IBM introduced a new set of social collaboration offerings on t he IBM Federal Community Cloud. Bringing social networking capabilities to the IBM Federal Community Cloud will help federal government organizations with collaboration, generate new ideas, and increase government efficiencies. can support that. For example, the U.S. MORE >>

Ralf Schlatterbeck: “Cloud Computing is becoming increasingly popular — and it is a danger to your freedom. First, when the term Cloud Computing was introduced, it meant a set of low-level services like virtual machines, databases and file storage. Examples of these are Amazon Elastic Computing Cloud and related services. MORE >>

I keep reading about more uses of the cloud and it all makes sense.    Although aspects of the cloud have long been in the consumer world also.  As Brandon Butler writes in Network World, Gartner predicts that 1/3 of consumer data will be stored in the cloud by '16.     MORE >>

I recently received a review copy of a useful new Forrester report, Four Giants Compete For Your Cloud Email Business. by Ted Schadler, that has a cost breakdown of cloud-based email services from the four leading vendors- Google, Microsoft, IBM and Cisco - and indicates that Google and Microsoft are in the lead for customers. MORE >>

According to a recent surve y over 60 percent of respondents in the mid-size business space say they are ready to look to the cloud. Many are already using virtualization but only 4 percent are using the cloud now to back up data.  At the same time, only 8% believe there is no advantage to the cloud.     MORE >>