CloudShare this week said it has bagged $10 million in new funding led by Globespan Capital Partners, joined by existing backers Sequoia Capital, Charles River Ventures and Gemini Israel Funds.
The company has raised a total of $26 million in three rounds since its founding in 2005. CloudShare said it will use the funding to expand its sales and market presence. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/07/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
Dimension Data last week said it has acquired OpSource, a provider of cloud hosting and managed services. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Based in Johannesburg, Dimension Data is a huge $4.7 billion global systems integrator and reseller. It is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NTT Holdings. Santa Clara-based OpSource provides cloud hosting and management services to more than 600 enterprises, service providers and SaaS-based ISVs. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/05/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
Microsoft's Office 365 provides users with 25 GB of capacity per mailbox but what if you need advanced archiving capabilities?
One option is from LiveOffice, which said it is offering advanced archiving, e-discovery and compliance services for users of Office 365. The LiveOffice service automatically synchronizes Exchange and SharePoint data, enabling end users to access messages and data in the archive from Outlook. Support for content from Lync will come in the fourth quarter. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/05/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
One week after the official launch of Office 365, partners and customers of its predecessor are realizing that they will have to wait three or four months before they can upgrade.
That's the estimate in a document (DOC) posted to the Microsoft Office 365 Transition Center, which states that transition availability for existing Business Productivity Online Suite (BPOS) customers will be available "roughly" four months after the Office 365 launch. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 07/05/2011 at 1:14 PM3 comments
The proliferation of cloud services has helped many IT pros spin up capacity on demand. But one consequence of the growth of these services is cloud sprawl.
That was the conclusion of a study released earlier this month by global integrator Avanade. Based on a survey of 573 C-level execs, 60 percent were worried about cloud sprawl. Twenty percent said it's impossible to manage all of the cloud services today and 25 percent said they have no central system to track and identify the cloud services that are in their organizations. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/30/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
A vast majority of cloud specialists within organizations using or considering cloud services see their initiatives significantly impacting one or more business processes, yet they aren't prepared to deal with those changes.
According to a recent survey conducted by The Open Group, 82 percent said their cloud initiatives will bring about such improvements to their business process, but of those, 72 percent have no idea how to adapt to those improvements. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/30/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
It looks like Google Apps reseller Cloud Sherpas is on an expansion binge. The company today announced its second acquisition this month, this time picking up Overland Park, Kan.-based Beloit Solutions Group for an undisclosed amount.
Atlanta-based Cloud Sherpas broadened its footprint earlier this month when it acquired Omnetic, based in San Francisco, giving the company a coveted West Coast presence. By acquiring Omnetic, Cloud Sherpas said it now has the largest concentration of Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists outside of Google. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/27/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
Two months after closing its $1.4 billion acquisition of Terremark, Verizon Communications is talking up its plan to offer cloud services through the combined entity.
Perhaps most noteworthy is that Verizon has moved 40 of its datacenters over to the Terremark business unit. The new entity, called Terremark, a Verizon Company, now has roughly 50 datacenters throughout North America, Latin America, Europe and the Asia-Pacific region. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/23/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
Public cloud spending will reach $72.9 billion by 2015, up from last year's $21.5 billion, according to a report released by market researcher IDC this week.
That accounts for a compounded annual growth rate of 27.6 percent over the next four years, according to the new forecast. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/22/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments
Dropbox warned customers of its cloud-based storage service that some accounts were exposed for several hours on Sunday. The accounts were accessible to anyone without the correct password.
The company said fewer than 1 percent of all accounts were exposed during a four-hour period. The exposure was the result of a code update to the software authentication mechanism of the service, in which a bug was introduced. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/22/2011 at 1:14 PM5 comments
The man who helped move the federal government to the cloud is moving on.
Vivek Kundra, the nation's first federal CIO, is taking a fellowship at Harvard University, where he will serve as a joint fellow at the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, the White House announced today. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/16/2011 at 1:14 PM1 comments
Microsoft Exchange hosting provider Intermedia on Tuesday said it has acquired Zlago, a provider of similar services as well as virtual servers and hosted desktops, for an undisclosed sum.
The move comes just weeks after New York-based Intermedia itself was acquired by private equity firm Oak Hill Partners. Zlago is based in Washington, D.C. but has a nationwide presence through a network of channel partners. More
Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 06/15/2011 at 1:14 PM0 comments