Software as a service - News, Features, and Slideshows

News

• Yahoo sets fees for BOSS search developer program

  Yahoo has established a fee structure for the upcoming version of BOSS, a platform that developers use to create custom search engines on top of Yahoo's infrastructure.

• Hearsay preps social media monitoring tool for enterprises

  Hearsay, a startup founded in 2009, is launching a cloud-hosted social media management application tailored specifically for companies that have a national brand as well as a broad base of local affiliates.

• Amazon to offer Oracle's database in the cloud

  Oracle's database will be available in the second quarter as part of Amazon Web Services' Relational Database Service, the companies announced Tuesday.

• Okta's service offers single sign-on for all cloud apps

  While using cloud-based applications solves some problems for IT administrators, it also creates new ones, including how to handle user identity management.

• Amazon adds CloudWatch to management tool

  Amazon has added CloudWatch to the list of services that are integrated with its AWS (Amazon Web Services) Management Console, allowing IT staff to create alarms and troubleshoot from a browser.

• Google adds education category to Apps Marketplace

  Google is debuting on Tuesday a special category for education-related software in its Apps Marketplace, prompted by what it considers the success of its Apps for Education collaboration and communication suite.

• Box.net moves cloud storage further into business collaboration

  The beauty of the cloud is that it makes it easy for people to get technology in place when they need it. The ugliness of the cloud is that it lets employees bring in technology that the business is unaware of, potentially exposing confidential information or worse. Cloud storage provider Box.net is trying to square that circle with a new version of its Box.net service, which begins rolling out today. The rollout to the company's 5 million customers should be complete in 30 days.

• Box.net overhauls content management app's user interface

  Box.net has redesigned from the ground up the user interface of its cloud-hosted content management application, as well as added new collaboration features and real-time notification capabilities.

• Is SaaS office safe?

  Is software as a service (SaaS) office safe? We get this question a lot and the SaaS office most often asked about is Google Apps for Business and Microsoft Office 365. This security concern reflects in our research numbers: Fewer than 18 per cent of organizations are planning to deploy SaaS office but nearly twice as many companies are evaluating. 

• Microsoft: BPOS components average 99.9-plus per cent uptime

  The hosted applications in Microsoft's Business Productivity Online Standard Suite (BPOS) have averaged uptime of 99.9 per cent or better in the past year, according to the company.

• Google tightens Apps' uptime guarantee

  Google is modifying its Apps service level agreement in ways that increase the company's accountability whenever the hosted collaboration and communication software experiences downtime, the company plans to announce on Friday.

• Cisco eschews cloud services - for now

  Cisco's cloud strategy encompasses pretty much everything under the sun save one - actual cloud services.

• First look: Chrome OS beta's Achilles' heel is its reliance on the Web

  Computers and their software today are too complicated, and users are increasingly looking at iPads and cloud-based services such as Google Docs to handle the basics that most of us stick to: document editing, photo management, emailing, Web browsing, and the like. Running Office on a PC or Mac is beyond overkill for most people. Google proposes we do away with the PC altogether, at least part of the time, and replace it with Google's cloud-based laptop -- an appliance in which the Chrome browser serves as operating system. With the Chrome OS, all actions occur in the browser and the cloud.

• Microsoft straightens out cloud strategy -- finally

  Things will get rowdier for vendors of cloud collaboration, communication and office productivity applications now that Microsoft plans to unleash a take-no-prisoners assault on the market with Office 365.

• Google preps Gmail-based backup for Exchange

  Google continues its aggressive strategy to poach Exchange customers with the launch on Thursday of a Gmail-based disaster recovery and business continuity service for organizations running the Microsoft e-mail server on premises.