Cloud Computing News & Articles

Let's take another trip to the cloud, shall we? Yes, the adage may be old: to cloud or not to cloud? The open source Enterprise CMS vendor Nuxeo (news, site) solved this poetic dilemma and took its document management product to the cloud.

Not to be outdone by the other Enterprise 2.0 vendor announcements during the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this week, IBM (news, site) not only unveils the SaaS version of their social computing solution, LotusLive Connections, but they also take home an award for it.

Amazon Web Services, or AWS (news, site) is has a limited beta out for a new service. Called AWS Import/Export, you will soon have the ability to move your content into and out of the cloud much easier and quicker.

Using Amazon's high speed internal network, you will be able to move your data onto, or off of, just about any storage device -- as long as it meets the compatibility requirements.

It's not to difficult to understand why you would want this capability, but Amazon does offer a few ideas:

• Data Migration: Loading data into the cloud for the first time has never been faster.
• Disaster Recovery: Using Amazon S3 for storage of your website for disaster recovery purposes? Now you can get your website back up and running faster.
• Offsite Backup: Maybe you want to use S3 to store basic backups, whether full or incremental.
• Direct Data Exchange: Partners send you data on devices on a regular basis? Now they can send that data directly to your S3 bucket.

 This new service basically works by you putting your data on a storage device and then ship that device to Amazon Web Services to process in their secure data center. Of course there are a few other steps to complete prior to shipping off your device.

The beta is currently limited to importing data to AWS for US buckets. The export capability and support for EU buckets will come later.

Get yourself registered for the beta program if this new service interests you.

Moving further into the hosted world just as they promised to late last year, Amazon Web Services (news, site) has announced the release of a handful of new tools for the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).

Wanting users to spend less time and energy on the “muck” that is operational burdens and system admin, the new tools focus specifically on enabling visibility into the health and usage of AWS resources, enhancing application performance, and giving wallets a little break.

SoftLayer (news, site) offers a range of server-based systems from plain storage to dedicated multi-processor servers. Now, it adds a CloudLayer to offer a wide-ranging cloud package to the enterprise.

With the amount of sensitive content floating around enterprise content management systems it is hardly surprising that ‘security’ is becoming an increasingly important issue, especially given the number of companies that are beefing up their web presence.

Only last week, US data and email security firm Websense introduced a new Web Gateway appliance that allows companies access Web 2.0 sites without security concerns.

This week, UK-based Sword Group, a provider of high value and hi-tech business applications, has unveiled a new gadget that will allow enterprise content management integration for Google Apps.

And the clincher -- using the gadget can access complex ECM repositories that are firewalled up to the hilt.

CrownPeak (news, site), a provider of SaaS web content management solutions, has its eye on the online marketing crowd.

The latest release of CrownPeak CMS sports multiple new features designed to make CRM and web content management easier. If campaigns, lead conversions, tracking and revenue generation are part of your lexicon, CrownPeak has news for you.

AIIM has released its annual State of the ECM Industry research report. And although the term Enterprise Content Management was coined about eight years ago, the research findings are still not very optimistic in some areas.

Not surprisingly, the bottom line is that electronic content in many of its shapes and forms in the organizational landscape is still (mainly) a mess.

 Anyone who’s anyone knows the Internet is practically vibrating with the buzz over cloud computing, how best to structure it and what it means for the future of the Web. Much like the recent microblogging trend and what it means in terms of ROI and customer service, companies are trading in their souls for a piece of the action.

One of the latest vendors to jump on the bandwagon is Six Apart (news, site). Their recent partnership with Etelos Inc. enables their Movable Type blogging platform to be available in a “cloud-hosted” environment.

In today’s high-tech world, companies rarely have it in them to wage full-on war against their competition, but any seasoned Web geek knows that’s simply because they’re too busy trying to outdo each other.

Of course, this isn’t always so. In fact, two of the biggest names in technology duke it out all the time. In their most recent tiff, IBM plays the schoolyard bully while Microsoft attempts to save face with a cool yet scathing blog response. The fire starter? Oh, just what's being called the most destructive force in technology.

SQL Data Services (SDS) has been on the radar since MIX08, when it was first announced as an online data storage and query processing service that could be accessed using the standard internet protocols. It has come a long way since then. At MIX09, Microsoft demonstrated some of the newest capabilities of SDS -- specifically its new relational database capabilities.

That's right, Microsoft will offer a relational database in the Azure cloud.

Sometimes writing about the hype surrounding Twitter is like beating a dead horse. Except that the horse isn’t dead at all—on the contrary, it’s the most alive and energetic horse on the Web.

Case in point number one million and one: Twitter recently integrated with Cloud Computing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) masterminds, Salesforce.com. The combination of the two powerhouses highlights the growing importance of real-time search and conversation yet again.

As you may remember, Windows Azure got some serious play late last year when Open Text announced their records management and archiving capabilities designed specifically for the cloud-based operating system.

Continuing on the path to clear (cloudy) skies, and perhaps in order to attract even more big names from the enterprise content management world, Microsoft recently announced some upgrades to the platform.

Revealed alongside Silverlight 3 beta at the MIX09 conference, Azure’s new capabilities include non-.NET language support via FastCGI, and geolocation. The new features are aimed directly at the hearts of developers who dream of being able to host data and code across more than one US-based center.

Gartner predicted cloud computing to be one of the top 10 strategic technologies for 2009, and so far it looks like they were right. Besides appealing to developers, the Cloud route means customers too can store data in multiple locations without IT involvement, and for significantly less money. And as much as we’d hate to see ECM trampled into oblivion, we must admit that benefits like that are hard to beat.

Follow Open Text’s continued efforts to stay afloat here, or check out more details on Azure here.

Amazon Simple Storage Service, also called S3, (news,site) is a great service for those who desire a pay-as-you-go, hosted storage service for building web apps or storing files in the cloud.  CloudBerry Lab, a software vendor, has released a freeware solution called CloudBerry S3 Explorer that makes accessing and managing your Amazon S3 storage easier than ever before.

Acquia, the subscription based service and software company behind the popular open source web content management system Drupal, has made some new announcements that mean a change in management and exciting new things for the future of Acquia and Drupal.