• Salesforce to launch government Cloud

  By Kenneth Corbin | 25 April, 2012 23:27

  Salesforce.com, already a leading provider of cloud services to the public sector, is doubling down on its government business, unveiling on Wednesday a major initiative to host federal, state and local agencies' computing operations in a multi-tenant cloud environment, along with a new app marketplace and a training program to equip integrators with the skills to help government clients shift to the cloud.

• Oracle quietly plotting ambitious cloud computing plan

  By Brandon Butler | 19 April, 2012 07:39

  During a series of analyst briefings this week, Oracle has provided additional details of how it plans to play in the cloud moving forward.

• IT pro rethinks infrastructure from the ground up, ends up in clouds

  By John Dix | 05 April, 2012 05:39

  Mark Adams, vice president of IT at HireRight, is living the dream -- the chance to completely rethink the infrastructure for a $300 million software-as-a-service employment screening service company. While the nucleus of the 1,600 employee company has been around for 30+ years, a three year acquisition spree resulted in data center sprawl, leaving the company with 10 facilities, including company owned and collocation and disaster-recovery sites, some of them overseas. Now HireRight is three quarters of the way through a consolidation effort with a heavy emphasis on cloud. Adams gave an update on the company's modernization progress to Network World Editor in Chief John Dix.

• Cloud services face taxing dilemma

  By Brandon Butler | 29 March, 2012 06:39

  States are having a hard time keeping up with the cloud, especially when it comes to taxing it.

• 5 signs that you've lost control over your Cloud apps

  By Carolyn Duffy Marsan | 12 March, 2012 21:28

  CIOs are waking up to the reality that they've lost control over access to data stored in software-as-a-service applications purchased by other departments.

• Are you ready for networking in the cloud?

  By Jim Metzler | 31 October, 2011 21:48

  The two primary forms of public cloud computing, Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), are both growing dramatically in popularity. Over the last few years, the primary focus of the IaaS providers has been on offering the basic compute and storage resources required to run applications.

• Is the future of CRM in the Cloud? - Part 1

  By Brad Howarth | 18 April, 2011 11:22

  It is just on 10 years since Salesforce.com unveiled the first preview of its customisable online customer relationship management (CRM) software at the annual DEMO conference in California. DEMO had previously been the launch platform for ground-breaking technology such as Netscape Navigator, Sun’s Java and Adobe Acrobat, but attendees in February 2001 would have had little idea that they were witnessing something that would turn the world of customer management software — and enterprise software generally — on its head.

• Cloud Computing's Three Revolutions: Part 3

  By Bernard Golden | 04 March, 2010 05:06

  I've gotten a lot of feedback on parts one and two of this three-part series on "The Three Revolutions of Cloud Computing." This series is based on my perspective that cloud computing represents the next major platform shift in computing, and will undoubtedly impose as much change as previous shifts like client/server or the rise of the Web. In parts one and two I focused on the changes cloud computing will cause in IT operations and application funding patterns. Now I'd like to turn to the changes cloud computing will cause in applications - and, to be blunt - those changes will be enormous.

• Compliance Under a Cloud

  By Jim Hietala | 25 February, 2010 11:33

  There's no doubt that cloud computing is dominating today's IT conversation among C-level security executives. Whether they're lured by its compelling cost savings or its perceived advantages, security leaders are probing the capabilities and restrictions of the cloud. At the same time, security and compliance concerns remain issues holding large enterprises back from capitalizing on the cloud's benefits.

• Open source helps Facebook achieve massive app scalability

  By Rodney Gedda | 24 February, 2010 09:40

  People all over the world spend a total of eight billion minutes a day on Facebook. Some 3.5 billion pieces of content are shared every week, 400 billion Web pages are viewed every month and the site logs a staggering 25TB of data every day. David Recordon, senior open programs manager at Facebook, talks about how the social networking giant uses open source tools to achieve its massive app scalablilty.

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