Tag Archives: cloud services

THE FUTURE OF CLOUD SERVICES

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There is still quite a bit of interest in cloud services, and still no small demand for them. Due to this, there’s been a rush by all manner of service providers, both old and new, to provide cloud offerings to hungry customers. Indeed, of the roughly 20,000 North American service providers, just about 20 percent of these offer cloud services at this time, and this number is expected to grow sharply over the next few years. Yet at the same time, there will be a lot of attrition among these providers, if only because many of these organizations are only regional in nature, and offer only a small array of products — most of them just one or two.

At least that’s what Ashar Baig, a research director at Gigaom predicts. He provided his view on the near future and the recent past of cloud services at the recent ITEXPO in Las Vegas, Nevada. (more…)

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Small and midsize companies in the cloud reap security, privacy and reliability benefits

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Microsoft study shows 94 percent of small and midsize companies gain security advantages — contradicting perceptions that hold others back from adoption.

REDMOND, Wash. — June 11, 2013 — A study released today reveals that, in addition to time and cost savings, small and midsize businesses (SMBs) in the U.S. that use a cloud service gain significant security, privacy and reliability advantages compared with companies that have not adopted the cloud. The study, commissioned by Microsoft Corp., shows that perceptions of the cloud held by nonusers directly contrast with the real experiences of cloud adopters. (more…)

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IBM Delivers New Software and Cloud Services to Accelerate Social Business

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ARMONK, N.Y. – 28 Jan 2013: IBM today announced new software and cloud-based services to help business leaders, such as chief marketing officers and chief human resource officers, advance their organization’s transformation with the adoption of social business technology. The new offerings will help business leaders integrate IBM’s industry-leading social networking and analytics technologies into their business processes to empower the 21st Century workforce and transform client experiences. (more…)

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Meet the ‘Plumbers’ Powering ‘Halo 4’ Infinity Multiplayer

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Members of 343 Industries talk to the Microsoft News Center about the infrastructure behind the “Halo 4” Infinity Multiplayer suite and the video game industry’s shift to a world of 24/7 live services.

REDMOND, Wash. — Oct. 31, 2012 — Meet Jerry Hook and Tamir Melamed, the hardest-working plumbers in the video game world not named Mario or Luigi.

Hook and Melamed lead the engineering team laying the subterranean IT structures that will power every pixel of the multiplayer experience in “Halo 4.” Everything fans experience online – stats, screenshots, the simple joy of blasting a friend or stranger to smithereens – depends on the infrastructure they’ve built over the past year and half. That infrastructure is supported by Windows Azure, which provides the team with the affordable scalability they need to keep a game like “Halo 4” running smoothly for fans. (more…)

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