3 best practices for your cloud computing first-timers

As enterprises continue to move to cloud computing, blunders will occur, but we'll also see success with the cloud. Now is a good time to survey what works -- that is, the best practices around cloud deployment. Here is my initial list, but it will evolve over the next few years.

4 critical trends in IT business continuity

In IT, failure is not an option. Not surprisingly, organizations have made it a high priority to develop and implement reliable business continuity plans to ensure that IT services are always available to internal users and outside customers.

Information Builders gives its BI platform more cloud-like capabilities

Information Builders has added a range of improvements to its WebFocus BI (business intelligence) platform that will make it more appealing to ISVs and other providers that want to offer it as a cloud service, the company announced Monday.

First off, the company has introduced support for multitenant deployments, a software architecture common in cloud applications that allows a provider to serve many customers from a single application instance, as well as scale the service on demand.

Amazon expands cloud-based live streaming

Amazon has added the ability for CloudFront to stream live content to Apple iOS devices and Microsoft Silverlight clients, the company said in a blog post on Sunday.

Amazon CloudFront is a Web service that allows enterprises to distribute content, including images, videos, media files or software downloads. To improve performance, CloudFront uses a network of edge locations spread out across Asia, Europe, South America and the U.S.

Carriers make their play in the cloud

The wave started last year when Time Warner Cable, the telecommunications company serving much of the Eastern United States, spent $230 million to purchase NaviSite, a provider of cloud services for businesses.

VMware tackles enterprise personal cloud

The public cloud and now even the private cloud have been pretty well defined. The personal cloud is somewhat fuzzier.

Dell expands virtual desktops into the cloud

Dell said this week it is expanding its virtual desktop offerings into the cloud through a partnership with another company.

Dell's Simplified DaaS (Desktop as a Service) is a cloud-based virtual desktop offering targeted at companies of any size. Dell partnered on the offering with Desktone, a company that makes software to access cloud-based desktops. The product is expected to be available at some point this quarter and pricing details have not yet been released.