the right partner like Google or even Samsung.

Taxing the Cloud: Tax Implications of Adding Cloud Communications on Providers of Cloud Computing
This article is intended for informational purposes only and is not for the purpose of providing legal advice. You should not act upon the information in this article without seeking professional counsel.

Did Sandy Shake-Up the Cloud?
This past fall, the Northeast was blasted by a storm named Sandy that left millions without power and thousands without homes. Numerous data centers were flooded and down. All of this happened during the hype of the cloud.

OpenStack: The Good, the Bad and the Future
The OpenStack open source cloud software project is only two and a half years old, but it has already attracted the active participation of more than 200 companies and 6,000 software developers. New deployments are launching continuously across all segments: service providers, enterprises, and even web-scale businesses.

Considerations When Moving to a Hosted Cloud
I have worked with many companies over the past 17 years to transform their business by implementing SAP. During transformation, companies typically review Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of the enterprise architecture and recognize opportunities presented by the transformation.

Can BYOD Make Your Data More Secure?
Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) policies have earned the ire of IT professionals and security experts, but for organizations that have embraced software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions, BYOD can actually make data more secure. The reason is simple: BYOD decreases the chances of user error.

The Next Level of Application Performance Management (APM) in the Cloud
Businesses expect many benefits when they move to the cloud, including greater business agility, significant cost-savings and of course, increased profitability. Careful application performance management (APM) can be the key to achieving these benefits, in more ways than one.

Enterprise Virtualization Clouds vs. Elastic Infrastructure Clouds
Enterprises pursuing cloud computing migration strategies have endured a seemingly endless stream of promises, predictions and obfuscation over the past five years. Finally, a measure of clarity has emerged, one that presents two distinct and differing paths for enterprises making cloud infrastructure choices.

If You've Got It, Use It: Implement a Private Cloud with Minimal Changes
Imagine that you want to remodel your home, adding onto your family room to accommodate larger gatherings. Would it be more cost-effective to tear down your entire house, or just make changes to the one room? Obviously it's best to just change what you need to, but some organizations today think that to take advantage of new technology trends, they essentially have to tear down the house. One area in which this is evident is implementing a private cloud.

The Cloud, Isn't It Ironic?
When the cloud first showed up in the contact center, adoption lagged behind other enterprise applications due to concerns… about security, reliability, control, provider viability, you name it. The initial reluctance of business leaders, IT directors, and contact center management was understandable given the lack of exposure they had to cloud applications and the mission critical nature of customer care operations.

Hybrid Storage in the Cloud: Why Not?
The amount of data and information enterprises are generating continues to grow at a truly staggering rate. Yet it seems very few companies are truly prepared to manage, store and protect it properly. Data is created through a wide array of devices and is distributed across numerous systems, locations, and geographies, so getting a handle on it can prove challenging.

The Seven Deadly Sins of Cloud Computing
Cloud computing provides an increasingly popular way of procuring IT services that offers many benefits including increased flexibility as well as reduced cost. It extends the spectrum of information technology (IT) service delivery models beyond managed and hosted services to a form that is packaged and commoditized.

Is Your Enterprise Cloud Driving Business Agility?
In this article, I will provide seven easy steps to help IT and business leaders make strategic decisions for their enterprise cloud investments and drive business agility.

Fear, Uncertainty and Dumb: The 'Horrors' of Cloud
We've never met. Unfortunately, we probably never will. I, and many of my peers, grew up tinkering, hacking and learning on the hardware that you designed. It saddens me a bit that hardware has advanced to a point where a motivated curious child armed with a soldering iron and a grand vision is simply no match for modern industrial electronics manufacturing techniques.

User Expectations Driving Cloud Adoption
Following the launch of the iPhone 5, the technology world's attention was focused squarely on the new features and enhanced capabilities - as well as those that were still missing from Apple's latest iconic device. In fact, the majority of technology conversations tend to focus on what users can do with the latest hardware, services and applications.

Prevailing Against the Challenges of PCI Compliance in the Cloud
Implementing the technical and administrative controls that will pass a PCI audit is challenging enough in a traditional data center where everything is under your complete control. Cloud-based application and server hosting, however, adds additional complexity to these challenges.

