Watch Out Netflix: Amazon to Stream Everything From Spongebob to Jersey Shore

Watch Out Netflix: Amazon to Stream Everything From Spongebob to Jersey Shore

Amazon's on-demand streaming video offering just got a whole lot more attractive. The company announced today that they signed a deal with Viacom, allowing them to offer thousands of new videos from sources like MTV, Comedy Central, VH1, BET and Nickelodeon, among others.

In total, Amazon Prime will have over 15,000 videos available for streaming, including some very popular television shows. Amazon launched its video streaming service about a year ago with 5,000 videos. With today's announcement, that number is now tripled.

The move comes just as Netflix struggles to rebound from a rough 2011. One of the ways it's hoping to do so is by launching original, Web-only TV content like the new series "Lilyhammer." That strategy is only in its infancy so it remains to be seen how it will play out. In the meantime, Amazon Prime is slowly emerging as a serious potential competitor to Netflix.

Wired's Tim Carmody argued recently that Amazon is particularly well-positioned to emerge as a such a competitor, not only to Netflix but to cable television as well.

Amazon Prime still has some growing to do, and for now the service is tied to Amazon's free shipping service of the same name. GigaOm's Ryan Lawler argues that unbundling the two and launching a stand-alone streaming service could make the service an even stronger contender for Netflix's throne as king of this space.

It's worth keeping in mind that Amazon Prime Instant Video only launched in February of last year. Netflix has been around since 1997 and launched its Watch Instantly streaming feature in 2007. Amazon is rising fast, and its clear that digital content is a growing priority for the company, especially now that its also sells its own media tablet.

Google Near Launch of Cloud Storage Service (Amir Efrati/Wall Street Journal)

Google Near Launch of Cloud Storage Service (Amir Efrati/Wall Street Journal)

Amir Efrati / Wall Street Journal:

Google Near Launch of Cloud Storage Service  —  Google Inc. is close to launching a cloud-storage service that would rival one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups, cloud-storage provider Dropbox Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.  —  Like Dropbox, Google's storage service …

Cloud Computing In China Looks Set To Soar

Cloud Computing In China Looks Set To Soar

Cloud Computing In China Looks Set To Soar China is notorious for being a closed market, however, as the largest single market in Asia it could prove to be the game changer necessary to tip the scales of Cloud Computing adoption (at least in Asia). While we all know that a single grain of rice [...]

I alway like to know what china is going towards as it brings in the dollars  and drives down the prices. 

Dreams of the Paper Free Office: AIIM Reports

Dreams of the Paper Free Office: AIIM Reports

  We had dreams of a paperless workforce. By now we should have laser rays shooting out of our eyes that can scan, decode and upload relevant information into our bionic brains, eliminating the need for us to handle paper documents of any kind. For many of us, that simply isn't the way it worked out.

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What Accountants Must Know Before Choosing The Right Cloud Application Vendor | CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community

What Accountants Must Know Before Choosing The Right Cloud Application Vendor | CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community

Accountants can benefit from cloud computing because it eliminates purchasing software and servers, and maintaining and running them. The old technology infrastructure which requires all software and servers to be housed in the accountant’s office is now being replaced with a more robust and inexpensive technology known as cloud computing. Cloud applications are run through the web. An accountant just needs a computer or a laptop and an internet connection to be able to run accounting applications. The software and server are managed not by the accountant but by the cloud application vendor. Typical applications available for accountants include full ERP (enterprise resource planning), payroll, and tax software. The accountant need not purchase a license to use the software. He/she just needs to pay subscription fees.

Many accountants are hesitant to use the cloud computing technology because they don’t know the benefits of moving to a cloud environment. One of the benefits of cloud computing is that the accountant doesn’t need to install a software in his/her computer. He/she just has to remotely access his/her application anytime, anywhere. If he/she has employees, his/her employees can access the same application and data. As long as there is internet connection, the accounting application and data can be accessed wherever and whenever.

