A recent survey of small businesses shows a moderate increase in IT spending ahead. Conducted by Spiceworks, the survey questioned the IT spending habits and budget plans of 1,250 small businesses. The modest gains are driven in part by a need to refresh long-held hardware.
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Continue reading " Aging Hardware Drives IT Spending at Small and Mid-sized Companies "

As the fallout from Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystems continues, customers remain rightly concerned as to how Oracle might try to wring profit from Sun’s software portfolio, including the Java platform. True, most of that software is open source. But while Oracle has long contributed to various independent open source communities, it’s much more reluctant to give its own products away.

Continue reading " Cloud-based Java offers risks and rewards "

Salesforce.com and VMware demonstrated VMforce on April 27 in San Francisco. Here are some pictures and screenshots from the demo that put some meat on the bones of the announcement. In bringing Java application development to the cloud, the two companies are aiming to set the stage for what Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff called mobile Internet computing.
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Continue reading " VMforce Mixes Java Application Development with Cloud Infrastructure "

HR departments view SaaS as a way to stay on top of recruitment and other company goals, according to a new survey from Saugatuck Technologies and Plateau Systems. But CIOs must make sure that support comes with the package.
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Continue reading " Human Resources Turns to SaaS "

Cisco Systems is offering new e-mail and Web security services that attempt to make cloud computing more secure. The services are part of Cisco’s larger Secure Borderless Network architecture. In a separate announcement, Verizon and Novell say they are partnering on a identity management solution for cloud environments.
– Cisco Systems, Verizon Business and Novell are unveiling offerings designed
to make cloud computing more secure.
Cisco on April 28 announced security services based around e-mail
and the Internet that are part of the company’s cloud protection push and its
Secure Borderless Network architecture,…

Continue reading " Cisco, Verizon, Novell Look to Secure the Cloud "

PGi commissioned a study to find out what people like – and don’t like – about meetings. PGi specializes in meeting, conferencing and collaboration solutions for businesses.
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Continue reading " Run a Better Meeting "

It’s been a few weeks since the first public draft of Microsoft’s new Infrastructure Planning and Design Guide for the Dynamic Data Center was made available. The beta for this guide has now closed and the final release has been made available to the public.

This 46-page dynamic data center blueprint focuses on design recommendations for several aspects of the infrastructure, including the hosts, storage, and network considerations, as well as the management software.

Continue reading " Microsoft guide helps with the design of dynamic data centers "

Red Hat’s cloud strategy appears focused on retaining existing customers, not attracting new customers.

There’s little argument that Red Hat is the undisputed leader in the enterprise Linux market by the measure that counts most: revenue. However, Red Hat’s position as the leading Linux vendor for cloud workloads remains in dispute at best, and far from reality at worst. All signs point to Ubuntu as the future, if not current, leader in the Linux cloud workload arena.

Continue reading " New Red Hat cloud offering poses high barrier to adoption "

Nine months after Google daringly launched a sync tool to link its hosted Apps collaboration and communication suite with arch-rival Microsoft’s Outlook PC software, results have been poor.

Google states that most organizations using the Outlook sync tool are very satisfied. However, IDG News Service, over the course of several weeks and even after enlisting the help of Google’s public relations department, couldn’t find one Google Apps administrator whose employer isn’t a Google Apps reseller or integrator willing to speak favorably about the Outlook sync tool.

Continue reading " Google Apps sync for Outlook gets poor reviews "

While I enjoyed fellow InfoWorld blogger Paul Venezia’s commentary “McAfee’s blunder, cloud computing’s fatal flaw,” I once again found myself in the uncomfortable position of defending cloud computing. Paul is clearly reaching a bit by stating that McAfee’s ability to brick many corporate PCs reflects poorly on the concept of cloud computing.

Continue reading " The imperfect cloud versus the imperfect data center "