Here is a cloud resource list that we’ve put together.  The list has over 50 of the biggest and best up and coming Cloud Computing companies anywhere.  If you’re interested in shifting to the cloud this would be a good place to start your search.  We will include this in our Cloud Vendors section and will be constantly updating with new players and developments.

Tools that benchmark performance promise to reveal the strengths and weaknesses of competing cloud providers.

New software developed to measure the performance of different cloud computing platforms could make it easier for prospective users to figure out which of these increasingly popular services is right for them.

Right now, developers have little means of comparing cloud providers, which lease access to computing power based in vast and distant data centers. Until actually migrating their software to a cloud service, they can’t know exactly how fast that service will perform calculations, retrieve data, or respond to sudden spikes in demand. But Duke University computer scientist Xiaowei Yang and her colleague Ang Li are trying to make the cloud market more like the car market, where, as Yang says, “you can compare specifications like engine size or top speed.”

Working with Srikanth Kandula and Ming Zhang of Microsoft Research in Redmond, WA, Yang and Li have developed a suite of benchmarking tools that make it possible to compare the performance of different cloud platforms without moving applications between them. These tools use algorithms to measure the speed of computation, and shuttle data around to test the speed at which new copies of an application are created, the speed at which data can be stored and retrieved, the speed at which it can be shuttled between applications inside the same cloud, and the responsiveness of a cloud to network requests from distant places. The researchers used the software to test the services offered by six providers: Amazon, Microsoft, Google, GoGrid, RackSpace and CloudSites. Results of those tests were combined with the providers’ pricing models to allow for quick comparisons.

The results are among the first attempts to compare the performance of several clouds platforms, says Yang. “We found that it’s very hard to find a provider that is best in all metrics,” she says. “Some are twice as fast for just 10 percent extra cost, which is a very good deal, but at the same time their storage service is actually very slow and has a lot of latency variation.” Another provider showed good computation speeds but was less quick at spawning new instances of an application–something that might be necessary for a service that experiences peaks in demand, as a video site does when some of its content goes viral. “It seems like in today’s market it is hard to pick a provider that is good at everything,” says Yang.

Continue Reading at MIT ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/07/pitting-cloud-against-cloud/feed/ 0 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/07/rackspace-open-sources-cloud-platform-announces-plans-to-collaborate-with-nasa-and-other-industry-leaders-on-openstack-project/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/07/rackspace-open-sources-cloud-platform-announces-plans-to-collaborate-with-nasa-and-other-industry-leaders-on-openstack-project/#comments Thu, 15 Jul 2010 10:35:54 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=1991

SAN ANTONIO, Jul 19, 2010 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Rackspace(R) Hosting (RAX 16.64, -0.66, -3.82%) today announced the launch of OpenStack(TM), an open-source cloud platform designed to foster the emergence of technology standards and cloud interoperability. Rackspace, the leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry, is donating the code that powers its Cloud Files and Cloud Servers public-cloud offerings to the OpenStack project. The project will also incorporate technology that powers the NASA Nebula Cloud Platform. Rackspace and NASA plan to actively collaborate on joint technology development and leverage the efforts of open-source software developers worldwide.

“Modern scientific computation requires ever increasing storage and processing power delivered on-demand,” said Chris C. Kemp, NASA’s Chief Technology Officer for IT. “To serve this demand, we built Nebula, an infrastructure cloud platform designed to meet the needs of our scientific and engineering community. NASA and Rackspace are uniquely positioned to drive this initiative based on our experience in building large scale cloud platforms and our desire to embrace open source.”

OpenStack will feature several cloud infrastructure components including a fully distributed object store based on Rackspace Cloud Files, available today at OpenStack.org. The next component planned for release is a scalable compute-provisioning engine based on the NASA Nebula cloud technology and Rackspace Cloud Servers technology. It is expected to be available later this year. Using these components, organizations would be able to turn physical hardware into scalable and extensible cloud environments using the same code currently in production serving tens of thousands of customers and large government projects.