Tomorrow's Cloud, Optimized by Plantronics
Most people think of the cloud as being removed from the local environment because, after all, it requires the addition of a browser to access. But thanks to innovation from the people at Plantronics, the cloud can now reach through the browser and closer to the user than ever before. In fact, the company has an SDK, which for the first time bridges the worlds of mobile and enterprise communications as well as computing. While CTI or computer-telephony integration is not a new concept, Plantronics uses its Spokes software as communications middleware to seamlessly connect mobile telephony with cloud-based or on-premise enterprise software.

Storm of Cloud Confusion Persists
Recently, I covered a somewhat vexing cloud topic that I haven't been able to shake since writing the article for TMCnet.com last month. While the industry is caught up in this "storm" known as "cloud," most Americans believe cloud computing is actually affected by inclement weather, according to recent research. If you were among those who saw this report, you may have been in as much as, if not more, disbelief than I.

The Four Pitfalls of SaaS Monetization
A transformation is taking place in the software industry. Experts agree that the number of traditional on-premise-only software vendors will continue to decrease at a rapid rate and most new software vendors coming to market will focus on building their solutions as SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) offerings. Despite this fundamental shift in the delivery of software, developers still need to pay close attention to maximizing the value of their software from both a revenue and cost perspective.

Winds of Change
The hosted versus premise debate has been raging for a while. The tide is turning. One major reason that hosted PBX is winning is due to the nature of the office. The idea of the office is changing. Freelancers, virtual workers and mobile workers are making the physical office - if there still is one - a hub, but not the place that many workers work.

Beyond the Hype Cycle, Cloud Means Real Business
For the past two years, the hype around cloud has done nothing but grow, with vendor after vendor touting its latest and greatest cloud-based solutions that will help businesses become more agile and efficient. But, as anyone who has followed the tech space knows, hype is always followed by questions.

Five Cloud Trends to Watch Now
It's no surprise to anyone reading this that what the future holds for cloud computing is uncertain - which is why analysis of the market needs frequent review and it's what we strive to provide within each issue of Cloud Computing.

Connection Cloud Brings the Power of 4GL to the Cloud
As enterprises move more and more of their data into the cloud, the reality is they lose more control over the data they store on services from companies like Netsuite, Oracle and Salesforce. In order to get programmatic access to your data you need to become familiar with the APIs of each vendor and then deal with the intricacies of what information they make available.

Is 'The Cloud' a Misnomer?
Dear Service Providers, What do you mean when you say "cloud-based?" Do you mean your solution lives in the ether, accessible to all who pay for it with no vestiges of the old legacy systems?

Securing Servers in the Cloud
By now, everyone knows that security is the number one concern among enterprises considering moving to the cloud, inhibiting cloud adoption. But lesser known is what to do to mitigate some of the security risks and concerns.

Open Cloud Comes to the Enterprise
Enterprise CIOs we talk to are beginning to realize that the private cloud they built to consolidate servers and run legacy applications is not the only cloud they need. The new cloud they're looking to build is specifically architected to run new applications designed to leverage the unique capabilities and economics of elastic infrastructure clouds like Amazon Web Services (AWS).

DR. Cloud: Rx for Recovery
Getting critical data replicated in near real-time to a cloud-based Disaster Recovery (DR) site is all fun and games. Conversely, creating an environment whereby this data can be rapidly deployed in a functional live state is all games and no fun. Here, we highlight a few of the problems that you're guaranteed to encounter.

NAND Flash: Cloud Computing's Silver Lining
The cloud industry's rapid growth is good for business, but puts cloud providers under great pressure to scale to meet growing and volatile performance demands, while maintaining a viable business model. Flash memory solves these problems for several cloud environments, including Web-scale and software-as-a-service providers.

Is UC in the Cloud Right for You?
Unified communications (UC) has opened up a new world of productivity for today's businesses. With all the different ways we have to share information now - voice, video and Web collaboration - managing all these tools within a single interface is critical for efficiency and speed.

Harnessing the Power of Customer Moments
The future of customer care lies in the cloud and mobility, and the killer app for such mobility might be as simple as harnessing the power of customer moments. Think about how we use our smartphones and tablets.

