Are Service Providers Hedging Their Bets?
Transitioning to cloud is not as easy as slapping gear in a data center calling it cloud and you are off and running. Well, you are running - chasing revenue as fast as you can. As I learned from speaking with Sonian, building for cloud delivery is very different that moving it to a data center or virtualizing it. However, it will be a few years before the market grasps that yet.

Multitenant or Single? That is the Question
Deep in the recesses of corporate server rooms everywhere, administrators debate the merits of public cloud computing solutions versus private or even hybrid cloud computing solutions. Security, control, and access - these are all issues being tossed into the dispute. But public versus private is ultimately the wrong query. Rather, IT should be asking 'multitenant or single tenant?' That is the question.

Healthcare IT Leaders and the Cloud: Cautious Yet Optimistic
As healthcare IT leaders move forward with digitizing their electronic records, cloud computing is increasingly being considered a viable option for many provider organizations. There are clear business benefits of moving to the cloud, including the opportunity to reduce upfront capital expenditures, scale up or down based on business needs, improve service with SLA guarantees, and support workforce collaboration and mobility.

Network Control in the Cloud Demands Visibility, Control and Speed
More and more businesses - both small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and large enterprises alike - are migrating business-critical applications to the cloud in the hopes of achieving lower cost and greater efficiency.

MSPs and Cloud Services Converge Through Intermedia's Acquisition of Telanetix
When the deal is made final, Intermedia, which is already the world's largest third-party hosted Exchange provider, will become one of the largest U.S. providers of cloud voice and hosted PBX services for SMBs. The acquisition is one of the latest examples of an MSP and cloud player merging their offerings, narrowing the gap between the two growing segments to create a carefully and fully managed cloud services experience.

BC/DR Strategies and the Cloud
The aftermath of Superstorm Sandy - which pummeled its way through the Northeast last fall, leaving millions without power, cable and phones for days on end - left IT decision makers and other executives seriously considering their business continuity/disaster recovery (BC/DR) strategies. Since disaster recovery is more about preparation than recovery, a BC/DR strategy, even for small businesses that do not have a dedicated IT staff, is critical.

Performance Management in the Cloud: Challenges & Solutions
As technology changes continue to accelerate, service providers are seeking new ways to manage more complex, high-bandwidth, IP-based data services. A consistent challenge for IT managers and administrators is to proactively monitor performance across the cloud, identify threats and decrease any impact on the end customers.

Cloud Computing is More Reality than Hype
Despite the hype, media attention and adoption patterns to date, the cloud is still a relatively new technology with many questions still to be answered. Nevertheless, the concept of moving sensitive business information and applications into an off-premises environment managed by a third party is profoundly changing how businesses think about, purchase, and manage technology. That change has led technology leaders to invest in new strategies, both in their internal operational environments, as well how they approach their customers, with many of the leading technology vendors leading the charge.

Brokering the Cloud for IP Telephony Services
Most recently, the concept of "cloud services brokering," a term defined by Gartner, has described the implementation of this premise to reflect a focus on the integration, aggregation and customization of third-party cloud services and applications.

2013 Cloud Computing Storage Excellence Award Winners
Storage - it's the one thing you are certain to outgrow with time. The massive volumes of multimedia content being produced and consumed are overwhelming traditional storage facilities, leading to an increase in the use of cloud-based storage.

Telefonica Takes Businesses to the Cloud
Perhaps best known as a leader in the telecommunications sector, Telefonica has remained steadfast in its mission to fully support its more than 300 million customers by developing and providing cloud services that are designed for large enterprise and small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) as well as SoHo and consumer markets.

Is the Cloud There Yet?
Cloud computing has come a long way in the past few years in terms of acceptance and implementation, however as 2013 kicks off, the barriers toward adoption - namely security and integration - still plague CIOs considering shifting to cloud-based technologies and services.

Interconnection: A Key Element for Successful Cloud Computing
As cloud computing continues to evolve, there have been a number of predictions about the impact "the cloud" will have on the colocation business. With more customers increasingly interested in either providing cloud services or consuming cloud services on some level, Cologix, a network-neutral colocation and interconnection provider, is indeed enabling the growth of cloud.

Helping Government Migrate their Applications into the Cloud
Government organizations are constantly faced with the daunting task of doing more with less. Many have turned to cloud computing for the answer and made major investments in cloud solutions like salesforce.com. Now, they must migrate their legacy applications into the cloud in order to truly realize the cost savings, simplification and consolidation that cloud technologies can provide.

The Road Toward a 'Cloud-Enabled' Organization is Paved with Good Intentions, But What Are They?
hype around cloud (yes, it still exists) has made it difficult for senior IT executives to know where to start, let alone begin to understand the benefits of what it means to be a "cloud-enabled" organization. The choices, the jargon and the frenzy around cloud is, well, jarring for IT leaders who are in earnest looking to make the right decision for their respective organizations.

2013: The Next Frontier of Cloud
By many accounts, 2012 was the year cloud moved past the hype phase into the adoption stage. In fact, cloud computing is expected to grow 19 percent in 2012, becoming a $109-billion industry compared to a $91-billion market last year, according to Gartner.

Optimizing Cloud Infrastructures, Driving Business Innovation
With the ever-increasing number of cloud infrastructure providers, businesses are now able to choose from a variety of options to align their cloud strategy with their specific business needs. The cloud drives business innovation by being infinitely scalable, completely secure and able to turn on a dime to innovate without any interruption of service or extra cost to customers.