“We are founding the OpenStack initiative to help drive industry standards, prevent vendor lock-in and generally increase the velocity of innovation in cloud technologies,” said Lew Moorman, President, Cloud and CSO at Rackspace. “We are proud to have NASA’s support in this effort. Its Nebula Cloud Platform is a tremendous boost to the OpenStack community. We expect ongoing collaboration with NASA and the rest of the community to drive more-rapid cloud adoption and innovation, in the private and public spheres.”

Rackspace and NASA have committed to use OpenStack to power their cloud platforms, and Rackspace will dedicate open-source developers and resources to support adoption of OpenStack among enterprises and service providers. An OpenStack Design Summit hosted by Rackspace was held July 13-16 in Austin, where more than 100 technical advisors, developers and founding members joined to validate the code and ratify the project roadmap. More than 25 companies were represented at the Design Summit including AMD, Autonomic Resources, Citrix, Cloud.com, Cloudkick, Cloudscaling, CloudSwitch, Dell, enStratus, FathomDB, Intel, iomart Group, Limelight, Nicira, NTT DATA, Opscode, PEER 1, Puppet Labs, RightScale, Riptano, Scalr, SoftLayer, Sonian, Spiceworks, Zenoss and Zuora.

“OpenStack provides a solid foundation for promoting the emergence of cloud standards and interoperability,” said Peter Levine, SVP and GM, Datacenter and Cloud Division, Citrix Systems. “As a longtime technology partner with Rackspace, Citrix will collaborate closely with the community to provide full support for the XenServer platform and our other cloud-enabling products.”

“We believe in offering customers choice in cloud computing that helps them improve efficiency,” says Forrest Norrod, Vice President and General Manager of Server Platforms, Dell. “OpenStack on Dell is a great option to create open source enterprise cloud solutions.”

To download or contribute code and get involved, visit OpenStack.org. Follow OpenStack on Twitter @OpenStack.

About Rackspace Hosting

Rackspace Hosting is the world’s leading specialist in the hosting and cloud computing industry. The San Antonio-based company provides Fanatical Support(R) to its customers, across a portfolio of IT services, including Managed Hosting and Cloud Computing. For more information, visit www.rackspace.com.

About the NASA Nebula Cloud Program

NASA Nebula is a Cloud Computing service based at NASA Ames Research Center that provides high performance compute, network, and data storage services to NASA scientists and researchers. Nebula allows NASA to share and process large scientific data sets and was one of three flagship projects highlighted in NASA’s Open Government Plan. For more information, visit http://nebula.nasa.gov.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of Rackspace Hosting could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including any statements concerning expected development of the OpenStack project; the acceptance of OpenStack technology as an industry standard; anticipated operational and financial benefits from any development of the OpenStack project; the participation of other companies or individuals in the OpenStack project; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the possibility that expected benefits from the OpenStack project may not materialize because the underlying technology is not reliable or generally compatible with industry standards; there are changes in technology that adversely affect the adoption of the standards, and other risks that are described in Rackspace Hosting’s Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2010, filed with the SEC on May 6, 2010. Except as required by law, Rackspace Hosting assumes no obligation to update these forward-looking statements publicly, or to update the reasons actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in these forward-looking statements, even if new information becomes available in the future.

Forges New Relationships with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Cloud Hosting and salesforce.com

DALLAS, June 7 /PRNewswire/ — INGRAM MICRO CLOUD SUMMIT – As part of its inaugural Cloud Summit, Ingram Micro Inc. (NYSE: IM) today announced the Cloud Conduit − a new services initiative that connects Ingram Micro’s North America channel partners with leading and emerging cloud computing vendors including ISVs, cloud hosting companies and system integrators. The distributor is also pleased to announce three emerging relationships with cloud innovators Amazon Web Services (AWS) LLC, Rackspace Hosting and salesforce.com.

Launching today, the new Cloud Conduit program provides Ingram Micro’s channel partners with a comprehensive portfolio of cloud-specific enablement resources and service offerings including Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS), educational tools and resources such as face-to-face engagements, business development resources, sales training and webinars.  This new program, in combination with Ingram Micro’s Seismic managed services, cloud and software-as-a-service offerings, reinforces the distributor’s position as a thought leader and strategic partner in the cloud computing market place.

