Google Wins One Battle, Microsoft Wins Another, But The War Continues… On an article published more than a year ago on January 7, 2011, I had written “Microsoft and Google have never been the best of friends, and this mutual dislike has extended to their ventures in the cloud computing space as well. Both these technology behemoths fully realize the immense potential of cloud computing and have been intensely competitive in trying to get one up on the other…..” The article dealt with Google’s lawsuit challenging the US Department of Interior’s adoption of Microsoft’s Business Productivity Online Suite, later renamed
Government
Rumors in Cloud: What a Tangled Web We’ve Woven As our community has witnessed cloud’s rise to headliner, we have also failed to dispel certain rumors that could hinder its acceptance. Incorrect information merely hampers the progress cloud computing could make as the IT phenomenon it is. A couple ideas in particular stand out to me right now, hackneyed and trotted out too often. The first misconception: “private cloud is too pricey for rookies.” The rhetoric of public versus private colors many sectors of society: education, class, government, and onward. It holds that “public” connotes less of something provided for
Taiwan’s Cloud Trinity – Medicine, Tourism and Culture Innovation Over the last year, Taiwan has become synonymous with cloud computing development. From government support (See: Cloud Computing: Taiwan’s Next Trillion Dollar Industry) to international acclaim (See: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon in the Taiwanese Clouds), everyone seems to repose faith in the Taiwanese cloud. Now, the government has decided to increase the stakes. Taiwanese Minister and deputy convener of the Board of Science and Technology in the Cabinet (Executive Yuan), Cyrus Chu, has announced the government’s intention to complete three major plans for a medical cloud, a tourism cloud, and a
The Cloud Gets Green We are all, at this point, at least fairly well aware of cloud computing’s capacity to slash wasted time and spending for both homes and businesses. But many of us are now wondering if this significant boost in economy and efficiency could potentially translate into an environmental advantage. For the fourth year running, technology products vendor CDW has staged a report that investigates if the cloud can actually make good on its green promises. Its Energy Efficient IT Report this year says much to corroborate the understanding that cloud computing can make a positive, potentially sustainable
Could Cloud Computing Cause More Stress Come Tax Time? Money doesn’t grow on trees. Nothing under the sun is free. Aphorisms like these saw concepts such as cloud computing escape from the reality of high cost and taxation — until now. The cloud community is up in arms at what’s recently taken place in Vermont, where an extremely suspicious and cryptic financial technicality has resulted in a wave of tax audits that could set precedents for cloud computing endeavors in other states. The Department of Taxes in the State of Vermont released a bulletin in 2010 claiming that “prewritten software
Air Force and Army Clouds Debate: Commercial or Gov’t? It is now official: cloud computing now has serious gov cred. We recently learned that the Air Force was strongly considering the possibility of leaping into the cloud, as a strategy to slash the girth of maintenance and operations in their budget, as well as to tighten security measures. Many readers will wince at that last aim; cloud computing and great security are hardly synonymous, they will muse. The Air Force has nevertheless honed in on several of the cloud’s virtues from a military perspective. These advantages may lie in cloud’s