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. Cloud teams often hit a wall when it's time to select and deploy PCI security controls for cloud server environments.

The Future of Mobile Cloud
As more enterprises adopt cloud services and embrace enterprise mobility initiatives, mobile and cloud are converging. With more mobile workers and consumers supporting tablets, mobile content, mobile video and personal cloud services, the IT world is in another state of transition as "mobile" serves as both the protagonist and subject of this unpredictability.

Building the Better Cloud: ServerCentral Puts its High Performance Cloud Infrastructure to the Test
While cloud computing continues to grow in both demand and the number of players in the market, there are only a few real contenders when it comes to public cloud services. Many cloud service providers, including Amazon, may be an affordable option, but they typically do not offer the performance and reliability organizations need to truly leverage the benefits of cloud.

2nd Annual Cloud Computing Excellence Awards
Over the past several years, Cloud Computing has become one of the defining trends in technology, acting both as a catalyst to function of evolution in both enterprise and consumer markets, as well as fixed and mobile network environments. Judging from most analyst and research firm reports, the impact of cloud computing is only beginning to be felt. As questions surrounding reliability, security, compliance, and ROI are being answered, more and more businesses are moving their cloud applications from test scenarios to live production - as many cloud vendors have expressed, "people are doing 'real' things in the cloud now, not just testing and toying around with the ideas."

Cloud Redefines IT Outsourcing Requirements
Amid all the hype surrounding cloud computing, it's still unknown to the extent enterprises are planning for and adopting cloud computing as a replacement for traditional data center infrastructure technologies and management processes. But there has been enough traction among enterprises that IT outsourcing (ITO) is being transformed by the shift to cloud.

Cloud Balancing: Don't Put All Your Apps in One Basket
As more organizations shift toward moving their technologies into the cloud, perfecting the balance of where applications reside is paramount to performance and, most certainly, avoiding potential outages.

Monetizing SaaS: A Survival of the Fittest
With worldwide software-as-a-service (SaaS) revenue forecast to reach $14.5 billion this year, there is no doubt that the cloud phenomenon is reaching a critical mass. Just take a look at the latest industry news and it's impossible to miss headlines about the latest SaaS companies that are taking their product public. Investment firms are pouring millions of dollars into this growing segment because of the promise it holds, yet only the strong will survive.

Why Businesses Need to Put APM in the Cloud Ahead of Anything Else
As more companies look towards implementing a variety of cloud deployments to gain infrastructure efficiencies and operational cost savings, many times planning for application performance management (APM) gets lost in the process of defining the infrastructure requirements and implementation of the cloud components.

Cloud Telephony: It's Not Just Another Buzzword
Turning to the cloud for unified communications, PBX solutions or hosted VoIP can give businesses access to sophisticated communications infrastructure. In fact, small and medium-sized businesses are adopting cloud-based services at rates twice as fast as larger corporations, primarily because they aren't as risk-averse or don't have be concerned about integration with legacy systems. While the best-known service is cloud computing, cloud telephony is built on the same foundation - a vendor provides a product or service in a virtual environment.

Big Data Drives Maturing Cloud Storage Market
Cloud backup and disaster recovery service providers are the companies both consumers and businesses trust with valuable, often irreplaceable data. Although more businesses are looking to the cloud for their storage needs, the industry is challenged with addressing the hurdles that delay widespread adoption.

Public vs. Private Cloud? It's Not An 'Either / Or' Decision
While cloud computing is still in the early stages of growth and widespread adoption is still several years out, few would argue cloud is a game changer. At this phase in the cloud movement, as cloud-based services are on the rise and service providers continue to emerge, it's an exploratory time for businesses which areundergoing the validation of cloud.

TMC Announces Cloud Computing Awards Winners
The First Annual Cloud Computing Excellence Award recognizes companies that most effectively leveraged cloud computing in efforts to bring new, differentiated offerings to market.

SMBs Leverage Enterprise-Class Cloud Solutions
Microsoft Corp.'s global "SMB Cloud Adoption Study 2011" investigated how cloud computing will impact small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in the next three years. According to the research, 39 percent of SMBs expect to be paying for one or more cloud services within three years, an increase of 34 percent from the current 29 percent. It also finds that the number of cloud services SMBs pay for will nearly double in most countries over the next three years.

Data Security: Barrier or Bridge to the Cloud?
Cloud has opened up several IT strategy considerations for businesses, with security top of mind for chief information officers as they evaluate the potential benefits of shifting to the cloud for their computing needs. Cloud Computing has taken an in-depth look at the conceivable risks involved by speaking with some of the industry's leading cloud and security experts on how to overcome these challenges, separating fact from fiction.

Verint Introduces Business Impact Solutions for Operational Excellence

Leaving Fear Behind, Today's Youth Tell the World: This is What the Good Side of the Internet Looks Like

Encoding.com Partners with FreeWheel to Enable Entertainment Companies to Deliver and Monetize Video Content Across All Devices

PLX Technology VP to Address PCI Express in Enterprise Storage at Cowen and Company Technology, Media & Telecom Conference

Cloudian Unveils Cloudian Connector for Citrix CloudPortal Business Manager, Simplifying the Management and Delivery of Storage-as-a-Service