Cloud companies rejoice: Amazon S3 lowers prices for storing your precious terabytes | VentureBeat

Cloud companies rejoice: Amazon S3 lowers prices for storing your precious terabytes | VentureBeat

Not a huge discount , but a good sign that moving to the cloud cost are passed on. So not only do you save but you will keep saving. Amazon S3 services for their cloud storage needs might find themselves paying up to 13.5% less starting this February

Adobe Creative Cloud will get you CS6, Lightroom 4, 20GB storage for $50/month | VentureBeat

Adobe Creative Cloud will get you CS6, Lightroom 4, 20GB storage for $50/month | VentureBeat

Adobe Creative Cloud, a forthcoming service that will let you license Adobe’s highly sought-after Creative Suite and give you a plethora of cloud-based extras, now has a price tag: $50 per month with a required one-year contract.

Microsoft to deliver CRM apps for iPad, iPhone, Android, Windows Phone in Q2 | ZDNet

http:/www.zdnet.com/blog/microsoft/microsoft-to-deliver-crm-apps-for-ipad-iphone-android-windows-phone-in-q2/11822

—  Summary: Microsoft will deliver mobile versions of its Dynamics CRM app and service for iPad, iPhone, Android phone, BlackBerry and Windows Phone 7 in the second quarter of 2012.

Introduction to cloud computing

http://www.flyingsolo.com.au/technology/cloud-technology/introduction-to-cloud-computing

Proponents argue that cloud computing will deliver wonderful productivity gains at low costs. So what is it, and could it be useful for your business?

The cloud is arguably top of the list of seismic shifts in the computing world in recent times. Having grown from the fringes just a few years ago, cloud services were valued at more than $70 billion in 2010, and are projected to grow by almost 20 percent per annum for the next 5 years. It's anticipated that cloud services will contribute more than $175 billion to the global economy by 2015. That's a lot of dollars!

But what is it? The name "cloud" is taken from those cute little network diagrams with a couple of computers, a couple of squiggly lines and a fluffy cloud in the middle joining them all up.  In reality there is something in that cloud, and for most small business users that will be a bank of computers in a server centre hosting your application.

In the past, businesses of all sizes have installed computers to store their data and run their applications. Businesses with more than a single employee have installed servers (and hired IT people to manage them) to allow their employees to share that data. With a cloud solution, organisations are able to effectively rent a small slice of capacity in a server centre (via the apps they sign up to), taking away all the issues around maintaining their own hardware.

This might mean paying for a hosted email service (rather than installing your own exchange server), paying for a file data storage service rather than storing data on your own file server (and managing security, backups and so on), or paying for an application such as customer relationship management (CRM), payroll or accounting rather than installing the equivalent applications on your PC or server.

This is generally taken to mean a little bit more than simply taking an existing (desktop) solution, putting it on a remote server, then paying to access that on a monthly basis. The ability to do that has been around for a decade or more, and you may have heard suppliers of this option referred to as application service providers (ASPs). Cloud solutions differ from ASPs in a number of crucial ways:

1. Most cloud apps involve sharing of the actual software. For example, with Gmail (one of the most widely used cloud solutions) users are moving from each having their own copy of a mail program (such as Outlook) installed locally on their PC, to sharing a common instance of an email solution hosted somewhere in the cloud. This is commonly referred to as "multi-tenancy" – lots of different users with their data in the same database, running on the same program (rather than lots of copies of the same program).

2. Most cloud apps allow you to sign up for a monthly fee, and exit again anytime you want to.  This is very different from having to buy software upfront, which if it is not suitable for your business you are then stuck with (it is often very difficult to sell software second hand).

3. With what are generally referred to as "web 2.0" applications, users are able to share data on-line, in real-time. In this way the cloud opens up opportunities for collaboration (either within a business, or with clients or external service providers).

This is the first article in a three-part series. The next article will cover some of the claimed benefits and potential dangers of the cloud, and the final article in the series will look at some specific applications, and compare desktop and cloud solutions that might be suitable for small businesses.

Have you embraced cloud computing yet, or are you still considering your options?

Want to build a business? You need an IT ecosystem. | Cloud Computing News

http://gigaom.com/cloud/want-to-build-a-business-you-need-an-it-ecosystem/

The rapid delivery of new solutions means that companies will no longer wait patiently for "their" provider to catch up to major innovation leaps. The only way to stay in front of your competition is to grease the technical infrastructure skids with strong management platforms and clear adoption, ownership, and orchestration strategies.

