Posts tagged Computing
Coming Soon to a Bank Near You: Cloud Computing
Nov 3rd
The financial services industry is warming up to the idea of using the cloud for some of its critical computing needs. More than half of bank transactions will be supported by cloud-based infrastructure and software by 2015, according to a recent report from Gartner.
That is the expectation of about 39% of financial services CIOs worldwide, according to the survey. In Europe, the Middle East and Africa, 44% of CIOs for banking firms expect that more than half of their institutions’ transactions will take place via infrastructure that lives in the cloud, and 33% expect most of them will be processed using some type of SaaS application.
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For banks, the cloud can offer far greater computing power and scalability. Migrating critical operations there won’t be without its risks, however. Security and stability are always a concern when moving to the cloud, and that’s especially true when highly sensitive data like financial transactions are involved. It simply requires that systems are architected in a secure and fail-proof way.
Let the Machines Do What They Do Best, So People Can Focus Elsewhere
Another key value the cloud offers to financial firms is increased efficiency. As Gartner points out, banks are increasingly going to be replacing people with machines to perform certain tasks, leaving humans to do things the human mind is good at.
“As banks progressively replace people in the value chain with algorithmic operations (AOs) to run processes and make decisions, their intellectual property increasingly resides in these algorithms,” reads a post on Gartner’s blog. “The value of people is not in running operations but in improving the AOs.”
It’s this type of efficiency and operational enhancement that can drive what Gartner calls “creative destruction” within the banking industry.
As Gartner Managing Vice President Peter Redshaw summed it up, “Successful new cloud services can displace the existing and dominant process for design, distribution or transacting in a disruptive way, rather than just incrementally improving them.”
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BizCloud Computing Consultants Offer 6 Essential SEO Tips for Business Blog … – San Francisco Chronicle (press release)
Oct 30th
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BizCloud Computing Consultants Offer 6 Essential SEO Tips for Business Blog …
San Francisco Chronicle (press release) The online marketing and SEO experts at BizCloud® have compiled a list of tips to help companies that use business blogs as part of their Web strategy. How can these blogs be optimized for major search engines to boost the volume of relevant traffic … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
BizCloud Computing Consultants Offer 6 Essential SEO Tips for Business Blog … – DigitalJournal.com (press release)
Oct 30th
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BizCloud Computing Consultants Offer 6 Essential SEO Tips for Business Blog …
DigitalJournal.com (press release) The online marketing and SEO experts at BizCloud® have compiled a list of tips to help companies that use business blogs as part of their Web strategy. How can these blogs be optimized for major search engines to boost the volume of relevant traffic … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
Top 5 SEO and Social Media Tools for Creating Web Content – Small Business Computing
Oct 6th
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Top 5 SEO and Social Media Tools for Creating Web Content
Small Business Computing Others are free but don't provide any guidance or SEO boost. PRWeb manages to find a happy middle ground. PRWeb's rates are reasonable, ranging from $80 to $360 per release; I usually go with the $200 per release rate, a level that includes search … |
View full post on SEO – Google News
7 Ways to Get Started With Cloud Computing
Sep 19th
If you are a cloud virgin, what is the best way to get started and learn more about what the cloud can offer? Here are several suggestions, from the perspective of someone who has moderate IT knowledge and not necessarily the full backing and support resources of an IT department behind them. The idea here is to demonstrate some of the key concepts of cloud computing, as well as introduce you to some cool tools. We have also tried to focus on those that offer free trials or services that are relatively inexpensive and easy to get started with.
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- Set up a Google Docs account, and create a native document in its repository. Now share it with a couple of friends and see how the real-time editing process works. Resist the temptation to email this document and keep it inside Google’s repository. Think about the benefits here: instead of waiting for comments and trying to resolve different authors’ revisions, you can do it in the now. Certainly, Word documents and slide presentations lend themselves best to this real-time treatment.
- Do the same thing for Box.net, , and try one of its fax connectors to send the document from your cloud to your own fax machine to try it out. Box has lots of other connectors to extend the functionality of your storage repository, as you can see below in the screenshot. You can also tie your Box account with your LinkedIn account, so that people viewing your profile there can download PDFs of writing samples or recommendation letters.
- Use one of the cloud-based spreadsheet programs that I mention here and upload your own Excel data to it. These can be easier to use than Google Docs, and also support a wider range of features specific to spreadsheets and databases.
- Use the Salesforce for Intuit QuickBooks . You can setup a free account and upload your own customer list. This product connects both the customer relationship Salesforce with the accounting software Quickbooks, and everything is happening up in the cloud to manage your company financial and customer data. Intuit has several cloud offerings besides these connectors, including WebTurboTax where you can do your taxes using the cloud.
- Windows Live Mesh can make it easier to remotely control your Windows and even Mac desktops. You can synchronize files between computers, keep your bookmarks/favorites the same and control your PC from a browser in a remote location. While this isn’t entirely cloud-based – you do need to download the Live Mesh software to each desktop – it does show you where Microsoft is going with some of its Live cloud-based services.
