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UPDATE: Microsoft COO: ‘We Are Going To Lead With the Cloud’

cloudtweaks — Thu, 29 Jul 2010 05:36:03 +0000

SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)–Cloud computing tops a four-point plan Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) has developed for maintaining its position in the business-software market, Kevin Turner, the company’s chief operating officer, said Thursday.

“We are going to lead with the cloud,” Turner said at the Redmond, Wash. software giant’s analyst day. “It helps position Microsoft to sell more on-premise products.”

Microsoft plans to drive sales of its two key franchises, the Windows 7 operating system and the Office 2010 suite of business software, and hopes to improve customer satisfaction and expand market share.

Turner said that Dow Chemical Co. (DOW) and Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, part of Hyatt Hotels Corp. (H), are new customer wins for Microsoft’s cloud products.

“Both of those were very competitive bids against Google (GOOG) and IBM (IBM),” Turner said, calling out a slew of cloud competitors including Salesforce.com Inc. (CRM), VMware Inc. (VMW) and Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN). “Seventy percent of the wins in the cloud that we had in Q4 were new Microsoft customers.”

“Two years ago we were nowhere [in competition with VMware,] Turner added. “What’s Microsoft been able to do in just two years in this space? A 15.2% share gain per [International Data Corp.].”

Officials at VMware weren’t immediately available for comment.

Microsoft’s cloud customers include 13 of the top 20 global telecom firms, the company said, along with 15 of the top 20 global banks and 16 of the top 20 global pharmaceutical companies.

“The sweet spot we have for this company is right in the heart of providing IT as a service for customers,” Turner said. “Some of the biggest companies in the world are choosing Microsoft.”

A lot is expected from Thursday’s meeting as Microsoft struggles to redefine itself.

In recent months, Microsoft killed a high-profile mobile phone project less than two months after its launch, reorganized its entertainment division and saw its market capitalization slip below that of Apple Inc. (AAPL).

For investors, those events seem to have overshadowed that Microsoft is making lots of money and that Windows 7 has sold well. Turner said the latest iteration of the operating system was selling nearly eight copies every second. The company’s fiscal fourth-quarter profit climbed 48% to $4.5 billion.

But while Windows 7 is a big hit, all of Microsoft’s operating systems, as a group, have lost market share in recent years. According to an April estimate from market-watcher Gartner Inc., non-Windows operating systems, such as Linux and Apple’s Macintosh OS, have grown from 3.3% of the market in 2003 to 5.9% of the market currently.

Microsoft shares have dropped 15% so far this year. In early afternoon trading, Microsoft was up 0.3% at $26.21.

-By Jeanette Borzo, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-8230; jeanette.borzo@dowjones.com

Developers Rate IBM Top Private Cloud: Evans Data Corporation Survey

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:16:27 +0000

ARMONK, N.Y., July 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ – IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced that its private test and development cloud was the top choice of developers in Evans Data Corporation’s Cloud Development Survey 2010.

Evans Data Corporation’s Cloud Development Survey Report examines the concerns, intentions and current adoption of developers regarding deploying to and developing for public or private clouds. The report covers the full range of Cloud Computing issues, including: Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud, Private cloud management and data centers, standards and security.

In the survey of over 400 software developers, almost 30% identified IBM as the top Private Cloud provider. Developers indicated that the most important factors in determining which private cloud provider to use are security, reliability and uptime, and proven expertise. The primary benefits of deploying applications in a private cloud are the freedom from maintaining hardware, cost savings, and scalability.

“We’ve seen that safely enabling developers to serve themselves can help reduce IT labor costs by 50 percent, reduce provision cycle times from weeks to minutes and improve quality, eliminating software defects by up to 30 percent,” said Jan Jackman, vice president, cloud computing services, IBM Global Technology Services. “IBM is honored that our test and development cloud service has been recognized for its enterprise-grade security, reliability and control.”