Opening enterprise collaboration to the world

Opening enterprise collaboration to the world

via Software as Services Blog RSS | ZDNet by Phil Wainewright on 1/24/12

Cloud collaboration platform Huddle is seeking to cement its enterprise appeal with the launch today of a new unlimited user edition and a 99.9% total uptime guarantee. The UK-headquartered, venture-backed start-up is less well known than US rivals such as Box, Dropbox, Jive and Yammer but it believes it has a unique market opportunity because of its focus on external enterprise collaboration.
"Traditional collaboration was very inward-looking," CEO Alastair Mitchell told me when we met last week in Huddle's offices overlooking London's 'Silicon Roundabout' . "Jive, Yammer, are very much of that paradigm," he went on. "What's driving our growth at the moment is that organizations are demanding collaboration that goes beyond the firewall — that allows the whole ecosystem to operate."
Huddle says the 93% of its customers that use its platform to connect beyond the enterprise firewall work with an average of 25 other companies (sounds like a great demonstration of frictionless enterprise in action). The new Unlimited Enterprise edition supports collaboration across that entire business ecosystem, with the ability to freely add 'lite' users who can view or download content, or contribute to document comments, task whiteboards and discussions.
Unlike its more consumer-focused competitors such as Box and Dropbox (though Box in particular has recently sought to target larger enterprise accounts), Huddle already has a heavy focus on the enterprise market — implementations typically start at a hundred users and many run into thousands of seats, Mitchell told me. Its 'True Uptime' guarantee should enhance its appeal to that market. Whereas all cloud uptime guarantees cover unexpected failures, most explicitly exclude 'planned' uptime, when systems are taken down to make infrastructure improvements or upgrade to a new release. In contrast, Huddle is including these events within its meagre 0.5% downtime allowance. It is bolstering the guarantee with a money-back promise if it fails to live up to 99.5% uptime. The company is confident it can meet this tough standard, for example achieving in excess of four nines — 99.995 percent — over the past 90 days.
One of the most potent demonstrations of Huddle's appeal to an enterprise market is in its penetration of government accounts, which make up a quarter of Huddle's business globally. Government is a natural candidate for collaboration outside the firewall, says Mitchell: "It's all about content. It's extremely collaborative. It's totally interconnected … To be able to plonk a secure extranet in front of everyone is ideal."
Although Huddle is a firm proponent of the multi-tenant cloud model, it does offer a dedicated version of its service that runs over the private internet networks that many governments run independently of the public Internet. A first implementation for the UK government, introduced last year, "has gone absolutely crazy," says Mitchell. Now the company is seeing demand for the same solution from the US, Australia and many European governments. "It's delivering networked collaboration on content, in a secure environment," explains Mitchell. But he's careful to emphasize that this is "not a branched version of Huddle," which would break "a fundamental tenet of multi-tenancy."
For Huddle, multi-tenancy is not just an architectural choice, it's part of its raison-d'étre. "The next coming of the collaboration sector really has been enabled by cloud," Mitchell asserts. "Facebook is the prime example of that, using cloud in its purest multi-tenant form. Facebook could only have happened not just because of the Internet but also because of that ability to connect to one central, multi-tenant service."
The other component of Huddle's strategy is its attractiveness as a replacement for a very conventional enterprise collaboration platform. "We're benefiting from companies moving to the cloud and taking big and clunky kit such as [Microsoft's collaboration platform] Sharepoint off their servers," says Mitchell. "Sharepoint is near the top of most people's hitlist — it's so unpopular." Huddle offers easier mobile access, simpler connection to external users and faster speed of deployment among other factors, all for a lower cost than enterprises currently spend to maintain their existing Sharepoint instances.
Although Huddle is not as generously funded or as lauded by the Silicon Valley echo chamber as some of its competitors, it has the ambition to punch above its weight and an advantage in terms of its proven enterprise credentials that it aims to leverage to maximum effect. As a Brit, perhaps I'm biased, but I think this Silicon Roundabout prodigy is one to watch.

