Lock-in, migration costs can put a damper on cloud projects
Cloud services promise low cost-of-entry and rapid return on investment, but those advantages make it easy to overlook associated investments. To find out the true return on investment (ROI) of cloud computing enterprises have to dig deeper, according to a white paper from industry organization Information Systems Audit and Control Association (ISACA).
Calculating the total cost of an IT service against its potential return is always a challenge for IT staff, and that holds even truer for cloud computing, according to ISACA. A thorough analysis of cloud computing benefits must include short-, medium- and long-term views as well as termination costs, it said.
Hidden costs that enterprises may fail to anticipate when moving quickly to cloud-based services include the cost of bringing services back in-house due to regulatory change; unexpected expenses involved in the initial migration of systems; and lock-in with a specific provider or proprietary service model, according to ISACA. Read more...
Acquire, reward or revolutionize: thoughts on what Apple will do with its $100B in cash tomorrow
What Apple will do with its cash has long been a topic for discussion, with analysts and investment specialists going crazy predicting what it will do. Now, the company has announced that it will be talking about its decisions on spending its accumulated cash in a conference call tomorrow morning.
The most likely announcement is a dividend to shareholders, or stock buyback. Following that, the acquisition or large investment in technology of some sort. Perhaps Apple will acquire Twitter, the social network that it has so tightly integrated into its iOS and OS X operating systems.
Back in June of last year I speculated that Twitter had scored itself an immortality clause due to its integration deal with Apple. Read more...
HP’s open-sourcing of webOS begins today
The last time we heard about webOS, HP had opted to open-source the mobile platform, letting developers take a stab at breathing some life into it. It was an unconventional move, but not necessarily a bad one: it puts the platform largely in the hands of the development community, and it doesn’t require a large investment.
Today we found out more about HP’s plans for the second coming of webOS. The first step of the open sourcing process, the release of the Enyo application framework, took place today. The entire process is expected to be completed by September of this year. Upon completion of the open-sourcing transition, it will be known as Open webOS 1.0. Read more...
NSF study raises serious concerns about U.S. investment in technology
The National Science Foundation (NSF) just released a bevy of reports detailing American investment in science and technology, and the picture's grim.
While the size of the U.S. science and engineering workforce grew 24 percent between 2000 to 2010, to reach 6.65 million, the number of Americans working in high tech manufacturing dropped by 28 percent, and it's still headed down.
Make no mistake about it, high tech jobs still drive the American economy. NSF's numbers show that "Knowledge and Technology Intensive Industries" in the United States account for 40 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product, compared to 32 percent for the EU and 30 percent for Japan. But the U.S.'s share of the world revenue for knowlege-intensive service industries (business, financial, and communications) has fallen from 42 percent of the world total in 2000 to 33 percent in 2010. At the same time, China's world share has gone from 2 percent in 1995 to 7 percent in 2010, largely due to a 20 percent per year growth in China's communications industry. Read more...
White House ‘clarifies’ H-1B, green card rules to attract investment
The White House is attempting to make it more attractive for foreign entrepreneurs to create a business in the U.S. by "clarifying" H-1B visa and green card rules.
This idea of making it easier for foreign investors to create U.S.-based start-ups has been pitched by lawmakers who proposed "start-up visa" or "founder's visa" bills in recent years.
The White House isn't proposing new visa regulations, but is instead making what it characterized as "clarifying" adjustments to green card and H-1B rules that may make it easier for foreign investors to get a visa. Read more...
Lady Gaga, Eric Schmidt and others will invest ~$1M in Backplane internet starup.
What do Lady Gaga and Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt have in common?
Schmidt’s Tomorrow Ventures and Gaga have partnered up to finance Cartier’s still in stealth startup, with Gaga being a 20% shareholder. Tomorrow Ventures is leading the angel round, which is currently at over $1 million. It is not clear yet as to whether the round has closed. Read more...
Dell to invest $1 billion to boost data storage products
Dell plans to invest $1 billion over the fiscal year 2012 to bolster its data storage products to business customers, with the money going toward the research of technology like cloud computing and virtualization, along with the development on new data centers.
Dell announced the investment at a company sponsored event in Beijing on Thursday. Read more...
Angry Birds developer bags 42 million-dollar investment
Rovio, the Finnish software company that unleashed the Angry Birds game on millions of mobile phone users, said Thursday it had raised a 42-million-dollar (30.4-million-euro) investment.
"We will strengthen the position of Rovio and continue building our franchises in gaming, merchandising and broadcast media," Mikael Hed, the chief executive and co-founder of Rovio said in a statement. Read more...