So here we go again. Serious violence, if not outright war, is imminent in Gaza and Israel. This time, Hamas has rockets that can travel to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, upping the ante a few notches.

Violence is a lot uglier up close than as seen on TV, whether delivered by land, sea, piloted aircraft, or drones. Delivered by our continuously improving technology, it obliterates not only buildings and people, but the promise of improved lives brought on by our continuously improving technology.

To that end, we’ve included Israel, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria in our Tau Institute research, as we seek to uncover the developing world’s diamonds in the rough and the developed world’s sterling performers. We’ve also included several Gulf States and Northern African nations.

This entire part of the world does well in our rankings, exceptionally so when we consider the violence that’s been part of its fabric. (And I say this knowing that more than 100 people will be murdered throughout the United States this week-end.)

Among the 102 countries we’ve surveyed, we find Egypt, Yemen, Jordan Syria ranking near or above the world average in potential, with Egypt scoring in the world’s Top 20. Among developed nations, Israel scores among the Top 10 with the most potential.

The Middle East and North Africa aren’t as dynamic overall in our findings as are Eastern Europe or Southeast Asia, but the regions are on a par with Latin America and have several places with strong ICT growth and great potential. This message must be delivered behind the podium or lectern at a peaceful hotel or in a classroom, not in chaotic streets in the midst of an air raid.

My hopes are that madness will not rule the week-end in this part of the world, despite all the evidence that it will.

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Here is the announcement of the new version of Open-Xchange – a web app built for the cloud using HTML 5 and JavaScript for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, documents, plus integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.
The design engineers at German software maker Open-Xchange today unveiled OX App Suite, providing individuals with a single intuitive way of communication and sharing, across platforms, across devices and even across connections.

OX App Suite will be available next month as a cloud application service from providers, as well as software for on-premises installations. The Suite comes with a web desktop «Portal,» and with a set of applications to help users easily manage their most important personal and professional data including email, contacts, calendars, pictures, music, videos, along with any kind of document, as well as other services like Google Mail, Hotmail, along with data from Facebook and LinkedIn.

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Here is the announcement of the new version of Open-Xchange – a web app built for the cloud using HTML 5 and JavaScript for email, calendar, contacts, tasks, documents, plus integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter.
The design engineers at German software maker Open-Xchange today unveiled OX App Suite, providing individuals with a single intuitive way of communication and sharing, across platforms, across devices and even across connections.

OX App Suite will be available next month as a cloud application service from providers, as well as software for on-premises installations. The Suite comes with a web desktop «Portal,» and with a set of applications to help users easily manage their most important personal and professional data including email, contacts, calendars, pictures, music, videos, along with any kind of document, as well as other services like Google Mail, Hotmail, along with data from Facebook and LinkedIn.

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HP Thursday put out an x86 server it claims is purpose-built for Big Data.
It says existing architectures aren’t designed to handle the specific needs of Big Data workloads such as Hadoop, MPP data warehouses, Big Data analytics and object stores, and that early deployments have returned suboptimal results in terms of performance and cost.
It claims its new wonder will save the user up to $1 million over three years.
As the kind of ultra-dense solution required by these workloads, the new HP ProLiant SL4500 server series is supposed to provide maximum performance, productivity and cost-effectiveness.
It’s said to consume up to 50% less space and 61% less power for 31% less money while using 63% fewer cables.

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Zetta.net has announced that a report by analyst firm Storage Strategies Now highlights Zetta.net’s second generation hybrid cloud backup solution, acknowledging that it outperforms, and eliminates the disadvantages of, appliance-based data protection systems. According to the report, appliance-based systems add extra hardware costs, present a single choke and failure point, and induce complications for distributed offices, particularly for managed service providers supporting hundreds of customers.
The report asserts that Zetta.net’s recent addition of Lean Local Copy makes «an excellent trade-off» against hardware appliances, and enables local backup and recovery without resorting to additional hardware boxes which add complexity and drag time to recovery. The interaction of Zetta.net software directly with its Smart Cloud «provides significant increases in the speed of offsite backups and disaster recovery,» with much less to manage – which can be particularly important in distributed environments and locations operated by a managed service provider.

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Zetta.net has announced that a report by analyst firm Storage Strategies Now highlights Zetta.net’s second generation hybrid cloud backup solution, acknowledging that it outperforms, and eliminates the disadvantages of, appliance-based data protection systems. According to the report, appliance-based systems add extra hardware costs, present a single choke and failure point, and induce complications for distributed offices, particularly for managed service providers supporting hundreds of customers.
The report asserts that Zetta.net’s recent addition of Lean Local Copy makes «an excellent trade-off» against hardware appliances, and enables local backup and recovery without resorting to additional hardware boxes which add complexity and drag time to recovery. The interaction of Zetta.net software directly with its Smart Cloud «provides significant increases in the speed of offsite backups and disaster recovery,» with much less to manage – which can be particularly important in distributed environments and locations operated by a managed service provider.

