Microsoft's W.Europe VP Klaus Holse Andersen urges SMBs to go for the cloud in order to become as innovative and competitive as their larger counterparts, saying cloud computing being up to 40x more cost-effective when compared to running one's own IT systems. 

The company's cloud adoption study predicts 39% of SMBs paying for one or more cloud services within the next 3 years-- compared to today's 29%. On average, paid cloud service users will use 3.4 services (an increase from today's 2.0 services). 

Meanwhile the global SME sector will go towards Read more...

PowerCloud Systems announces the latest release of its cloud-based CloudCommand virtualised network controller, improving ease of use, manageability and security for SMB customers. 

New features with this release include a streamlined interface with improved navigation, more comprehensive reporting toolsand an optional autonomous mode for local control. One-click firmware updating is also available, alongside VLAN tagging, a connectivity status diagnostics tool, power management control and guest network client isolation for additional security.  Read more...

Will 2011 be marked as the year where dominance for the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) market dominates the industry? That's what Gartner says in its special report examining the PaaS marketplace's key issues. 

All leading enterprises software vendors and large cloud specialists will introduce-- or expand on-- their PaaS and cloud-based infrastructure offerings. 

The analyst predicts today's PaaS specialist-subset offerings will consolidate into a few major infrastructure service suites within the next 3 years (as opposed to today's various Read more...

CSC BizCloud combines a private cloud privacy and control with a public cloud's agility and commercial model-- making it ideal for security-conscious organisations ojecting cloud adoption. 

The company's cloud datacenters carry CloudCompute (CSC's new IaaS architecture) to deliver compute, storage and network resources as a service to mission and business critical workloads. CSC's partner, VCE, provides the Vblock infrastructure platform to integrate virtualisation software, networking, security, computing, storage and management technologies from Read more...