CoderTakeout - Cloud Computing

(SMART SUMMARY) Dell's formation of a new software group, which was announced Thursday, could be the forerunner to a string of acquisitions by the vendor, with some observers predicting a focus on systems management and cloud services provisioning.

(SMART SUMMARY) SAP's $3.4 billion purchase of cloud software vendor SuccessFactors has been delayed indefinitely while a U.S. regulatory body investigates the deal, an SAP spokesman confirmed Wednesday.

(SMART SUMMARY) Finance and IT professionals, facing the need for greater computing power for everything from operational management to hedge accounting are understandably tempted by SaaS, given the cloud's relatively low startup costs and the fact they may lack the skills needed to build their own analytic solutions.

(SMART SUMMARY) In anticipation of offering its open-source content management software as a service, Alfresco has upgraded its namesake product to work with multiple clients and to interact with a wider range of form factors, the company announced Thursday.

(SMART SUMMARY) Oracle executives on Tuesday gave a more detailed picture of their plans to integrate technologies gained through October's $1.5 billion acquisition of RightNow, maker of cloud-based software for customer service through the Web, social networks, and contact centers.

(SMART SUMMARY) Hewlett-Packard has updated its Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) software package so it will allow administrators to map their IT assets in the cloud.

(SMART SUMMARY) Recession-fueled stagnation is slowly drawing to an end as U.S. companies are signaling they're ready to sink some cash into growth and emerging markets.

(SMART SUMMARY) External developers will be able to build much more sophisticated applications and tools for Office 365 once Microsoft releases the next upgrade of that cloud-hosted communication and collaboration suite, according to a Microsoft partner.

(SMART SUMMARY) Facebook scammers have started redirecting victims through Amazon's cloud in order to bypass malicious URL filters, according to security researchers from antivirus vendor F-Secure.

(SMART SUMMARY) CloudPassage is launching a new security product for virtual servers in public clouds such as Amazon Web Services that it says takes care of the all-important need for security when using services from infrastructure providers.