IBM’s Smart Business Development & Test Cloud features IBM Rational Software Delivery Services for Cloud Computing, which includes a collection of Rational’s market-leading products and capabilities helping clients harness the agility and flexibility of the cloud. Development and delivery teams can more effectively collaborate and quickly develop, test, and deploy new technology-based business initiatives. IBM also offers enterprise developers the opportunity to take advantage of IBM’s secure and scalable cloud infrastructure with the IBM Smart Business Development and Test on the IBM Cloud.

IBM is building an ecosystem of partners to deliver the most complete and comprehensive cloud computing solutions to clients. This ecosystem comprises existing and new cloud partners in the IT industry that intend to work with IBM and complement the IBM Cloud in key areas. For example, RightScale and Kaavo can help customers manage and provision cloud resources to facilitate more effective deployment of applications and workloads in the cloud, while Navajo Systems can provide additional security for cloud-based applications and Silanis’ e-signature process management can enable secure e-transactions and e-contracts. Aviarc, Wavemaker and Corent can enable development of applications on the cloud, while VMLogix can provide manual, functional, and compatibility testing; AppFirst can provide performance monitoring; or SOASTA CloudTest can deliver load and performance testing — all taking advantage of the IBM Cloud.

For more information about IBM’s cloud computing portfolio, research and labs, visit www.ibm.com/cloud.

VMworld® 2010, the Leading Virtualization Event of the Year, Comes to San Francisco and Copenhagen

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 15:55:29 +0000

PALO ALTO, CA–(Marketwire – July 27, 2010) – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop through the datacenter and to the cloud, today announced that VMworld® 2010 makes its return to San Francisco Aug. 30 through Sept. 2 at Moscone Center and will also be held Oct. 12-14 at The Bella Center in Copenhagen. With more than 19,000 attendees expected worldwide and more than 200 sponsors and exhibitors, including Global Diamond sponsors Cisco, Dell, EMC and NetApp and Global Platinum sponsors HP and Intel, VMworld 2010 will spotlight VMware and the industry’s commitment to virtualization and the transformation to IT as a Service.

The theme of VMworld 2010 is “Virtual Roads. Actual Clouds,” showcasing the journey to cloud computing through virtualization. Attendees will explore new roads that will help them discover, learn and break new ground in transforming IT.

VMworld offers attendees informative deep-dive technical sessions and hands-on labs training, plus access to a wealth of technology and cloud partners gathering in San Francisco and Copenhagen. Attendees will share and gain practical knowledge around virtualization best practices, building a private cloud, leveraging the public cloud, managing desktops as a service, virtualizing enterprise applications and more.

This year, all VMworld labs will be powered by the VMware LabCloud portal, a self-service interface custom-built to enable attendees to access lab courses and content, allowing VMware to increase the number of labs offered and provide attendees more opportunities to explore how virtualization can make a powerful impact on their organization. VMworld will stage more than 22,000 lab seats through 480 simultaneous user workstations during the four-day event. To build out this environment, VMware has committed more than 75,000 man-hours in lab creation and development to produce 30 lab topics — all of which are powered by the VMware vSphere™ cloud infrastructure platform and hardware technologies donated by more than a dozen sponsors. The labs will cover everything from virtualized desktop infrastructure, through the VMware vSphere-powered datacenter and into the VMware-powered cloud. With easy access to more than 150 VMware subject matter experts on hand to answer questions and explore options, participants will get one-on-one attention and still have the flexibility to move at their own pace.

VMworld 2010 Registration
To register to attend VMworld 2010, please visit www.vmworld.com.
For questions about press registration, please contact: vmworld10@outcastpr.com
For questions about analyst registration, please contact: vmwarear@nectarpr.com

For a current list of sponsors, please visit: http://www.vmworld.com/community/conferences/2010/sponsors-exhibitors/

To network and join VMworld discussions on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media, please visit: http://www.vmworld.com/community/discussion-document/

About VMware
VMware delivers virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable IT organizations to energize businesses of all sizes. With the industry leading virtualization platform — VMware vSphere™ — customers rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, improve agility, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2009 revenues of $2 billion, more than 190,000 customers and 25,000 partners, VMware is the leader in virtualization which consistently ranks as a top priority among CIOs. VMware is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, VMworld, and VMware vSphere are registered trademarks and/or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and/or other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word “partner” or “partnership” does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

