Office 365 Attracts New Group of Government/Education Organizations

Microsoft Corp. has announced that eight government and education organization have adopted the Microsoft Office 365 cloud productivity platform to reduce costs, improve collaboration, and modernize their technology infrastructures. These include the Cities of Kansas City, Missouri, and Seattle, Oregon; University of Miami; California State University, Sacramento; the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs; San Diego County Regional Airport Authority; Dupage County; and King County, Washington. More

Big Data: Big Potential, Big Priority, Says Cisco Study

A Cisco global study finds Big Data tied to competitive advantage driving network traffic, IT budgets, and Cloud adoption. The Cisco Connected World Technology Report surveyed IT professionals across 18 countries to examine the IT readiness, challenges, technology gaps, and strategic value of implementing Big Data projects. Whole most companies are collecting, storing, and analyzing data, the report reveals that many are struggling with both the business and IT challenges involved. More

Cisco Increases Quarterly cash Dividend to $0.17 per Common Share

Cisco has announced that its BoD has declared a quarterly dividend of $0.17 per common share, a three cent increase over the previous quarter. It will be paid on April 24 to shareholders of record at the close of business on April 8. More

Gartner Positions NetApp in Leaders Quadrant

Gartner Inc. has positioned NetApp in the Leaders quadrant in its General-Purpose Disk Arrays Magic Quadrant for its FAS and V-Series arrays. In the recently released report, Gartner defined leaders as having “the highest scores for their ability to execute and completeness of vision. A vendor in the Leaders quadrant has the market share, credibility, and marketing and sales capabilities needed to drive the acceptance of new technologies.” More

Nike, ConnectEDU To Discuss Cloud Innovation at NaviCloud Expo

NaviSite Inc., a Time Warner Cable Company, has announced that Nike Inc. and ConnectEDU will present on how they leverage cloud technology to drive their businesses at NaviCloud Expo 2013, April 11-12 at Charlotte, North Carolina. Nike Infrastructure Architect Paul August will talk about deploying NaviSite’s NaviCloud ONE Desktop-as-a-Service solution to offer employees flexible work environments and on-demand availability for corporate data and applications. Connect EDU CTO Rick Blaisdell will discuss how his company has grown 20-fold after partnering with NaviSite four years ago, and how rapid growth and development in the cloud is changing the role of business and IT executives. More

NaviSite Choses Cloudshape as its Exclusive Partner in Benelux

NaviSite Europe Ltd. has chosen Cloudshape Ltd., a subsidiary of IT service provider Datacon, as its exclusive partner to deliver NaviCloud services in Benelux. Cloudshape will assist organizations in evaluating and implementing cloud services using the robust, high performance, secure NaviCloud platform. More

SAP Business Suite Deployment Options Deliver Speed and Simplicity

SAP AG has announced new ERP rapid-deployment solutions to deliver speed and simplicity to enterprises adopting the SAP Business Suite powered by SAP Hana. The SAP ERP systems offer a clear starting point for deploying an integrated family of business applications that capture and analyze transactional data in real time on a single in-memory platform. More

Rackspace Acquires Exceptional, Adds Error Tracking, Redis-as-a-Service

Rackspace Hosting has acquired Exceptional Cloud Services to enhance its cloud development and application management services. The acquisition allows it to add error tracking and Redis-as-a-Service, which are currently used by more than 50,000 application developers. More

Cleversafe to Discuss Ease of Implement OBject Storage for Big Data at SNW Sprint 2013

Senior executives from Cleversafe Inc. and digital media storage customer Shutterfly will discuss the ease of object-storage integration and benefits of using object storage to solve scalability, flexibility, and cost challenges at the SNW Spring 2013 Conference April 2-4 in Orlando. Three sessions will focus on best practices for managing unstructured data and how companies can leverage breakthrough technology to evolve their IT environments and transform their business models. More

IBM Master the Mainframe Contests Prepares Students for A Smarter Planet

IBM’s Master the Mainframe Contest, part of its Academic Initiative, equips high school & college students with the basic skills needed to make them more competitive in the job market. This year’s contest drew more than 4,600 students from the United States and Canada, the largest turnout in North America since its 2005 inception. The three-part contest serves as an introduction to programming and application development and requires no initial mainframe experience. More