“The blending of the managed IT services model and cloud computing is an evolutionary step in the advancement of IT services,” says Jason Beal, director, service sales, Ingram Micro North America. “Cloud computing introduces a new playing field for solution providers and managed service providers. With the advent of cloud computing comes tremendous opportunity for our channel partners to add high value managed solutions and services from the cloud into their services portfolio and ultimately earn more business. Ingram Micro introduced the Cloud Conduit to help our channel partners take advantage of and maximize the business opportunities the cloud brings to the table.”

As part of the Cloud Conduit initiative, Ingram Micro is pursuing three distinct relationships with Amazon Web Services, Rackspace Hosting and salesforce.com.  Amazon Web Services is working closely with Ingram Micro to bring the benefits of the AWS platform to Ingram Micro’s many channel partners.

“Amazon Web Services is pleased that Ingram Micro will be utilizing AWS’ on-demand, pay as you go, cloud computing services to help a new community of customers and solution providers,” says Terry Wise, director of partner relations for Amazon Web Services.  ”Customers and solution providers will be able to innovate and accelerate the delivery of new applications all while cutting costs.”

Under the developing alliance with salesforce.com, the enterprise cloud computing company, Ingram Micro will provide channel development, marketing, and channel sales services to salesforce.com’s community of AppExchange ISVs and help bring these world-class applications to market through the Cloud Conduit program.

In addition, Ingram Micro will offer Rackspace’s managed and cloud hosting solutions as part of its Seismic managed services portfolio to the distributor’s more than 1,600 Seismic partners throughout North America, as well as its general solution provider base.

Ingram Micro Announces Cloud Conduit Advisory Council

To further accelerate industry adoption and build a greater understanding around cloud computing, Ingram Micro is spearheading a new industry leadership group called the Cloud Conduit Advisory Council. Founding participants include Amazon Web Services, CA, Citrix Systems, McAfee, Microsoft, Rackspace Hosting and salesforce.com.

“We created the Cloud Conduit Advisory Council to establish a common ground for the IT industry’s cloud innovators to share their vision, seek new alliances and drive greater visibility into the opportunity, challenges and benefits that cloud computing brings to the IT channel at large,” says Justin Crotty, vice president, services, Ingram Micro North America. “Together we will further enable our channel partners to clearly articulate and demonstrate the benefits of cloud computing to their customers.”

For more information on Ingram Micro Seismic and the new Cloud Conduit initiative, please visit ingrammicro.com/seismic.

Follow Ingram Micro Inc and Seismic on Twitter at:  www.twitter.com/IngramMicroInc and www.twitter.com/IngramSeismic.

About Ingram Micro

As a vital link in the technology value chain, Ingram Micro creates sales and profitability opportunities for vendors and resellers through unique marketing programs, outsourced logistics services, technical support, financial services and product aggregation and distribution. The company serves approximately 150 countries and is the only global broad-based IT distributor with operations in Asia. Visit www.ingrammicro.com.

SOURCE Ingram Micro Inc.

]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/06/ingram-micro-announces-new-cloud-conduit-initiative-to-accelerate-adoption-of-cloud-computing/feed/ 3 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/digital-fuel-announces-out-of-the-box-cloud-computing-solution/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/digital-fuel-announces-out-of-the-box-cloud-computing-solution/#comments Tue, 25 May 2010 12:24:15 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=1341

Digital Fuel, a well-known provider of SaaS (News – Alert) IT Business Management solutions, recently announced the introduction of IT Cloud Cost Management.

This out-of-the-box solution is designed to help enterprises to make the most of the up-and-coming cloud computing technologies and services.

With the help of IT Cloud Cost Management, enterprises are able to compare the TCO, unit cost, and performance of IT services between various cloud and non-cloud alternatives and vendors.

“Today’s cloud computing landscape is changing the nature of IT by providing many more applicable delivery and pricing alternatives,” said Yisrael Dancziger, president and CEO of Digital Fuel. “These alternatives, however, require fast, ongoing business management of IT capabilities based on delivery levels and cost. Now there are clouds for applications, infrastructure, and business processes. The issue, as clouds become the de facto architecture, is how to track, analyze and assess TCO, unit cost, direct and indirect costs, demand and usage. Furthermore, IT organizations need to know how to allocate the costs of these services to the consumers within their companies.”

