The Cloud has inspired a new way of thinking about ERP software deployments. Companies have the option to purchase a license or purchase a SaaS solution. When purchasing a license you own the software and have the ability to deploy it in your datacenter (on-premise) or outsource operations to an external provider (hosting). When you purchase a SaaS solution (sometimes called an on-demand solution), you rent a complete turnkey package that includes software and the entire delivery mechanism.
This article will examine the financial ramifications of these three models on your business. Continue Reading
Computer networking equipment giant Cisco Systems Inc. on Tuesday announced the intent to buy privately-held software company newScale Inc., in a move to complement and expand its offerings in cloud computing.
Based in San Mateo, California, newScale provides software that delivers a service catalog and self-service portal for information technology (IT) organizations to select and quickly deploy cloud services within their businesses. Continue Reading
In a belated move that should surprise no one, Amazon made its foray into the personal cloud computing space with the launch of its Amazon Cloud Drive service that allows users to store documents, photos, pictures and videos on the cloud.
With the success of Amazon Web Services (AWS) that offers on-demand computing power and online storage to mostly businesses and software developers, it was just a matter of time before Amazon taps on its cloud infrastructure to break into the personal cloud. Continue Reading
Thirty-five percent. By 2014, analysts believe that thirty-five percent, or over one-third, of global enterprise IT budgets will be spent on cloud services. While today the percentage of organizations investing in these types of offerings is small, the implication is clear: “the cloud” is not another industry buzz word, but a broad category which will drive the next phase of IT projects. For IT and business managers already inundated with information about the promise of a cloud centric infrastructure the question is not whether or not to use the cloud, but how. Fortunately, the virtualization and consolidation projects that ignited this renewed interest in centralized computing also provide a guide for how to best realize the full potential of the cloud by establishing the criteria that any project should try to address: How does IT more effectively understand, optimize, and consolidate resources to deliver the highest use and highest ROI for the business? Continue Reading
The President of San Rafael, California-based CRM Software, Gregory T. Friedman, has announced that its CRM software, Junxure, will now have a cloud-based version, available in January.
Brooke Southall wrote in Forbes last week that Friedman made this announcement at this particular time due to the huge hype that is currently surrounding the cloud, and the lack of participation from CRM Software put the company’s leadership position in the CRM software market in question. Continue Reading
The Seattle, Washington-based Amazon may announce the project as early as Tuesday, said the financial daily, citing sources close to the matter.
However the company is still ironing out key legal issues related to the service, the sources said, including being yet to secure content licenses from some major record labels and movie studios.
“We are disappointed that the locker service that Amazon is proposing is unlicensed by Sony Music,” a spokeswoman for Sony Corp.’s Sony Music Entertainment told the Journal.
The online store appears to be jumping into an online field where rivals Apple and Google are already working on similar “cloud” computing projects for online file collections a user could access from a variety of computers or other devices.
People solely relying on patching and upgrades are leading themselves into a false sense of security and individual protection is no longer sufficient in the age of multi-vector attacks, according to the president of the Australian Internet Industry Association.
Most people rely on operating system and software updates – including security patches – to gain a perception of security, but with increasing sophistication of cyber attacks this single-minded approach is no longer sufficient, according to AIIA chief executive Peter Coroneos. Continue Reading
Most of us like to name drop, at least a little. And so it is with great interest that we follow the careers of former colleagues. Here is Chad Evans, taking one deep at the iPad launch. Watch him here.
During the third quarter of 2009, a total of 35 energy and environmental companies received $421 million in new venture capital financing, representing an 8% decrease in the number of companies being funded and an 8% decrease in the total amount funded to the four sectors of Alternative Energy, Clean Tech, Energy and Environmental.
Alternative Energy companies showed the only deal funding volume percentage increase of the four categories, with a 20 % increase quarter over quarter. The Clean Tech sector showed a sharp decrease in activity, with an 86% decrease in amounts funded. Energy funding amounts were also down, with an 18% funding decrease and the number of companies funded decreasing by 27%.
During the quarter, Software company fundings represented the second largest sector, raising $610 million between 97 companies. This activity represented an increase of 10% in total funding amount and a decrease of 22% in the number of companies funded. The average financing round size reversed its previous decline and rose sharply, from $4.7 million in Q2 09 to $6.3 million in the current quarter.
Department of Energy Secretary Chu announces $93 million from the Recover Act to support the development of additional wind energy in the United States. The money will support R&D and testing for wind turbine drivetrains, support university and industry consortia focusing on critical wind energy challenges, advanced technology development in the private sector and a National Wind Technology Center in Colorado.
Chu also announced the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will receive $100 million for infrastructure projects. The largest is the development of an energy efficient LEED Platinum certified office, constructed at the same cost as that of a low efficiency commercial office building. The others are to use solar and other green energy sources to reduce the labs carbon use and to upgrade the integrated bio-refinery research facility used to develop commercial scale cellulose to ethanol technologies.
During his visit to the Golden, CO facility Chu stated that $26 billion of the more than $100 billion in the Recover Act for renewable energy projects had already been authorized with the goal of 70% being authorized by early September. He also discussed streamlining the DOE loan approval process with the goal of reducing the time to getting a loan application approved to a few months. It has been known to take years under the current process.
It is great to see some of this huge spending bill is being directed to innovation and more importantly that this is being coordinated with private industry. There continues to be a gap in funding for the commercialization of proven technologies. Until this gap is filled, the great innovation from the labs and universities will be delayed in helping solve our energy issues.