How Cloud Computing is Like Transforming a ’68 Dodge Dart

How Cloud Computing is Like Transforming a '68 Dodge Dart

via CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community by cloudtweaks on 2/1/12

How Cloud Computing is Like Transforming a '68 Dodge Dart I've spent a lot of time lately in front of customers trying to help them understand what cloud technology means and, more important, how it can help their businesses be more efficient, effective and better able to meet or exceed their goals and objectives. In [...]

Organizations look to the cloud for BI says Gartner

I think small and medium companies under utilize BI, because of the costs. By using cloud software it allows them to leverage tools out there. Great things are on the way.

Organizations look to the cloud for BI says Gartner

via Bime - SaaS Business Intelligence | Analytics & Dashboards by jonathan on 1/26/12

Gartner Survey

A report from Gartner released this week shows that more companies are turning to BI in the cloud as an alternative to the traditional on-premise solutions. Nearly one third of organizations either already use or plan to use cloud or software-as-a-service solutions to augment their central business intelligence (BI) functions.
Of 1,364 IT managers in the Gartner survey almost a third (27%) already utilise or plan to improve their BI options with cloud based solutions. A further 17% said they already have or plan to completely overhaul their current BI functions and replace it with a SaaS solution.

SaaS-y BI

Saas products hold many advantages over traditional on-premise solutions which are often associated with long lead times and a demand for highly technical expertise. Cloud solutions don't have these problems and can compliment existing IT infrastructure whilst still providing powerful functionality. Cloud solutions offer wider access and sharing capabilities, allowing users to dig into their data whenever and wherever they need to. A SaaS pay-as-you-go pricing model provides more flexibility and low capital expenditure. James Richardson, research director at Gartner said:

"Business users are often frustrated by the deployment cycles, costs, complicated upgrade processes and IT infrastructures demanded by on-premises BI solutions. SaaS- and cloud-based BI is perceived as offering a quicker, potentially lower-cost and easier-to-deploy alternative, though this has yet to be proven."

As GigaOm reported earlier today, "the momentum for SaaS is strong". Such advantages have lead legacy solutions to start offering their own SaaS offerings, however users need to be wary as some vendors are attempting to ride the cloud wave by merely re-branding existing apps without offering true cloud functionality, known as cloud washing. Bime is a true cloud BI, solution born and built in the cloud, incorporating all the best and most current technologies into our solution to harness the advantages mentioned above. We gambled on the cloud a long time ago and although BI has been slow in its uptake of cloud compared to other sectors, this latest Gartner research shows that the clouds are forming around BI !

CRM’s Next 5 in 5

CRM's Next 5 in 5

Each year, IBM publishes "The Next 5 in 5," in which they predict the five technologies that will change the way we work, play and live in the next five years. Some of their predictions this year seem plausible: systems will use your unique biological identity to protect your information, eliminating the need for passwords. Others border on sci-fi: scientists will create technology that links your brain waves to your devices, allowing you to control them with your mind.

I wanted to follow IBM's lead and ask, "Where will CRM be five years from now?" To answer that, I reached out to some of the foremost thought leaders in the field:

• Ray Wang, Principal Analyst & CEO at Constellation Research


• Brent Leary, Owner at CRM Essentials


• Esteban Kolsky, Principal & Founder at ThinkJar LLC


• Denis Pombriant, CEO at Beagle Research Group, LLC


• Paul Greenberg, Owner at The 56 Group, LLC


• Brian Solis, Principal at Altimeter Group

Without further ado, I present the five technologies that will change CRM in the next five years.

Context Services Will Provide a Clearer Picture of Customers

A key benefit of CRM is that it aggregates information about current and prospective customers, collectively painting a picture of the person or organization a company is dealing with. Context services, with data originating from social media, location-based services and mobile devices, contribute additional context (location, relationships, behavior, etc.) to that information. The result is a far richer customer profile. These services provide the foundation for intuitive offers, which are promotions or up-sell opportunities based on customer interactions and behaviors.

Ray Wang suggests that in the next five years, we will see tremendous growth in context services and the data they provide. A key source of this context data will be from mobile devices. Gartner predicts that by 2015, 1.8 billion people will have smartphones. Of those, they estimate 40 percent will opt-in to context services that track their activities. By 2017, these numbers will increase and, based on current growth, likely double. This could fuel an entirely new mobile CRM industry.