Read more… TMC.net ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/digital-fuel-announces-out-of-the-box-cloud-computing-solution/feed/ 3 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/cloud-computing-for-lean-local-governments-cloud-economy/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/cloud-computing-for-lean-local-governments-cloud-economy/#comments Wed, 12 May 2010 15:42:05 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=1259

Three years ago David Roberts glimpsed the future of leaner, more efficient local government, and saw it in the clouds.

The Vancouver entrepreneur and financier saw an opportunity for the bread and butter of local governments – permits, planning, enforcement, inspections and licences and the chores of citizenry – to be automated with less hassle and cost on either side.

At the time, Mr. Roberts owned Municipal Software, a Victoria, B.C., company that sells IT services and software to municipal governments the traditional way – by issuing a licence, installing it and training people on-site.

But cloud computing had caught his imagination, and Mr. Roberts realized that this method of selling software was too expensive and cumbersome for many small towns and cities.

“We decided to sell off the old business to focus on a new way of doing things,” said Mr. Roberts, president and CEO of the spinoff business, BasicGov Systems Inc. “It’s made us a lot more efficient as a supplier, and has worked really well for the customer.”

BasicGov sells software as a service (SaaS) and manages the business of running a community by writing software that resides on the Internet. Today 33 communities – 31 in the United States and two in Canada, Dryden, Ont., and Red Deer, Alta. – have signed on.

Governments lease access to the servers and software – up to five modules covering permits, planning, enforcement, inspections and licences, and a public portal. One user with one module pays $119 per month. Bulk pricing is available for larger clients.

Cloud computing is the future, and everyone from Apple to Google to Microsoft is betting that mainframe servers and physical software will eventually become a thing of the past.

The cloud is the Internet and users can access software that is stored on remote servers around the world on demand. Gmail is a common form of cloud computing.

As it requires no capital investment, setup or in-house expertise, it’s a smart solution for companies looking to cut costs. BasicGov trains employees remotely and automatically pushes out updates.

“Software to run a city is not like you or I buying a copy of Microsoft Office,” Mr. Roberts says. “The cost would typically be a half-million to a million dollars up front. It works okay if you’re a fairly large city with a big population, a lot of expertise in-house and a significant budget. But we found a lot of smaller cities that couldn’t afford that kind of payment up front.”

To ensure a reliable platform, BasicGov partnered with Salesforce.com’s cloud computing platform, Force.com, which is regarded as the SaaS industry standard in cloud customer-relationship management products supporting about 77,000 organizations. It also allows BasicGov to easily take on much larger clients. The partnership promises top-notch security.

“It comes up in almost every initial discussion,” vice-president Michael Togyi says. “People are worried, but once we explain the technology that’s in place, they realize it’s often better than what they would have done themselves. We have armed guards, underground power supplies. Our data centres are more rock solid than some national security agencies in the U.S.” Continue..

Credit to Shawna Richer: TheGlobeandMail

In the old days, infrastructure meant buying $5,000 servers, putting them into high-security, cooled rooms, and hiring IT folks to make them all work. And then doing this all over again so that you’d have redundancy. Those days are gone—in fact, if you tell investors that you need money for IT infrastructure, they’re going to question your intelligence.

Cloud computing is what has changed the game. It provides small businesses with the ability to deploy websites and applications quickly, to pay only for what you use, and leave all the management issues to someone else. It makes for a leaner business that can react faster to challenges and opportunities.

But cloud computing also requires understanding a whole new technology and computing philosophy. I was lucky when we put my company’s website, Alltop.com, “into the cloud” because our service provider, Rackspace, hosts hundreds of companies and our developers at Electric Pulp have done this many times. The gang at Rackspace and I have come up with a list of ten tips to help you get started in cloud computing:

1. Know the different options available to you. “Cloud computing” simply means that you pay only for what you use—like electricity, but it can be found many forms. A platform-as-a-service (PaaS for short) works well for front-end applications and websites. It takes care of a lot of the infrastructure you need to get started. An infrastructure as a service (IaaS for short) gives you access to a command line and allows you the flexibility to customize your load balancing, autoscaling, security and failover settings, but requires advanced technical knowledge in system administration.

