Increasingly organizations are looking to tap the collective power of social, mobile and cloud technologies. We asked Ric Telford, IBM VP of Cloud Services, to share his perspective on the trend in light of IBM’s new social business software including SmartCloud Docs, a cloud-based office productivity suite. University of Texas at El Paso is using the software to collaborate in the cloud using mobile devices.
Cloud Computing Journal: What’s the connection between Social, Mobile and Cloud. Are they just three tech buzzwords?
Ric Telford: Social, mobile and cloud are inextricably linked as three facets of the same movement – a new era of computing. Some call it the “third platform,” others “SoMoClo, let’s just call it “new era” for now. Cloud is the delivery, mobile is the ubiquitous access and social is the personal engagement. Cloud is scalable, flexible IT resources on-demand with the compute power to handle real-time analytics and Big Data; mobile is having simplified, user-friendly access anywhere. Social adds the power of collaboration. As one consolidated framework, this “new era” enables flexible delivery of services and expanding reach – bringing communication and productivity to whole new levels.
Monthly Archives: December 2012
How Cloud Computing Will Make the Workplace More Accessible
Cloud computing is changing the way big business communicates and is fast becoming the new technological standard for enterprises.
With employees working across so many devices from numerous locations, cloud computing is taking on a growing importance for a seamless work experience. Whatever solutions companies decide to buy, they all have to work on the range of devices people now carry. According to an article on CalgaryHerald.com, cloud computing is making business life easier by allowing users access to the same information regardless of which gadget they have logged on with.
A new mobile workforce means that software and file storage must be accessible anywhere, on any device, and cannot be stuck in one static place anymore. People want to be able to access work while at the beach or the soccer field. Simply dropping a file into a centralized location using cloud storage technology offers easy access and version control with the click of a button. This also means that your IT team will be able to focus on their core competencies rather than getting bogged down by contextual issues from their fellow, less tech-savvy colleagues.
Medidata Solutions Partners with Veeva Systems to Bring Integrated eTMF to the Clinical Cloud
Veeva Systems has partnered with Medidata Solutions to offer the life science industry’s first cloud-based end-to-end solution that integrates clinical documentation and trial development. The two companies will integrate Vault eTMF, Veeva’s electronic trial master file (eTMF) content management application, across the Medidata Clinical Cloud, offering life science companies and their global partners a complete clinical technology solution with a searchable central repository for all clinical documentation.
“Within the industry, there is an emerging demand for an eTMF to more consistently manage documents within a clinical trial,” said Alan S.Louie, Ph.D., research director, IDC Health Insights. “With the industry shift away from individual applications to more comprehensive eClinical solutions, seamless integration of applications and features such as eTMF into existing eClinical platforms should help leading life science companies to more fully and transparently manage overall trial efforts and improve process efficiencies.”
As clinical trials become more and more complex, the need for dependable document storage combined with real-time data accessibility is vital. The partnership will meet this need, advancing technology platform offerings in clinical development by facilitating efficient management of the trial master file collection. The integrated solution also provides secure document exchange between sites and sponsors, reducing the need for separate enterprise collaboration systems and portals. The collaborative nature of the clinical research team also demands a solution that is globally accessible and meets both regulatory and security needs.
Making Sure the Mail Gets Through with Cloud-Native Messaging Service
Message Bus has a simple goal: help customers keep their legitimate email messages out of recipients’ spam folders.
Message Bus has a pedigreed CEO, an impressive list of customers and partners, and technology that makes its cloud-based service highly scalable and resilient, yet the young company’s goal is simple: help customers keep their legitimate email messages out of recipients’ spam folders.
With Twitter co-founder Jeremy LaTrasse at the helm, Message Bus is navigating the often dark waters of email delivery so that its customers don’t have to. The company’s Global Delivery Network, launched in mid-November, aims to be to email and mobile messaging what Amazon Web Services are to cloud computing and Dropbox to cloud storage.
UMA Personal Clouds and the X Internet
A popular spot where the Cloud and Identity domains intersect is the idea of “Personal Clouds”, which would be ideal services to build via a concept of the `X Internet`.
With open standards like SAML providing the building blocks of interconnecting identity systems between applications, then those applications will be better enabled to exchange this personal data.
This will power a revolution in online e-business models – For example your grocery provider could sell you online loans and mortgages, underwritten by your bank providing them your salary details via an online web service query.
Hiring Online Ad & Cloud Expo Sales Rep in Silicon Valley
SYS-CON Media @SYSCONMedia is adding energetic sales representative(s) in the Silicon Valley area to sell @CloudExpo exhibitor space, sponsorship opportunities, and “high demand” online advertising packages for multiple events and online publications.
Prior technology sales experience is a must for passionate candidates with solid track record!
Must have excellent interpersonal, written and spoken communication skills and preferably existing relationships with our valuable partners/customers in the area for over two decades.
Egenera Makes Key Buy
Egenera has made a rare acquisition, picking a young Dublin ISV called Fort
Technologies that brings the Massachusetts firm private and public cloud
management sort of along the lines of what Cloupia is bringing Cisco and
Gale is bringing Dell.
Egenera, however, is way ahead of them since the integration is already
done.
Four in five IT directors feel responsible for cloud failure
New research from enterprise IT solutions provider Damovo UK has revealed that, for 80% of IT top brass, if they move their services to the cloud, it’s their responsibility if it goes wrong.
The UK-based research, conducted by Vanson Bourne which spoke to 100 IT directors catering for more than 1000 employees, also found that for nine in ten respondents, cloud providers should in turn be more accountable, and provide greater transparency when it comes to data governance.
Interestingly, nearly 70% of respondents believed the hype around the cloud was responsible for the delay in their utilising cloudy software – as the hype meant it was difficult to establish which was good or not due to ‘vanilla statements’ from cloud vendors.
This accounted for 80% of financial service companies, 76% in manufacturing, and 52% in retail, distribution and transport.
Research from Navint Partners in October found that four in five …
Delivering Managed Flexibility for the Cloud
This whitepaper explores how Red Hat CloudForms meets the challenges that come from letting enterprise customers serve themselves, while maintaining the IT control of workloads and life cycle management. Red Hat CloudForms helps IT organizations better utilize the cloud or virtualization technology that best meets the customer’s needs while solving the challenges of portability, governance, security, and cost. Ideal for enterprise architects looking to move their Red Hat Enterprise Linux workloads to the cloud.
Preparing for Cloud Outages
Depending on what your business has in the cloud, the impact of a cloud outage can vary. However, whether it’s your email service that’s down or your entire IT infrastructure, an outage will have a negative effect on your business and could lead to a loss in revenue. Here are some tips to help quell this situation.
Depending on what you’ve moved to the cloud, the impact of a cloud outage can vary. If your email services or office productivity software is cloud based, the impact can be minimal and simply be some delayed emails or late reports.
On the other hand, if you are completely cloud based, and have your entire IT infrastructure offsite, the impact of a cloud outage would be more severe and could impact your accounting system or sales order processing system, which ultimately could lead to a loss of business revenue.