Compuware Publishes New Whitepaper and On-demand Webcast: Performance in the Cloud

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 14:31:10 +0000

Whitepaper and Webcast Detail How Companies Can Manage the Performance and Availability of Applications in the Cloud

DETROIT, Jul 27, 2010 (GlobeNewswire via COMTEX) — Compuware Corporation /quotes/comstock/15*!cpwr/quotes/nls/cpwr (CPWR 8.20, -0.06, -0.73%) has published a new whitepaper titled: “Performance in the Cloud.” The paper examines how companies can manage the performance and availability of applications in the cloud by using real-time data to monitor cloud service providers. An on-demand webcast on performance in the cloud is also available at: http://bit.ly/cn5P26.

Cloud Computing is driving a fundamental shift in the way organizations build, deploy and use applications, and it’s raising expectations on how quickly and cost-effectively new IT functionality can be made available to the business. And even though the delivery chain for these “borderless applications” now crosses organizational and geographic boundaries, users will still expect the applications to perform well, and they will hold IT accountable if they don’t. IT is faced with managing an increasingly complex and diverse delivery chain, consisting of dozens of service and content providers spread around the world.

The challenge for IT is to meet the business expectation of faster delivery of new functionality, while at the same time maintaining end-to-end visibility and control of application performance and availability across an inter-dependent, but independent, network of service providers.

This Compuware whitepaper and on-demand webcast provide real-world insight into how companies are successfully addressing this challenge, and how they can get objective, real-time data on the performance and availability of their prospective cloud service providers to assist them in their decision-making process.

Together, Compuware Vantage and Gomez deliver the market’s only application performance management solution that provides broad visibility and deep-dive resolution across the entire application delivery chain, spanning both the Enterprise and the Internet. These unrivaled capabilities make Compuware the global standard for optimizing application performance.

Compuware Corporation

Founded in 1973, Compuware provides software, experts and best practices to ensure applications work well and deliver business value. Compuware solutions optimize end-to-end application performance for leading organizations around the world, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies and 12 of the top 20 most visited U.S. web sites. Learn more at: http://www.compuware.com.

The Compuware logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=5950

This news release was distributed by GlobeNewswire, www.globenewswire.com

SOURCE: Compuware

Open Source Release of ‘Hibari,’ A Database for Big Data

cloudtweaks — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 10:27:45 +0000

SAN MATEO, Calif., July 27 /PRNewswire/ — Gemini Mobile Technologies (″Gemini″) announced at ″Wireless Japan 2010″ in Tokyo that it will release Hibari (meaning ″Cloud Bird″ in Japanese) as open source. Hibari is a database optimized for the highly reliable, highly available storage of massive data, so-called ″Big Data.″ Hibari can be used in Cloud Computing Applications such as web mail, Social Networking Services (SNS), and other services requiring storage of tera-bytes and peta-bytes of new daily data.

Hibari, developed by Gemini, is based on distributed non-relational database technologies of key value store and chain replication. These technologies bring benefits of low cost and high reliability by enabling data storage on tens or hundreds of PC servers, instead of costly special-purpose storage appliances such as SANs. Development started in 2005, and has been deployed and commercially proven in a number of large telecom operators, storing everything from SNS digital goods to Cloud Mail for millions of users.

″Big Data″ applications are growing rapidly, fueled by tremendous growth in digital content, social media, automatically-generated data such as logs, histories, and telemetric statistics (electricity utilization, vehicle location information, etc.). By releasing Hibari to open sourcing, Gemini expects its commercially-proven, non-relational database technology to be used in a variety of fields, including enterprise private cloud computing, digital entertainment, e-commerce, financials, and telemetries.

Hibari is developed in Erlang, and is released under the Apache license. Hibari provides highly-versatile APIs including Amazon S3, JSON-RPC-RFC4627, Universal Binary Protocol, and soon-to-be-released Thrift, Avro and Google’s Protocol Buffers; Hibari supports Java, C/C++, Python, Ruby, and Erlang. Gemini plans to provide Hadoop Map-Reduce integration as well as a commercial license which includes updates and support.