Bob Metcalfe, using the history of the Internet as a guide, provided his list of things to look for and look out for in the changing energy sector.
Metcalfe gave an optimistic view of the environmental challenge suggesting not only are we in a Global Warming Bubble but that cheap, clean energy will be so abundant, it will easily be squandered.
He suggested the best place for research is in the research universities and not in government labs which are “nothing more than local earmarks”. In this model, professors along with their graduate students, will commercialize innovation with the help of entrepreneurs and venture capital.
Metcalfe warned that energy and environment are two overlapping issues and they should be viewed as two things. Otherwise, we may solve energy without solving the environment or vice-versa. Oh, and he offered a new color for clean energy, blue.
So, how many Google searches produce the equivalent CO2 emissions as boiling a cup of water?
A confusing question unless you been following the stream of posts generated by the Sunday Times of Londonquoting (or misquoting) Harvard University physicistAlex Wissner-Gross‘ study on the energy used by view webpages. IN the story, the Times reporters stated “Performing two Google searches from a desktop computer can generate about the same amount of carbon dioxide as boiling a kettle for a cup of tea, according to new research.” This seems to equate to about 7 grams of CO2.
Google immediatelyresponded in a blog poststating “we have designed and built the mostenergy efficient data centersin the world, which means the energy used per Google search is minimalsuggesting the number is closer to 0.02 grams per search.” And went on to state the energy used by the PC performing the search is greater than the search itself.
Meanwhile according to Tech News World,Wissner-Gross claims neither he nor the studymentioned Google or had anything to do with Google and certainly not with tea kettles. “They did that. I have no idea where they got those statistics,” Wissner-Gross said.
And in response to these back and forth discussions, more than a few bloggers have decided to weigh in:
The inaugural Cloud Summit held in Mtn. View, CA, was well attended with attendees representing many of the California technology companies and their suppliers of money and advice.
The folks at Pragmatic Marketing have put together a great book describing their process for creating products and services that customers want and more importantly will buy. Tuned In is a quick read and should prove to be a valuable reference guide as you turn to your potential customers to define the products and services someone is most likely to buy.
Websense announced in February that Google’s CAPTCHA busted in recent spammer tactic. This came right on the heels of bots breaking the Live Hotmail CATTCHA system. With my gmail account compromised a few weeks ago, I began looking into the likely ways this was done and and I believe there was a good chance it was via a bot attack. I have found no evidence of spyware on any of the machines I use. Change your passwords and check into your mail accounts often. You may also want to keep notes on when you opened the account and the email address you gave as a backup. These are things Google will use to return access to the account to you.
Attended my first Boulder Open Coffee Club this morning at The Cub on Pearl near 16th. I was dropped in after the planetarium trip with my son’s first grade class was postponed due to snow and cold (we were scheduled to walk past the CU solar system model to the show). As I arrived they were discussing the best places to find professional support such as legal, accounting, etc. And quickly finished promoting a new source for collaborative support the Boulder Tech Bootstrap site. The site will contain both a wiki and a discussion forum for entrepreneurs to help each other just git it done.
A panel of software providers (SixApart, NewsGator, SocialText and SpikeSource) listed the same issues around security, compliance and control confronting Enterprise 2.0 implementations seen in the past. Even so, a few companies are beginning to move forward with implementations and some have found creative ways to use these tools.
Adoption is driven less from personal passion and more from significant corporate pain points. Others are looking to provide internal tools for employees that provide the means of communication found in the student/consumer markets.
In recent years, companies have worked hard to reduce the cost of the IT infrastructure—the data centers, networks, databases, and software tools that support businesses. These efforts to consolidate, standardize, and streamline assets, technologies, and processes have delivered major savings. Yet even the most effective cost-cutting program eventually hits a wall: the complexity of the infrastructure itself.
• OUTSOURCING · It looks like a hit-or-miss business but every company wants to do it. The key for the provider is getting to scale quickly enough to be able to provide services superior to in-house folks at a cost effective price. Also the expertise needs to be the biggest differentiator. Its all the same model as Law Firms, CPA’s etc… and it was the same with Viant. Like any other product or service, you need to differentiate on Cost or Quality … you either need to manage/train/hire a workforce in a “LCR” or low-cost region (China, India, Mexico) or have in-house expertise that business can’t develop cheaply on their own.
• INCREASED IT SPENDING · I’ve heard a lot of chatter about it in the press, but I didn’t start seeing it until last quarter when orders started coming in and folks started complaining about being swamped. But that’s just a microscopic view … will it last? will it improve? It’s anybody’s guess and there are a lot of things that could change it: world events ( Terrorism, Iraq, Afghan, SARS); the Fed (raising rates); and the election.
• NEW TECHNOLOGY · There’s a lot of buzz about Nanotechnology these days but I think it needs a “killer app” to get everyone to spend money on it. I don’t know anything about how to get into it but its something that offers the promise of disruptive technology (like computers, the internet, biotech).
This posting by Kevin Brancato suggest that our view of healthcare cost in the US is distorted. While the data seems to lead to the conclusion that we’re buying much more healthcare at sky-high prices, economists doubt the validity and applicability of the offical data because it does not appropriately adjust for quality.
Stephen Downes in his predictions for 2004 suggest that a form of “non-blog blogging” will begin to emerge. He describes this as a way to tap into the views and opinions held by the vast majority of people who will not write publicly.
Downes also predicts that 2004 will be the year of personalization. He focuses this personalization around topic based feeds, which deliver only the content that is of interest to that user.
