Software as a service - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Forrester: Public cloud growth to surge, especially SaaS

  On the heels of the controversial Amazon EC2 cloud outage last week, research firm Forrester published a timely report on the growth potential of the major public cloud categories.

• Google to loosen up Apps contract terms

  Google will allow companies to sign up users for its paid <a href="http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/index.html">Apps for Business</a> hosted collaboration and communication suite on a month-to-month basis, without having to commit them to an annual contract.

• Successful tech startups offer IT tips for CIOs

  Successful technology startups are usually keen to draw attention to their hot products, not to their internal use of IT. But companies such as Groupon, Box.net, Zendesk and SlideShare can offer CIOs lessons from what they've accomplished with limited resources, a blank slate for IT infrastructure and their finger on the pulse of the latest IT tools and services.

• Google to offer cloud service for digital maps

  Google will open up to third parties its digital maps infrastructure so that enterprise organizations can use it to store and serve up geospatial data to their end users.

• Microsoft broadens Office 365 beta, launches app store

  Microsoft is expanding the beta testing program of its Office 365 cloud collaboration and communication suite, almost doubling the number of countries and languages it's available in, the company said on Monday.

• Networking, telecom leaving VCs cold

  The overall amount of venture capital invested in startups is on the rise, though the networking and telecom industries haven’t been big contributors of late.

• L.A. may sue over delays in Google Apps project, report says

  Google on Thursday downplayed a report that the city of Los Angeles may file a lawsuit against it due to delays in implementing a much touted $7.2 million contract to replace Novell GroupWise applications with the Google Apps for Government hosted email and office applications platform.

• How cloud computing promotes business growth

  Coty is growing.

• What the cloud really costs: Do you know?

  For CIOs who distrust most technological promises (having heard too many of them), cloud computing sets off alarm bells. Yet those CIOs finding success in the cloud say their colleagues should be equally skeptical of IT managers who claim they can deliver better and cheaper results internally. (For expert advice about cloud-vendor contracts, see "How the Cloud Can Turn Toxic</a>.)

• Cloud computing is not just a name for outsourcing

  I'm guessing many of you are asking if cloud computing isn't just a new name for ASPs, software as a service, outsourcing or, for us older guys, timesharing. While the cloud certainly shares principles with all of them, something more significant is happening, something with the same impact as the generational shift from mainframes to client/server.

• Report: Iron Mountain to shutter cloud storage service

  After only two years, Iron Mountain is planning to close its public cloud storage services , having already stopped accepting new customers as of April 1, according to market research firm Gartner.

• Google apps: How we locked down documents

  Although Google Apps has made progress over the past few years as a cloud-based collaboration and productivity suite for businesses, the first big wave of adopters have been government agencies, schools and nonprofit organizations.

• Novell's Vibe enterprise social networking suite debuts

  Novell has released to worldwide general availability its Web-hosted Vibe Cloud enterprise social collaboration suite, which adapts for workplace use a variety of social networking features made popular in consumer-oriented sites like Facebook and Twitter.

• IEEE hopes to drive cloud computing standards

  Standards organization IEEE has decided to get involved in cloud computing, starting with two development projects related to cloud interoperability, it said on Monday.

• ShareFile shares files on iOS and Android

  ShareFile has launched native clients for Apple's iOS and Google's Android OS, allowing smartphone users to access its file sharing service, the company said on Thursday.