If you don’t have someone comfortable programming in a terminal, an IaaS is not for you. Infrastructures-as-a-service require some system administration experience. If you don’t have someone with this type of expertise, either find a competent systems administrator or consider a platform-as-a-service instead. A PaaS provider should be able to handle basic but necessary tasks such as load balancing and security.

2. Understand that scaling is a skill, not a default. Cloud computing gives you a lot of flexibility to scale at a lower cost. However, no cloud provider offers “infinite scalability” out of the box though. The world’s most popular websites and applications have professionals working full-time to ensure uptime and speed when they are needed most. Be sure to factor this into your long-term IT costs.

3. Implement a disaster plan. The cloud is not fool proof, but there are ways to protect yourself should it go down. A multi-tenant cloud will go down on occasion. If uptime is crucial to your business, be sure you have a disaster recovery plan, geographic failover, and redundancy set in place.

4. Don’t be naïve. Cloud computing will not make up for a poorly written application or database structure. A hosting provider gets the blame for a lot of performance issues. If a database is not set up properly, or code is not optimized, there is nothing a hosting provider can do to make up for this. When it comes to developers, remember that you often get what you pay for. Be sure to check their resumes and portfolio for other work.

5. Budget for your specific use-case. Calculating your budget is not as simple as reading a provider’s website. Cloud computing treats hosting as a utility. Like other utilities such as electricity, your bill will vary each month with usage. If you see a surge in traffic or users, use more space, or process more information, expect to pay more at the end of the month.

6. Choose a cloud provider on your needs, not its popularity. Do you need something that is highly elastic in a short period of time? Are you going to need support and additional services? High availability? Integration with third party software? Different cloud providers excel at different things. Consider your individual needs, do your homework, and ask cloud providers questions about their availability, speed, security, and integration before you sign up.

7. Remember: some applications are not good fits for cloud. Cloud computing is great for anything you’d need to deploy quickly and at a low cost. However, just like multi-tenant buildings are not good for every business, a multi-tenant cloud is not good for every application. If you have high security or bandwidth needs, you will need to pursue dedicated gear.

For security reasons, any application that requires PCI or HIPPA compliance is not a good fit for cloud computing. A multi-tenant cloud may also not be able to handle extreme performance loads often seen by more resource intensive applications. Evaluate your specific needs and don’t rule out dedicated or hybrid hosting (a combination of cloud and dedicated hosting) if it looks like the right fit.

8. Think outside of the box. When hosting becomes a commodity, it opens your business up to new and exciting things. You can deploy applications or sites on the fly. Consider media rich or real-time elements to your application or website. Set up a server just to comb through customer information or other data your company collects. These possibilities were not as accessible to the masses before cloud computing, so don’t be afraid to try new things and expand how your business operates.

Full Source: Guy Kawasaki at OpenForum
]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/8-tips-to-getting-started-in-cloud-computing/feed/ 4 http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/cloud-computing-mo%e2%80%99-money-life-is-good-for-cloud-vendors/ http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/cloud-computing-mo%e2%80%99-money-life-is-good-for-cloud-vendors/#comments Mon, 10 May 2010 12:18:50 +0000 cloudtweaks http://www.cloudtweaks.com/?p=1234

Put simply, life is good for cloud computing and big data vendors because there’s plenty of money to be made. Whether it’s from VCs, big IT suitors or (gasp) customers, someone wants to invest in your vision. The great part is that you don’t even have to be a startup; if you have a good product, you can get paid. Want evidence? As I describe in my GigaOM Pro column today, this week offered plenty.

Investors Reach into Their Pockets…

• Washington, D.C.-based Virtustream closed a $40 million first round aimed at bridging the gap between corporate data centers and its own via its xStream cloud management platform.
• Cloud.com (formerly VMOps) raised $11 million in a Series B round for its CloudStack solution, which helps providers and individual companies turn their existing virtualized data centers into private clouds.
• Big data startup Clustrix proved the importance of cloudscale data management, presenting itself to the world on the heels of $18 million in initial funding. Open-source database projects like Cassandra and HBase are popular among web types, but this is the type of solution that could convince some of them to give up their DIY database cultures.