Compliance-Ready Cloud Security for the Enterprise
The regulatory pressure being placed on enterprises today is unprecedented. Factors including globalization, the advancement of technology and large scale failure of controls have driven data security and the manner in which data is shared, transported and retained, to become an integral component of governance.

The Special Sauce
There is no special sauce in telecom. Everyone has the same technology. Last year, there were fewer companies pushing hosted PBX. Today, in my market, hosted PBX is like the new Integrated T1 - everyone is offering it.

The Cloud's Next Step:Increasing Intelligence
For as much as the cloud is still emerging in business communications, its foundation is sound.Now that things like virtual server technology and flexible deployment options are commonly in use,organizations in growing numbers are successfully meeting key requirements for security and predictability as well as control.

Calling All Cloud Skeptics
For conceivably the past three years, we have heard, said and read a lot about thecatchphrase "cloud computing," whichundeniablyhas brought with it some mystique. At first, most people liked the idea of moving resources off premise, but many didn't want to get close enough to actually touch the concept. Times have certainly changed and we are seeing a maturing cloud movement: Even though cloud is still in the hype phase, as we enter the second quarter of 2012, more companies are choosing to move their IT infrastructure or communications into the cloud.

Neustar Aims to Make Mobile App Development Easier
Recently Jean Foster and Steve Edwards at Neustar showed me their Intelligent Cloud service, which integrates rich, anonymized databases from TARGUSInfo with access to carrier network and other information to accelerate developer productivity and, frankly, to enable applications to become better drivers of value for consumers and revenue for advertisers and merchants.

SMB Cloud Forecast: The Future is Bright
The bigger story, of course, is that the cloud enables SMBs to get on-demand access to the same enterprise-class communications applications that have previously beenexclusive to large organizations.Cloud Computing recently sat down with Walter Scott, CEO of GFI Software, to discuss adoption trends in the SMB market, how cloud is helping them level the playing field, and what concerns about cloud are justified or, more important, not justified.Our full exchange follows:

The M5 Case
Recently, M5 Communications was acquired for about $160 million by ShoreTel. The premise PBX vendor caves into the pressure of the cloud communications space both because of the opportunity and the threat. Avaya, Interactive Intelligence and MITEL have CaaS offerings. At some point, ShoreTel had to jump on that bandwagon.

'Undisastering' Disaster Recovery
No matter how you play it, Disaster Recovery (DR) is an expensive hedge. Maintaining a live replica of your production environment in a remote location cannot be reduced to a negligible expense. Cloud-derived efficiencies can, however, make a functional DR solution far more accessible and less expensive. Rather than expounding upon the obvious benefits of cloud DR, this article focuses on the inherent obstacles using a borrowed theme that symbolically parallels the road from disaster to recovery.

Private Personal Clouds: Fact or Fiction?
The recent forced closure of the popular Megaupload cloud file sharing service has left many people wondering about the security and overall wisdom of storing data and content in the cloud.

Assuring Cloud Compliance
Federal and state laws and industry regulations such as HIPAA and PCI DSS require strict controls on what kind of data can be stored, who can access it and where it can be stored. It is possible to have much tighter control on access in fully premise-based solutions, but they tend to be costly, especially for SMBs when they need to maintain multiple data center locations for failover and disaster recovery.

Headache to Nightmare: Email Now a Corporate Threat?
Unsolicited email has always been a nuisance for both users and IT administrators. Recently, the intent of this type of email has taken a turn for the worse. What was once unwanted bulk mail, soliciting products,has turned into dangerous and sophisticated emails with the intent of stealing sensitive corporate data, costing businesses a substantial amount of time and money. Gartner recently reported that advanced technologies must catch the last .5 percent of this advanced spam.It is imperative thatbusinesses stop malicious email before it reaches corporate networks.

Simplicity Scales: A Winning Strategy for Cloud Builders
All cloud systems are inherently complex, and complexity is inherently evil. You can't avoid complexity, since the size and scale that drives efficiency also adds complexity. However, you can choose how complex to make your basic system. A winning strategy for any team of cloud builders is to start simple and then get more complex organically over time. Starting with a complex system means multiplying that complexity as you scale, multiplying the risk of a major failure.