Hibari download site – http://sourceforge.net/projects/hibari/
About Gemini Mobile Technologies – http://www.geminimobile.com/

CONTACT: Giorgio Propersi of Gemini Mobile Technologies, +1-805-312-6379, gpropersi@geminimobile.com

SOURCE Gemini Mobile Technologies

http://www.geminimobile.com/

Skytap and Customer, Nuance Communications, to Speak on Cloud Computing at Burton Group (Gartner) Catalyst Conference

cloudtweaks — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 14:40:40 +0000

Skytap, Amazon EC2 and GoGrid Will Discuss Cloud Economics and Licensing

SEATTLE, WA–(Marketwire – July 26, 2010) – Skytap, Inc., the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions, today announced that Deanne Harper, senior manager of Speech University at Nuance Communications, and Sundar Raghavan, chief product and marketing officer at Skytap, will present at the Burton Group Catalyst Conference on July 28, 2010 in San Diego, CA.

At the event, Harper and Raghavan will provide real world insight into how the cloud can be used to accelerate business productivity, and share practical tips for companies to move to the cloud successfully. Sessions featuring Skytap and its customer, Nuance Communications, include:

Hands-on Training from the Cloud: Speech University’s Global Solution
Wednesday, July 28 at 4:05 PM
Speaker: Deanne Harper (Nuance Communications, Inc.)
Description: In this session, Deanne will describe the cloud-based training solution adopted by Nuance Speech University (NSU) in 2008. She will discuss the challenges that led NSU to consider the cloud as a training solution and the company’s requirements for a successful solution. Deanne will review her vendor comparison and identify factors that led to the solution adopted by Nuance.

Cloud Economics and Licensing
Wednesday, July 28 at 3:10 PM
Panel Participants: Drue Reeves (Gartner), Sundar Raghavan (Skytap), Mario Olivarez (GoGrid), and Nathan Day (SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.)
Description: The roundtable will discuss the economics around the cloud and the myriad of licensing issues that also accompany a move to the cloud.

Vendor Lightning Round
Wednesday, July 28 at 5:05 PM
Speakers: Sundar Raghavan (Skytap), Matt Tavis (Amazon.com), Nathan Day (SoftLayer Technologies, Inc.), and Jeff Samuels (GoGrid)
Description: In this session, cloud vendors present their vision and product in five minutes. The audience will vote to select a winner and the winner will receive 10 additional minutes to present.

Catalyst is a five-day, industry-shaping conference exploring cutting-edge ideas, current challenges and emerging technologies shaping today’s and tomorrow’s enterprise. Catalyst Conference is renowned for its attendee-driven agenda, high-profile speakers, in-depth content and fiercely independent point of view.

About Skytap, Inc.
Skytap is the leading provider of self-service cloud automation solutions for dynamic workloads. Skytap enables users to run enterprise applications unchanged in the cloud, collaborate securely with global teams, and gain unparalleled business productivity. Additionally, IT organizations can gain visibility and control over cloud projects, align capacity with demand, and reduce costs by 70% or more. Enterprises can securely connect Skytap to their data centers and create virtual private clouds. Skytap is ideal for any dynamic workload including application development, testing, virtual training, ERP migration and sales demonstration projects. To buy or learn more, visit www.skytap.com.

Novell and Tencent Establish Joint Cloud Computing Laboratory in China

cloudtweaks — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 12:25:10 +0000

The FINANCIAL — Novell and Tencent on July 22 announced the establishment of a research laboratory in Shenzhen, China to jointly develop an Internet Data Center (IDC) cloud computing platform.

Tencent, China’s largest Internet service portal with more than 480 million active users, is adopting SUSE® Linux Enterprise Server and PlateSpin Orchestrate as its auto-deployment system. As part of the agreement, Tencent will also utilize intelligent workload management solutions from Novell, including PlateSpin Workload Management, to create a flexible and easy-to-expand IDC cloud platform that will allow users to build, purchase and run business applications in a faster and more convenient way.

