Advanced Cloud

Retailers today are working to do more with less. And for retailers seeking to get big results with minimal resources, cloud computing is beginning to look like a miracle.

In a recent Microsoft-commissioned survey of about 3,000 business decision-makers across the United States, nearly half of the respondents (48 percent) from the retail industry said that their companies have used cloud computing. One-third (32 percent) said that their companies were ready to move all applications to cloud computing.

So, what’s pulling retailers toward the cloud? It’s the ability of cloud computing to address three key challenges for retailers: focusing on core competencies, meeting unpredictable demands and improving customer service.

Sun Microsystems’s slogan is “The network is the computer,” and that’s as good as any to describe how cloud computing works. In essence, a network of computers functions as a single computer to serve data and applications to users over the Internet. The network exists in the “cloud” of IP addresses that we know as the Internet, offers massive computing power and storage capability, and enables widescale group collaboration. But that’s the simple explanation. Let’s take a look at how cloud computing works in more detail.

Do traditional IT metrics like ROI and TCO apply? How can the benefits of business agility be applied to the bottom line? The topic came up during a panel discussion at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston this week. “How do you measure productivity?” was the reply of one of the panelists. This has been [...]

Resellers should not be afraid of technical advances such as cloud computing and software-as-a-service (SaaS), a leading Gartner analyst has warned. Speaking recently at CRN’s Channel Expo Tiffani Bova, vice president of research for indirect channel programmes and sales strategies at Gartner, advised resellers to embrace new technology and find ways to incorporate it into their businesses [...]

During IBM’s Q3 earnings call a few weeks ago, IBM CFO Mark Loughridge highlighted business analytics as a sector where Big Blue is investing significant amounts of cash. The company recently acquired data analytics company SPSS for $1.2 billion and business analytics firm RedPill. Tonight, IBM is unveiling a new internal analytics product that the [...]

Sharepoint is the big giant in the enterprise collaboration space. Salesforce.com is now in the market with Salesforce Chatter, a service that embraces Facebook, Twitter and the applications within Force.com. MindTouch has the potential to compete with the large market players. Today they are announcing MindTouch Cloud, an open-source, SaaS service that integrates business data [...]

I asked a question to myself: “Why has Google been incredibly successful in defending and growing its core as well as introducing non-core disruptive innovations?”. To answer my own question I ran down Google’s innovation strategy through Clayton Christensen’s concepts and framework as described in his book “Seeing What’s Next”. Here is the analysis: Google’s [...]

Cloud computing heralds an evolution of business that is no less influential than e-business, according to Gartner Inc. Gartner maintains that the very confusion and contradiction that surrounds the term “cloud computing” signifies its potential to change the status quo in the IT market. Gartner defines cloud computing as a style of computing where massively [...]

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