Real-time Customer Intelligence Will Become a Reality

The variety and sources of customer data is exploding,...

eXo Takes Its Latest Release Into the Cloud

eXo Takes Its Latest Release Into the Cloud

eXo has released the latest version of its open source portal, eXo 3.5. The release has lots of new features, but the big news may be the portal's journey to the cloud.

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Cloud Finance: Best Practices for Implementing Rolling Forecasts

Cloud Finance: Best Practices for Implementing Rolling Forecasts

Rolling forecasts allow finance executives and key decision makers to see both a financial and operational vision of the future, by projecting four to six quarters or twelve to eighteen months ahead. It also helps them assess next steps in their execution of their plan, understand critical pivot points in the plan and better judge the impact the changing economy may have on their plan.

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Freemium Is The New Piracy In The SaaS World

Freemium Is The New Piracy In The SaaS World

It is estimated that approximately 41% of revenue, close to $53 billion, is "lost" in software piracy. This number is totally misleading since it assumes that all the people who knowingly or unknowingly pirated software would have bought the software at the published price had they not pirated it. RIAA also applies the same nonsense logic to blow the music piracy number way out of proportion. The most people who pirate software are similar to the people who pirate music. They may not necessarily buy software at all. If they can't pirate your software, they will pirate something else. If they can't do that, they will find some other alternative to get the job done.

Fortunately, some software companies understand this very well and they have a two-pronged approach to deal with this situation: prevent large scale piracy and leverage piracy when you can't prevent it. If an individual has access to free (pirated) software, as a vendor, you're essentially encouraging an organic ecosystem. The person who pirated your software is more likely to make a recommendation to continue using it when he/she is employed by a company that cannot and will not pirate. This model has worked extremely well. What has not been working so well and what the most on-premise vendors struggle with is the unintentional license usage or revenue leakage. Customers buy on-premise software through channels and deploy to large number of users. Most on-premise software are not instrumented to prevent unintentional license usage. The license activation, monitoring, and compliance systems are antiquated in most cases and cannot deal with this problem. This is very different than piracy because the most corporations, at least in the western world, that deploy the on-premise software want to be honest but they have no easy way to figure out how many licenses have beed used.

In the SaaS world, this problem goes away. The cloud becomes the platform to ensure that the subscriptions are paid for and monitored for continuous compliance. You could argue that there is no license leakage since there are no licenses to deal with. But, what about piracy? Well, there's no piracy either. This is a bad thing. Even though a try before buy exists, there's no organic grass-roots adoption of your software (as a service) since people can't pirate. In many countries where software piracy is ram...

Cloud Computing In Financial Service Organizations | CloudTweaks.com - Cloud Computing Community

http://www.cloudtweaks.com/2012/02/cloud-computing-in-financial-service-organizations/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+cloudtweakscloud+%28CloudTweaks.com%29

Therefore, I consider that cloud computing has not yet reached its potential in the financial service industry because the benefits for extended cloud use and integration of public and hybrid clouds are not yet fully acknowledged.

2012 – the Year Companies Will Learn to Love ‘Big Data,’ Thanks to Cloud BI

http://bimeanalytics.com/blog/2012-the-year-companies-will-learn-to-love-big-data-thanks-to-cloud-bi/

1. Go deep for cheap: 
What will really matter for small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) in 2012 is the fact they can for the first time mine their own business like the big guys, and do so quickly and cheaply! SMBs can use powerful, high-end tools delivered via their desktop browser or onto their tablet for just a few dollars a month to see what's happening with their HR, their sales, their social media engagement. Those SaaS tools give a one-man shop or a 50-person outfit almost instantly the same firepower as a whole department with its own IT staff inside a multinational.

Cloud based accounting software

What is cloud software?

Cloud accounting software is internet based software, all you need is a internet connection and you can access your company’s financial data from anywhere in the world.

Benefits
*Access it anywhere
*Subscription based
*Upgrades on the go

We have experience staff to help you move to and keep working with Cloud based accounting software. We offer migration, setup and training. Get the benefits of Cloud with out the head ache by working with our team.

http://alwaysonbooks.com/