“Tencent has recognized the value of our solutions to its business,” said Dr. Sen Ming Chang, managing director of Novell East Asia. “This cloud computing laboratory will create a powerful IDC cloud platform that will not only promote IDC industry development but also help companies improve productivity and reduce costs. Our collaboration with Tencent further proves Novell’s leadership in cloud computing and the intelligent workload management market. We spare no effort to provide customers with excellent solutions and services, and hope more companies like Tencent will adopt our virtual solutions.”

Typically, IDC vendors lease resources from solution providers and make a profit by then leasing space, bandwidth and other resources to customers. With the rise of Web 2.0 and bandwidth-intensive multi-media sites, as well as increased business usage, demand for the IDC solutions has grown.

Because of this rapid development, the IDC industry and a number of Tencent’s operations have met with considerable challenges. To address these challenges, Tencent built its virtualization and data center engine using SUSE Linux Enterprise Server with Xen Virtualization and Novell PlateSpin Orchestrate. To date, the engine has achieved significant results including more efficient utilization, operational flexibility, improved productivity, lower costs and greater compatibility and security.

Source: FinChannel

Developers Pick Google and IBM as Top Cloud Vendors, New Cloud Development Survey

cloudtweaks — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:23:24 +0000

Dublin, Jul 22, 2010 (M2 PRESSWIRE via COMTEX) –

Research and Markets(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3b43c9/cloud_development) has announced the addition of the “Cloud Development Survey 2010 v.1″ report to their offering.

The Cloud Development Survey Report examines the concerns, intentions and current adoption of developers regarding deploying to and developing for public or private clouds. The report covers the full range of Cloud Computing issues, including: Private Cloud vs. Public Cloud, Private cloud management and data centers, standards and organizations, security, wireless Cloud Services, tool use, licensing, languages for use in the Cloud, and applications that will move first to the Cloud.

Conducted annually, 500+ developers

Executive Summary:

Google is the perceived leader for setup, infrastructure and application management in a Public Cloud and IBM is the top choice of developers for Private Clouds according to Evans Datas recently released Cloud Development Survey 2010. Over 40% of developers sited Google as the Public cloud leader and almost 30% identified IBM as the top Private Cloud provider, in this survey of over 400 software developers released end of June.

“Most developers expect to be in a hybrid situation going forward with respect to application deployment in the Cloud, said Janel Garvin, CEO of Evans Data. “And these two vendors are perceived of as best filling the two main requirements for either Public or Private clouds; i.e., security and reliability. With no other vendors even close in perceived leadership, its likely that well see IBM and Google dominating the cloudscape for the foreseeable future.

Developers also feel it is very important to be able to move applications between public and private clouds, and it is especially important to be able to move from the Public Cloud to the Private Cloud.

Other highlights from this bi-annual survey include:

- Over 80% feel that it is important for cloud providers to give 100% backward compatibility as the cloud infrastructure matures

- Sixty percent are concerned with government geographical restrictions with Cloud deployments

- Better data encryption is the most wished for security improvement for Public Cloud

Key Topics Covered:

- EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

- OVERVIEW

- DEMOGRAPHICS

- MOVING INTO THE CLOUD

- STRUCTURE OF THE CLOUD

- DEVELOPING IN THE CLOUD

- SOA AND CLOUD GOVERNANCE

- PRIVATE CLOUD

- PRIVATE CLOUD DATA CENTERS

- PUBLIC CLOUDS

- DEVELOPMENT TOOLS

- LANGUAGE USE

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/3b43c9/cloud_development

CONTACT: Laura Wood, Senior Manager, Research and Markets Fax: +1 646 607 1907 (US) Fax: +353 1 481 1716 (Rest of World) e-mail: press@researchandmarkets.com

((M2 Communications disclaims all liability for information provided within M2 PressWIRE. Data supplied by named party/parties. Further information on M2 PressWIRE can be obtained at http://www.presswire.net on the world wide web. Inquiries to info@m2.com.

For full details on International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) IBM. International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) has Short Term PowerRatings at TradingMarkets. Details on International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) Short Term PowerRatings is available at This Link.