As Do Big Vendors…

• IBM’s purchase of Cast Iron Systems has been covered to death, but the technical gist is that the Cast Iron platform will help customers integrate on-premise and cloud-based data, making SaaS migration more palatable (and letting IBM keep their business through this transition).
• New VMware property SpringSource bought GemStone Systems to ensure customers’ data layers can scale alongside the CPU layer as application demand increases. GemStone works fine on-premise and will be integrated with several SpringSource products.

As Do Customers…

Need more proof that life is good in the cloud? How about Rackspace’s first-quarter earnings call, during which it touted considerable cloud growth? The Rackspace Cloud represents only a fraction of total revenues (although it’s still growing), but more than 80 percent of the company’s nearly 100,000 customers. Some believe cloud computing has dot-com-like bubble potential, but Rackspace’s customer count is no mirage, and I don’t believe vendors like IBM, CA and VMware would invest as heavily as they are into a model for which they don’t foresee high ROI. Some cloud startups will fail, no doubt, but unlike so many dot-coms, cloud companies have real products that will find their way into other vendors’ portfolios and make money for someone. Read the full article here.

Source: GigaOm

Version 1.0 of the Rackspace Cloud Android app is now available in the Android Market.  This initial version helps you easily and quickly administer your Cloud Servers on the go, and includes the following features:

• List all Cloud Servers in your account
• Create new Cloud Servers (including from any existing backups)
• Delete Cloud Servers
• Resize Cloud Servers
• Perform Hard and Soft Reboots

Also, this app is open source!  If you’d like to see how it works (or even better, contribute), you can get the source at Github.

Source: RackSpace Blog

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) usage is on a staggering path to growth, according to a recent survey by Gartner.

According to Gartner, more than 95 percent of organizations will maintain or grow their SaaS use through 2010 fueled mostly by integration requirements, a change in sourcing strategy, and total cost of ownership.

“SaaS applications clearly are no longer seen as a new deployment model by our survey base, with almost half of those surveyed affirming use of SaaS applications in their business for more than three years,” said Sharon Mertz, research director at Gartner, in the survey. “The varying levels of maturity within the user base suggest growing opportunities for service providers along the adoption curve, as organizations seek assistance with initiatives ranging from process redesign to implementation to integration services.”

Despite the pending upswing in SaaS use, Gartner also found that many companies don’t have policies governing the evaluation and uses of SaaS. The survey revealed that 39 percent of respondents had policy or processes governing SaaS, which was up just one percent from 2008.

Gartner conducted the survey in December 2009 and January 2010, querying 270 IT and business management professionals involved in the implementation, support, planning and budgeting decisions regarding enterprise application software.

The survey found that the most popular SaaS applications include email, financial management and accounting, sales force automation, customer service and expense management, with more than 30 percent of survey respondents using those applications.

Additionally, 53 percent of organizations expect to increase their SaaS investment slightly over the next two years and 19 percent expect to boost SaaS investments significantly. Still, about 25 percent of respondents expect SaaS investments to remain level and 4 percent will reduce their SaaS spend slightly. Meanwhile, 72 percent of respondents believe SaaS investments will increase compared to current investments while 45 percent said on-premise budgets will increase compared to where they currently are.

And while it appears SaaS is ready to rapid and strong enterprise growth, the Gartner survey did reveal that some organizations find SaaS solutions less than optimal. Sixteen percent of respondents said they are transitioning from SaaS to on-premise solutions. While Gartner found now specific reason for the shift away from SaaS, organizations moving to on-premise software were faced with significant integration requirements and were unsatisfied with the TCO.

“These issues aside, organizations are becoming more savvy when it comes to renegotiating their SaaS contracts,” according to Mertz. “A key survey finding was that more enterprises are renegotiating contracts for greater functionality, additional users and improved financial terms. Thirty percent of respondents said that they had renegotiated their SaaS contracts before the end of the initial term.”

Full Source:CRN ]]> http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2010/05/saas-set-to-explode-in-2010-survey-cloud-computing-news/feed/ 11