Can the Cloud Cover your Business when Disaster Strikes?
Disaster recovery is like life insurance - it's something everyone knows they need, but no one really wants to talk about, plan for, or spend money on. But, like life insurance, when disaster strikes, you're incredibly glad you made the decision to put that safety net in place.

Why a Cloud Computing Magazine? Why Now?
Most of us know the benefits of cloud from an OPEX versus CAPEX perspective but what is sometimes lost in the move to cloud is companies are also benefitting by being able to focus more on their core competency. Are we in the business of building data centers is a question more and more CXO titles are asking themselves and, except for a handful of markets, the answer is "no." And by focusing on business instead of managing server farms and software licenses, companies are able to be more nimble - scaling their compute and bandwidth needs up and down as their business needs dictate.

Where Will the Cloud Take Us?
Considering business communications once revolved around the PBX, the cloud is mind-boggling. In companies of all kinds, applications for productivity and customer care are now being optimized to address the web, social media, speech analytics, mobility and huge amounts of data. Many of these optimizations, in fact, are delivering similar functionality in creative new ways.

Head in the Clouds
If you ask the cloud-reticent, they will say cloud is still in its infancy and the industry needs clear standards before they will make the leap from on premise computing.

A Business Case That's Hard to Ignore
The past year has seen the use of cloud-based services and applications increase faster than many would have expected. While there's no shortage us consumer usage (see iCloud, GoogleApps, etc.), the same combination of ubiquitous access and ease of management/use offers a business case that is hard to ignore. In fact, the suggestion from IDC that by next year, three-quarters of the U.S. workforce will be mobile will only fuel the fire, as the current growth in mobile data usage will only continue. If businesses can mobilize more of their workforces - either putting them on the road or allowing more flexibility in terms of work environment - because they are no longer restricted by physical network limitations, why wouldn't they?

Cloud Storage: When Does It Make Sense for Your Business?
Businesses are finding that they need to store more and more data, for a variety of reasons. They may be converting boxes of paper files to a digital format, saving all their electronic communications to comply with eDiscovery requests, or simply dealing with the glut of files that naturally accumulate over years of doing business. But all that data is expensive to keep around. The more data a business keeps onsite, the more manpower, electricity and physical space is required to maintain it.

The Evolution of IT Towards Cloud Computing
Cloud computing is a new paradigm for IT that displaces the current dominant paradigm, enterprise computing. This is in the same way that enterprise computing (or "client/server") displaced mainframe computing as the dominant paradigm.

Starting with a Hybrid Cloud Model
Businesses large and small, in every sector, are moving their operations to the cloud - including your competitors. Let's start by defining what "cloud" means and the difference between public and private clouds.

Meeting Regulatory Compliance Challenges in the Cloud
With more companies moving their networks into the cloud, a number of questions remain unanswered concerning corporate governance and regulatory compliance issues in cloud computing applications.

So, You Want to Sell Cloud?
Automobiles make it easy for an ordinary human to propel themselves forward at a relatively high velocity. Although they're easy to operate, the technology upon which they're built is incredibly complex. Cloud is no different in this respect.

Interactive Intelligence Helps Contact Centers Navigate Their Way Into the Cloud
Several years ago, Don Brown, the founder and CEO of Interactive Intelligence, saw a major market shift when he realized that companies were moving many parts of their technology to the cloud, with the potential for communications to be a core part of that shift.

A Force in the Telecom Industry
Not too long ago, there was simply hosting. A service provider would host not just your website, but the product catalog database like mySQL that was needed to provide complete information to your website visitors. Today, we call that "cloud."

Wyless signs agreement with Telefonica Digital to become the first member of the newly created M2M Global Partner Program

Amazon Web Services Achieves FedRAMP Compliance for AWS GovCloud (U.S.) and All U.S. Regions

Orange Business Services expands reach of Flexible Computing enterprise cloud infrastructure services

Samsung Now Producing High-Performance SSD for Enterprise Servers and Data Centers

Cloud has silver lining for telcos