- Set up a server on Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). Amazon has been a long-time entrant into the cloud computing space and its EC2 offers a wide range of features. Getting started is somewhat cumbersome, and here is a short screencast video that explains the initial setup process.
- Setup two Windows machines on Cloudshare.com. While Amazon certainly has lots of mindshare, as you can tell from the setup video above it isn’t the easiest service to get started with. A better choice might be Cloudshare.com, which has a free trial period and a dirt-simple browser-based process to get going. You can setup a Windows 2008 Server and Windows 7 client for testing purposes and upload a few sample Web pages for IIS or set up a Sharepoint server and client. The two machines are connected via their own cloud network, and you can access them via remote desktop connections too.
By no means are these the only cloud-based services, or even the simplest out there. We use them as examples of how the cloud has begun to grow and incorporate a wide variety of services for both small and large businesses. Do you have your own favorite sites for cloud newbies? Please share your own suggestions.
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How Will Affiliate Taxes Affect Cloud Computing? [Infographic]
Sep 15th
States are going after Amazon for sales taxes, hot and heavy. According an infographic from TurboTax, affiliate taxes have been enacted in Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Illinois, North Carolina, New York and Rhode Island. Another 14 states have introduced, but not passed, affiliate taxes.
Most of this is aimed at online retailers, but what about companies like Rackspace that have affiliate programs and reseller programs for cloud services?
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Generally, the concerns I’ve heard about cloud computing outside of technical issues revolve around legal issues relating to privacy, data protection and security. But what about the tax issues?
According to an article in Bloomberg from this August, it’s confusing at best. Tax authorities used to be able to tax off-the-shelf software sales – now they’re dealing with services being hosted in one state (or country) being sold to users in another state. For companies that have affiliates (like Rackspace) the crop of affiliate tax laws may answer the question – or lead those companies to cancel their affiliate programs as Amazon has been doing.
As various forms of cloud computing generate more and more revenue, states are going to be trying to ensure they’re getting their fair share of the revenue. I’d love to hear from providers and users of cloud computing services how they’re dealing with taxes now, and how they’re prepping for the future.
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CLOUD2 Study Shows How the Feds Can Migrate to Cloud Computing
Jul 26th
A blue-ribbon US government panel co-chaired by Marc Benioff and Michael Capellas released their report today, a summary of which can be found here.
The Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2), a collection of 71 industry executives, has been meeting over the past several months and has come out with its recommendations on ways to move towards cloud computing.
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The 14 recommendations focus on four vitally important areas to cloud computing:
- Trust: Individuals and organizations must be confident that the cloud can meet their needs including security, privacy and availability. One recommendation is for industry and government entities to accelerate the development of a private sector-led identity management ecosystem and to deploy strong authentication techniques throughout all federal agencies. Another is to enact a national data breach law.
- Transnational Data Flows: The cloud is not defined by national borders; businesses and data flow across international lines and the United States must lead by example in dealing with these challenges, and be willing to trust the cloud for appropriate workloads in other countries.
- Transparency: Cloud providers will earn confidence from corporate America and government agencies by providing users meaningful ways to evaluate cloud implementations. Cloud providers should enable document and tool portability across different cloud environments.
- Transformation: For full adoption of the cloud, there must be a change in how the federal government acquires technology; an investment in improving technology infrastructure including expediting broadband deployment and the move to IPv6; a commitment to ensuring that education and training priorities align with the needs of a cloud workforce; and creating incentives to encourage the global development and adoption of cloud technologies. Congress and other executive agencies should help agencies acquire cloud services and solutions.
As part of this effort, the Cloud First Buyer’s Guide were produced as a living website to help encourage movement towards cloud computing throughout the government. Both the buyer’s guide and the overall report was produced by the TechAmerica Foundation led by staff director Jennifer Kerber.
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Report: Cloud Computing Catching on in Emerging Markets
Jul 19th
While cloud computing gains steadily in the U.S., U.K. and Germany (and rather slowly in Canada), it’s taking off in emerging markets like Brazil, China and India. According to a study by GfK Custom Research, and covered by FineChannel,
cloud computing enjoys relatively high penetration rate in emerging markets, regardless of company size.
According to GfK, decision makers in Brazil, China and India have a much more positive view of cloud computing and cite cost-effectiveness, flexibility and security as the main benefits. In contrast, decision makers in the U.S. and the U.K. see security as a barrier rather than a strength, and view flexibility as the main advantage.
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But Fine Channel notes that data security is seen as a benefit by many in established markets as well. This fits with the BitNami, Cloud.com and Zenoss survey we looked at recently, which found that security is perceived as both a benefit and a risk by many technology decision makers.
In addition to security, cost, including migration and subscription rates, is often seen as a barrier to adoption. The cost of cloud services was named by 42% as a top reservation. Other concerns include availability and dependence on outside parties.
Decision makers in emerging markets were more trusting of global cloud providers like Amazon Web Services, Google and Microsoft than of domestic options. Microsoft was the most trusted name.
Photo by Jeffrey Bell
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