IBM announces its latest enterprise cloud-based offerings, saying its SmartCloud services should allow businesses to move from cloud service assessment to full-scale deployment more efficiently. 

SmartCloud will be available in 2 versions-- Enterprise and Enterprise+. 

Enterprise is already available, and IBM claims it reduces application development time from days to minutes (via automation and rapid provisioning) while cutting costs by 30% when compared to traditional application environments. 

It runs on Linux or Windows, with a virtual and some Read more...

Gartner estimates the global Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) market will grow to $3.7BN this year-- and will reach $10.5BN by 2014.

The analyst says the market's next 5 years represent a significant revenue opportunity, a period where vendors must start laying down the foundation for their future.

Due to the relative immaturity of the cloud market and its technologies, customers will tend to settle on what they can get immediately, rather than what they actually need. This implies at worst some unhappy customers and at best some customers Read more...

LinkSource announces its latest technology, IronTrap-- offering clients tools to administer, provision, monitor and manage multiple cloud environments. 

Using IronTrap users are able to manage dedicated servers, public cloud, private cloud, devices and sites from multiple providers from their worksite, with advanced monitoring alerting and reporting through a single portal. System administrators can find all servers available-- whether Windows or Linux-- from a single control panel. 

A network monitor alerts administrators following failure detection, Read more...

Novell launches Vibe Cloud, its first real-time web-based social enterprise collaboration platform. 

The service comes in 2 versions-- basic and enterprise (with additional security features, management controls and premium support).

The enterprise version also increases the storage limit from 250 MB/user to 5GB, while providing enterprise ownership of all data stored across users' groups in their domain. 

Vibe cloud combines real-time co-authoring, social messaging and file sharing with a secure IT environment, allowing for users across organisations Read more...