Cloud Computing Delivering on its Promise, but Doubts Still Hold Back Adoption

cloudtweaks — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 17:21:43 +0000

The Majority of IT Departments now Use Cloud-Based Applications, with Users Reporting Better Security and Lower Costs

Waltham, Mass., July 22, 2010 – Mimecast®, a leading supplier of cloud-based email security, continuity, policy control and archiving, today announced the results of the second annual Mimecast Cloud Adoption Survey, an annual research report examining attitudes to cloud computing services amongst IT decision-makers in UK and US businesses. The survey, conducted by independent research firm Loudhouse, reveals that a majority of organizations (51 percent) are now using some form of cloud computing service—and the levels of satisfaction amongst those companies is high across the board. Conversely, companies not yet using cloud services cite concerns around cost and security.

The survey shows that of those businesses using cloud services, 74 percent say that the cloud has alleviated internal resource pressures, 72 percent report an improved end-user experience, 73 percent have managed to reduce their infrastructure costs and 57 percent of say that the cloud has resulted in improved security. However, not everyone is convinced: 74 percent of IT departments still believe that there is always a trade-off between cost and IT security and 62 percent say that storing data on servers outside of the business is always a risk.

Highlights from the Research
Cloud Services are now the Norm:
- The majority of organizations now use cloud-based services. The report found that 51 percent of organizations are now using at least one cloud-based application. Adoption rates amongst US businesses are slightly ahead of those in the UK with 56 percent of respondents using at least one cloud-based application, compared to 50 percent in the UK. This is a significant rise from the 2009 survey, when just 36 percent of US businesses were using cloud services.

- Two thirds of businesses are considering adopting cloud computing. Encouragingly for vendors, 66 percent are now considering adopting cloud-based applications in the future. Again, US businesses are ahead of the UK in their attitudes to the cloud with 70 percent considering cloud services, compared to 60 percent in the UK.

- Email, security and storage are the most popular cloud services. 62 percent of the organizations that use cloud computing are using a cloud-based email application. Security and storage are the next most popular, used by 52 percent and 50 percent of organizations with at least one cloud-based service respectively. Email services are most popular with mid-size businesses (250-1,000 employees), with 70 percent of these organizations using the cloud to support this function. Smaller businesses (under 250 employees) are most likely to use the cloud for security services, with larger enterprises (over 1,000 employees) most likely to make use of cloud storage services.

Cloud Attitudes are Split Between the ‘Haves’ and ‘Have-Nots’:
- Existing cloud users are satisfied. Security is not considered to be an issue by existing cloud users: 57 percent say that moving data to the cloud has resulted in better security, with 58 percent saying it has given them better control of their data. Among current cloud users, 73 percent say it has reduced the cost of their IT infrastructure and 74 percent say it has alleviated the internal resource pressures upon the department.

- Security fears are still a barrier. Three quarters (74 percent) of IT departments agreed with the statement ‘there is always a trade-off between cost and IT security,’ suggesting that many organizations feel cloud solutions are less secure than more expensive on-premise alternatives, simply due to their lesser cost. Storing data on servers outside of the business was also seen as a significant security risk by 62 percent.

- IT is concerned that adopting cloud will not initially result in cost savings. 58 percent of respondents thought that replacing legacy IT solutions will almost always cost more than the benefits of new IT.

- Cloud concerns stem from a lack of clarity. One reason for the negative perceptions of cloud services among non-users seems to be a lack of clear communication from the industry itself. 54 percent of respondents said the potential benefits of cloud delivery models are overstated by the IT industry.

Supporting Quotes

“It is great to see that cloud computing has now been embraced by the majority of organizations,” commented Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Mimecast. “The fact that more than 50 percent of businesses are now using cloud-based applications – with two thirds currently considering adopting them – is hugely encouraging for the industry and a clear indication that IT is increasingly willing to innovate in order to get better value for money, increased reliability and greater control of their data.”

