Cloud

Have you ever needed to publish an internal web application for use outside of your corporate firewall?  If you have, you’re probably aware of many of the complications that come up while exploring that option including what ports need to be exposed, to DMZ or not to DMZ, various authentication challenges, etc.  Well, now you can with […]

Azure SQL Database now supports Azure Active Directory authentication in public preview. Azure Active Directory authentication is a mechanism of connecting to Microsoft Azure SQL Database by using identities in Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). With Azure Active Directory authentication you can centrally manage the identities of database users and other Microsoft services in one […]

Earlier this month, Microsoft announced the GS Series for Azure VM. A variant of G-series, the GS-series, which combines the compute power of G-series with the performance of Premium Storage to create powerful VMs for your most storage and compute intensive applications. Powered by the Intel Xeon E5 v3 family processors, the GS-series can have up […]

Last week Microsoft announced general availability of Azure IaaS virtual machine backup, previewed earlier this year. Why use Azure Backup? Azure IaaS VM backup provides application consistent backup for Windows operating systems and file system consistency for Linux operating systems without the need to shut down virtual machines, making it enterprise ready solution. Azure Backup […]

Over the last few years, we’ve learned that one of the greatest appeals of the move to the cloud is that the providers’ capital expenditures enable users to focus their budgets on operational expenses. After all, a standard on-premise approach can require you to purchase, install and maintain the software and hardware, while also spending […]

Business optimization is all about making investments that will reduce costs while driving efficiency and productivity, and the cloud is a big part of that, because it enables organizations to move quickly and achieve more, while spending less. 42% of IT decision makers planned to increase spending on cloud computing this year, according to Computerworld. […]

The App Cloud is about customer success. Today’s Dreamforce session started by introducing Bosma Enterprises, a non-profit for the blind and visually impaired. They are end-to-end Salesforce, and it’s all accessible to the visually impaired. The next project is to bring a telecom platform that can be maintained by the blind and visually impaired. Visit bosma.org […]

Everyone knows George Zimmer of Menswear fame and his “I guarantee it” commercials. After leaving Menswear, he’s back with a new startup and ready to revolutionize retail. It’s the first ever B2C platform powered on Salesforce from end-to-end. It started with a video for Generation Tux. The total Tuxedo market is 10 million rentals a […]

An analysis of the U.S. Federal Government (Fed) cloud strategy and implementation progress to date is an interesting exercise given the scale of the undertaking (the Fed’s IT budget peaked at $83B in 2013) the complexity of the requirements (e.g. securing classified information), the estimated size of the cloud spend (estimated between $1.4B and $7B […]

One of Azure’s ever-increasing number of new data platform services, Azure Data Factory provides the ability to execute and orchestrate Big Data workflows. Azure Data Factory allows you to manage and produce information by offering an easy way to create, orchestrate, and monitor data pipelines.  Activities are combined into Pipelines, and these pipelines are used […]

On the first day of Dreamforce 2015, two service experts from HP spoke about how they manage customer centricity. The session abstract: Proliferation of digital channels, new consumer experiences, and migration towards service-based offerings are the key trends shaping customer-centricity. Cloud applications are playing a key role in helping organizations respond to these trends. Join […]

Dreamforce 2015 is off to a great start. I just attended my first session of the week where I had the chance to hear Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and AstraZeneca talk about how their enterprise social networks are transforming how they work as companies and how they retain top talent. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt integrated Chatter on top of an […]