“We are pleased with the responses we are receiving from our service provider partners and will continue making a substantial investment in our expertise and knowledge initiatives,” said Birger Steen, CEO of Parallels, on the occasion of the publication of the latest report in the Parallels SMB Cloud Insights series.

Now entering its third year of annual publication, the research results continue to confirm that SMBs remain the fastest growing segment for cloud services and the optimal target market for service providers of all sizes, with the global market for SMB cloud services expanding at a 28 percent CAGR to $95 billion by 2015.

“Parallels SMB Cloud Insights research is core to our commitment to help service providers make both strategic and tactical decisions about the rapidly growing market for SMB cloud services,” Steen said.

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SaaS-based application performance monitoring start-up New Relic, which has already raised $34.5 million in venture capital, has gotten a whopping $80 million in mezzanine financing to move into native mobile applications, open an office in Europe, add staff and prepare to IPO.
The handsome sum, which gives it a total of $115 million and a reported valuation of $750 million, comes largely from Insight Venture Partners and T Rowe Price, marking the first time since Twitter that the pair has funded a start-up together.
Other participants include Dragoneer Investment Group, Passport Ventures and the company’s existing investors Allen & Company, Benchmark Capital, Trinity Ventures and Tenaya Capital.

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I recently got some feedback on my previous musing that from the customer viewpoint, PaaS equals automation. That led me to think of ways to articulate better what this means both to customers and vendors.

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I recently got some feedback on my previous musing that from the customer viewpoint, PaaS equals automation. That led me to think of ways to articulate better what this means both to customers and vendors.

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RiverMeadow Software™ Inc., developer of the RiverMeadow™ cloud migration SaaS, the world’s only automated server migration platform developed specifically for Carrier and Service Provider Clouds, today announces that PeakColo, a leading enterprise-class IaaS Cloud service provider for channel partners, chose the RiverMeadow cloud migration SaaS as the server migration solution for PeakColo’s cloud computing platform.

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RiverMeadow Software™ Inc., developer of the RiverMeadow™ cloud migration SaaS, the world’s only automated server migration platform developed specifically for Carrier and Service Provider Clouds, today announces that PeakColo, a leading enterprise-class IaaS Cloud service provider for channel partners, chose the RiverMeadow cloud migration SaaS as the server migration solution for PeakColo’s cloud computing platform.

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According to a new report from KPMG, companies need to assume cost reduction in the cloud is ‘a given’ and consequently need to look at more transformational ideas.

KPMG’s report, ‘The Cloud Takes Shape’, polled nearly 700 IT professionals and looks at cloud computing as a maturing technology, noting that seven out of 10 IT professionals agree that cloud computing is currently “delivering efficiencies and cost savings”.

Yet the report advocates that organisations need to go further; merely stating that the cloud drives value isn’t telling the full story.

“Gaining real cost savings from the cloud is about more than simply moving from fixed costs to operating costs,” says Rick Wright, KPMG US global cloud enablement program leader in the report.

“The greatest cost savings – and, more importantly, the transformational business benefits – will come from the longer-term outcomes, such as more efficient processes, more flexible operating models and …

A new sub-market of the broader cloud-computing market has emerged: the cloud service broker, but the market has yet to fully define it.
Emerging markets don’t generally follow smooth, predictable paths. Rather, they struggle and jerk unexpectedly, much like an eaglet escaping from its shell. Vendors, analysts, and pundits may seek to define such markets, but typically fall short. After all, vendors don’t establish markets. Customers do.

Today, cloud computing is still in its birth throes. Yes, many organizations are now achieving value in the cloud, but many more still struggle to understand its true value proposition as cloud service providers (CSPs) and vendors mature their offerings in the space. One problem: cloud computing is not a single market. It is in fact many interrelated markets, as its core service models, infrastructure-, platform-, and software as a service (SaaS), fragment as though they were so many pieces of eggshell.

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SYS-CON Events announced today that BillingPlatform.com, a flexible, high-volume, cloud-based billing platform, will exhibit at SYS-CON’s 12th International Cloud Expo, which will take place on June 10–13, 2013, at the Javits Center in New York City, New York.
BillingPlatform.com is the industry’s most flexible, high-volume, cloud-based billing platform for rating any combination of metered, subscription and ad-hoc services while managing customers, products and rate plans. BillingPlatform.com makes it easy to quickly and accurately implement any pricing and rating model and roll out new products and services so customers can rapidly turn ideas into cash.

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Over the last few weeks I’ve been hearing a lot of discussion around HIPAA. When we speak about HIPAA, invariably the two components of data security and data privacy arises.
In the traditional data centers database managers and data owners know where their data reside and implement the necessary processes to preserve privacy, and audit access.
However when we move to the cloud, the cloud being all about data, we are looking at servers, network, and storage which are abstracted. What this raises concern is that data owners may not necessarily know where their data sets physically reside and we are looking a Cloud Service Provider (CSP) employees who will be handling confidential patient data or Personally Identifiable Information (PII).

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