“The research shows that there is a clear divide within the IT industry on the issue of cloud computing,” commented Peter Bauer, CEO and co-founder of Mimecast. “While those organizations that have embraced cloud services are clearly reaping the rewards, there are still a number who are put off by the ‘cloud myths’ around data security and the cost of replacing legacy IT. It is now up to cloud vendors to educate businesses and end users to ensure that these concerns do not overshadow the huge potential cost, security and performance benefits that cloud computing can bring.”

About the Research
The Mimecast Cloud Adoption Survey was carried out by Loudhouse Research on behalf of Mimecast in June 2010. The survey polled over 500 IT professionals from a range of businesses and organizations based in the UK and USA. The full report can be downloaded here: http://www.mimecast.com/barometerresearch2010.

About Mimecast
Mimecast (www.mimecast.com) delivers SaaS-based enterprise email management including archiving, discovery, continuity, security and policy. By unifying disparate and fragmented email environments into one holistic solution that is always available from the cloud, Mimecast minimizes risk and reduces cost and complexity, while providing total end-to-end control of email. Founded in the United Kingdom in 2003, Mimecast serves approximately 3,000 customers worldwide and has offices in Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and the Channel Islands.

Facebook Selects Salesforce.com! As Cloud Computing Provider

cloudtweaks — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:22:08 +0000

World’s largest social networking service selects world’s leading enterprise cloud for CRM

SAN FRANCISCO, July 21 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — Salesforce.com (NYSE: CRM), the enterprise cloud computing company, today announced that Facebook (http://www.Facebook.com/facebook) has selected Salesforce CRM (http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation) to manage its fast-growing sales operations.

Facebook Looks to the Cloud to Increase Sales Process Efficiency

Facebook evaluated the pros and cons of enhancing its own system or selecting a cloud computing CRM system and went with the Sales Cloud 2 for the inherent benefits of cloud computing, particularly its quick implementation time and the ability to scale along with the company’s rapid growth.
Facebook has deployed the system across its sales operation teams along with its developer relations to automate complex workflow and approval processes. The system integrates with half a dozen existing systems.

Comments on the News:

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer, Facebook commented: “Facebook and salesforce.com share a common vision for helping people connect and share information more efficiently. Salesforce.com’s cloud model was the perfect fit for us – with our current growth trajectory and future sales goals, we needed a product that will scale with our growing business.”
Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO, salesforce.com commented: “Facebook joins the thousands of companies managing their enterprise sales teams in the cloud, enabling them to focus on their fast growing business rather than the hardware and software to support it.”

Additional Resources:

More information on Sales Cloud 2 is available here: http://www.salesforce.com/crm/sales-force-automation/
Become a fan of salesforce.com at http://www.facebook.com/SALESFORCE
Follow @salesforce on Twitter

About salesforce.com

Salesforce.com is the enterprise cloud computing company. Based on salesforce.com’s real-time, multitenant architecture, the company’s platform and CRM applications (http://www.salesforce.com/crm) have revolutionized the way companies collaborate and communicate with their customers, including:

The Sales Cloud, for sales force automation and contact management
The Service Cloud, for customer service and support solutions
Chatter, for social collaboration
The Force.com platform, for custom application development
The AppExchange, the world’s leading marketplace for enterprise cloud computing applications

Salesforce.com offers the fastest path to customer success with cloud computing. As of April 30, 2010, salesforce.com manages customer information for approximately 77,300 customers including Allianz Commercial, Dell, Japan Post, Kaiser Permanente, KONE, and SunTrust Banks.

Any unreleased services or features referenced in this or other press releases or public statements are not currently available and may not be delivered on time or at all. Customers who purchase salesforce.com applications should make their purchase decisions based upon features that are currently available. Salesforce.com has headquarters in San Francisco, with offices in Europe and Asia, and trades on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol “CRM.” For more information please visit http://www.salesforce.com, or call 1-800-NO-SOFTWARE.

Copyright (c) 2010 salesforce.com, inc. All rights reserved. Salesforce and the “no software” logo are registered trademarks of salesforce.com, inc., and salesforce.com owns other registered and unregistered trademarks. Other names used herein may be trademarks of their respective owners.

Facebook® is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners.

SOURCE salesforce.com