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In 2013 business will continue on the path of big data, bigger opportunities, and evolving their recipe of how to innovate in an environment of emerging risks. This is article one in a series about the future of cloud technology and the business of Big Data – and how to harness the risks of a data-driven world for growth and sustainability.
Since the very beginnings of trade and commerce, it has been a commonality that most information exchange between buyer and seller, customer and business, was treated as a discrete, confidential, and almost intimate affair. Trust was earned, not given.
Consider the not so distant history of the local American bank. Banks have been collecting personal information about their customers for decades, harkening back to consultations over a notepad, paper deposit slips, and hand-written applications. The reputations of applicant and banker, buyer and seller, were local reputations, with personal and professional references limited to the confines of the community and the reality of proximity.

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This election season marked a major shift from the traditional ground game of door-to-door get out the vote efforts to «Big Data politics» – in which algorithms are run in the cloud on databases of voter information to figure out who volunteers should target.
As captured in Rackspace’s 2012 election «Powered by the Cloud» infographic, nearly every digital component of the 2012 election utilized the cloud: from the smartphone campaign apps to the social media systems to the super-secret voter information files. The cloud industry was well equipped to handle the terabytes of data-crunching demanded of the multi-billion dollar campaigns. For example, over 80 million voters will use cloud-based networks and smartphone apps to access information critical to their voting decision, a 200% increase over 2008’s election.

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The Holland Pavilion has been one of the highlights of recent Cloud Expo shows, including the most recent conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, CA.

A group of entrepreneurial companies in the cloud and social media spaces were present at the show last week, including a Utrecht-based startup called WorkVoices, described as “the enterprise social network leveraging your business.”

I spoke with company co-founder Marc Koetsier about the company and its vision…

Roger: When did you start WorkVoices and why? What need did you see?

Marc: We started WorkVoices in the beginning of 2009. Both founders were consultants at the time and saw the need for more interactive communication between employees, instead of a push-information edited intranet. We also noticed the need for a one-portal solution to combine all applications in use at a company into one main stream.
Roger: How does your product and service differ from Tibbr, for example, or from Salesforce’s Chatter?
Marc: It differs firstly because we link to Google Apps. A tight integration with Mail, Calender, etc., is on its way. We also provide WorkVoices as white label, so the styling can be completely set to the customers’ needs, and even custom functions can be built in. We also provide integrations to other applications, and can add more if needed.
Roger: How is it delivered? As SaaS, for example?

Marc: Yes, it is delivered as a SaaS solution, and thus readily available for users. We prefer the cloud, and have the flexibility there to help customers.

Roger: Do you view it as social media or collaboration software, or both?

Marc: I think it’s both, but mainly collaboration software. Social media is considered to be more on the Internet and Worldwide Web instead of on a company’s intranet. We do however provide integration with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Roger: Is there a typical client for WorkVoices? Big company, for example? How many people would work in a typical WorkVoices environment?

Marc: There is no typical client for WorkVoices. We do business in almost all sectors, whether it be an engineering company, hospital , education, government, to non-profit organizations. We believe a minimum of about10 people should be in a network, to make it attractive to use. At the high end, we have quite successful networks of approximately 2,000 users, and this number is rising.

Roger: How did Cloud Expo work for you?

Marc: We enjoyed meeting a lot of people and made some friends – even, perhaps, a possible partner for us the US.

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The Holland Pavilion has been one of the highlights of recent Cloud Expo shows, including the most recent conference and exhibition in Santa Clara, CA.

A group of entrepreneurial companies in the cloud and social media spaces were present at the show last week, including a Utrecht-based startup called WorkVoices, described as “the enterprise social network leveraging your business.”

I spoke with company co-founder Marc Koetsier about the company and its vision…

Roger: When did you start WorkVoices and why? What need did you see?

Marc: We started WorkVoices in the beginning of 2009. Both founders were consultants at the time and saw the need for more interactive communication between employees, instead of a push-information edited intranet. We also noticed the need for a one-portal solution to combine all applications in use at a company into one main stream.
Roger: How does your product and service differ from Tibbr, for example, or from Salesforce’s Chatter?
Marc: It differs firstly because we link to Google Apps. A tight integration with Mail, Calender, etc., is on its way. We also provide WorkVoices as white label, so the styling can be completely set to the customers’ needs, and even custom functions can be built in. We also provide integrations to other applications, and can add more if needed.
Roger: How is it delivered? As SaaS, for example?

Marc: Yes, it is delivered as a SaaS solution, and thus readily available for users. We prefer the cloud, and have the flexibility there to help customers.

Roger: Do you view it as social media or collaboration software, or both?

Marc: I think it’s both, but mainly collaboration software. Social media is considered to be more on the Internet and Worldwide Web instead of on a company’s intranet. We do however provide integration with LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
Roger: Is there a typical client for WorkVoices? Big company, for example? How many people would work in a typical WorkVoices environment?

Marc: There is no typical client for WorkVoices. We do business in almost all sectors, whether it be an engineering company, hospital , education, government, to non-profit organizations. We believe a minimum of about10 people should be in a network, to make it attractive to use. At the high end, we have quite successful networks of approximately 2,000 users, and this number is rising.

Roger: How did Cloud Expo work for you?

Marc: We enjoyed meeting a lot of people and made some friends – even, perhaps, a possible partner for us the US.

read more