IBM showed strong protest over the $600 cloud project agreement that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) supposedly awarded to Amazon. The giant companies, Amazon and IBM continue to battle for the intriguing cloud contract as each pushes its old and new business solutions for the CIA. Amazon Web Services (AWS) already announced that it…
Hewlett Packard (HP) is ready to take the cloud on a new level as it explores a road no other cloud player has taken, even when it appears crazy to some. Some of the cloud plans include the Moonshot gear, Analytics-as-a-service and many other unusual ideas. With this new revamp, HP hopes to attract a…
Today, IBM, one of the world’s largest cloud computing vendors, is announcing an agreement to acquire SoftLayer, the world’s largest privately held cloud infrastructure provider. CloudTimes has been covering Softlayer over the last years. For recent articles see here. This acquisition will: Speed IBM’s ongoing focus to provide cloud services for the Fortune 500 which…
by Andi Mann Despite the inclination to wait until all of the cloud’s kinks have been worked out, holding off on cloud initiatives until the industry matures won’t guarantee success. The fact is, the greater an organization’s experience with cloud, the greater the benefits. This is one of the key findings in CA Technologies’ “TechInsights…
The exclusive club of billionaires cloud has a new member in its ranks: Microsoft. Windows Azure, one of the four professional cloud services from Microsoft (with Office 365, Dynamics CRM Online, and Windows Intune), have over the last 12 months reached the symbolic first billion dollars in revenue. According to Microsoft, for the last six…
Cloud computing is catching on in business, but not all alike, as recent reports say. For example, the firm RightScale that mediates between users and public cloud services announced the latest analysis on the issue and found that 75 percent of respondents are using the cloud to some extent. Companies with more than 1000 employees…
by Erik Grueter Cloud computing is set for a number of big shakeups this year. The big story is in the effect these changes will have on smaller businesses. Public clouds that can be accessed cheaply and without a big IT overhead are likely to be chosen by small, developer friendly companies. Big data is…
Traders and users who want to use cloud, smartphones and tablets as mobile payment devices card processing should be cautious and wait for the availability of greater protection techniques. It is a recommendation of the PCI Security Standards Council, which considers that, in its current stage, these systems introduce new security challenges. The PCI Security…
Despite the many advantages provided by cloud computing technology, the rate of adoption among large enterprises has been surprisingly slow, especially when compared to the way SMEs have embraced the technology. The main reason for the slow rate of adoption is the fact that migrating to the cloud would generally require the discarding of many…
In a troubled economic environment, the public cloud services market in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) is expected to increase by 24.5% in 2013. In a new report published by the research firm Gartner, the MENA region will generate $462.3 million in revenue during 2013. Gartner projections also indicated that the growth rate…