Is Cloud Computing Killing the Hardware Stars? Dell, HP: Take Heed New York Times “Bits” writer Quentin Hardy declared major victory last week for cloud computing. The triumph resounded well enough to earn the title “The Week the Cloud Won.” After lengthy months of incremental progress, cloud’s organizations have finally chipped away at the big boys of technology like Dell and Hewlett Packard. These heavy hitters in “enterprise computing” dwindled in earnings, whereas Salesforce.com, a major cloud computing company, saw its profits skyrocket by nearly 40%. True cloud diehards interpret these developments, as does Hardy, as bellwethers of auspicious change for
Salesforce.com
Cloud Benefits in the Energy and Utility Industry A report issued in June 2011 by the Carbon Disclosure Project and supported by AT&T discovered that companies which embrace cloud computing technologies can reduce energy consumption, lower their carbon emissions, and decrease their capital expenditure on IT resources while improving operational efficiency. By 2020, the same group estimates that large US companies using cloud can achieve annual energy savings of $12.3 billion and annual carbon reductions equivalent to 200 million barrels of oil. In addition to environmental benefits, the energy industry is fostered to adopt the technology in order to reduce costs, enhance
What Will The Taleo Purchase Bring To Oracle? On 9 February 2012, Oracle announced its purchase of human resources management software maker Taleo Corp. for $1.9 billion. Taleo’s cloud-based talent management solutions optimize how organizations hire, manage, develop and motivate employees to improve performance and drive growth. The $1.9 billion price values Taleo at $46 a share, an 18% premium to the company’s closing stock price of $38.94 the day before. Even for a company as large as Oracle, this represents a significant amount of money. So, what will this acquisition bring to Larry Ellison and company? First of all,
Cloud Computing: A Cloudy World There has been a thunderstorm of growing noise surrounding Cloud Computing in the past 24 months. Vendors, analysts, journalists and membership groups have all rushed to cover the Cloud medium – although everyone seems to have their own opinion and differing definition of cloud computing. According to the most common definition, it is Internet-based computing where shared resources, software and information are supplied to users on demand, rather like a utility company would supply electricity, water or gas. The term is not new; vendors such as Salesforce.com have provided Cloud services in different guises for many
Some Recent Cloud Computing Acquisitions As an industry matures, consolidation occurs and some prominent players emerge. With big companies already staking their claims in this space – a phenomenon which I had argued differentiated the cloud computing fervor from the dotcom bubble (See: Are Cloud Computing Stocks Overvalued?) – it was only time that the bigger fish started swallowing the small ones (See: Is Consolidation Coming to Cloud Computing?). While startups are always on the acquiring companies’ radars (See: Acquisitions of Cloud Computing Startups Speed Up), some mid-size companies are also attracting considerable interest. This article features two such recent
Can Box.net Overtake Microsoft SharePoint? If Microsoft Windows is the dominant operating system in the world and Microsoft Office the most popular productivity suite, Microsoft SharePoint is the preeminent file sharing platform. However, after years of dominance, a new challenger has appeared in the form of Box.net. As things stand today, Box.net with 7 million customers is just a pretender to the throne occupied by SharePoint with 125 million customers. However, with Box.net’s user base increasing by 250,000 every month and its current clientele including 350 companies in the Fortune 500 list, Microsoft may have cause for worry. What’s more,
Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money: UPDATE 1 Startups have always attracted pride of place on this website, and with many of them being created with astounding regularity and getting financing, this article is just the first of many updates that are sure to follow. You can read some other consolidated news articles on startups here: 1. Acquisitions of Cloud Computing Startups Speed Up 2. Cloud Computing Startups Raise Big Money Startups are no longer the domain of the young college graduate with ideas, especially in a field like cloud computing that builds on existing competencies in information technology. Consequently,
