The World Wide Web has come a long way since 400 Arpanet users received the first spam message in May 1978. Journey back to 1969, when the U.S. military-funded research network Arpanet connected four computers, to take a look at the Internet, then and now. Renamed “the Internet” in 1984, the service reached a milestone moment when it linked 1,000 hosts at university and corporate labs. Almost 15 years later, the Web began making commercial […]
Cloud Computing
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Just as virtualisation has transformed data centre operations, the emergence of cloud computing represents a significant shift in the way IT operates applications today. Up until now, IT ops teams have been driven by a server-centric operations model, where the application itself played a secondary role. Cloud computing, on the other hand, is an application-centric operations model. As applications get more distributed, virtualised and pushed into the cloud, application developers and architects are faced with […]
Cloud, mobility, and advanced analytics are transforming the way insurance companies offer value to their customers. As competitive pressures within the industry increase, insurance companies will turn to technology for assistance in this changed environment. To prosper in this new environment insurance companies can look to the cloud, in conjunction with other technologies, to help drive reinvention of their business model to offer new services and create direct, multi-channel relationships with customers. Real-time data collection […]
In May 2011, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants issued a new set of guidelines known as Service Organisation Controls-2 (SOC-2) report, which outlines criteria for the security, availability, processing integrity, privacy and confidentiality of a service organisation’s systems and processes. Organisations that outsource functions, not relevant to financial statements, can request an SOC-2 report to assure themselves that they have requisite controls in place. The report is similar to the older SAS 70 […]
Cloud technology is the future for the business-world. According to KPMG, it’s now used by most organisations. However, with this new technology come new risks for company information security, and it is important for HR teams to ensure that they update company IT policies to adequately protect business interests. What’s different about cloud computing? Cloud systems are often different from the traditional IT infrastructure set up by a company itself because they are normally provided […]
The many benefits of cloud computing include helping enterprises become more efficient, agile, innovative and flexible, but achieving those benefits depends on a number of factors, including the involvement of the board of directors. ISACA, a nonprofit, independent association of more than 100,000 governance, risk, security and assurance professionals worldwide, has issued new guidance outlining key questions for boards of directors to ask to ensure their enterprise’s cloud initiative is in line with business objectives […]
SMBs that embrace Cloud computing and business websites are much more likely to enjoy rising revenue than others, according to accounting software provider, MYOB. The company’s March 2013 MYOB Business Monitor study, which was conducted by research firm Colmar Brunton and surveyed more than 1000 SMBs, found that the businesses that adopted Cloud technologies were twice as likely to see an earnings uplift in the past year. However, only 16 per cent indicated to use […]
The word ‘cloud’ has been literally hanging over executives’ heads for the past two years — in the form of massive banners hanging from the ceilings of almost every hub airport they travel through. To date, the focus of cloud has been on the delivery of IT-related capabilities from IT-related providers, largely for things that the IT department is responsible for managing. Cloud computing is expected to grow to 20% or more of the total […]
Today, most large enterprises, no matter what industry they serve, are software developers. The reason? The various ways through which employees and customers can, and want, to engage with businesses has grown exponentially; time, platform and frequency are no longer considerable barriers to achieving what you want to achieve. Applications that are used by either staff or customers are developed internally by the development team and/or with their development partners. For many organisations, their applications, […]
Only 28 percent of small-business owners completely understand the concept of cloud computing, while 42 percent of respondents said they are not using cloud computing at all and 35 percent said they were using it only for data storage, according to the latest “Brother Small-Business Survey,” from Brother International, which examined the role of technology in small business. Small-business owners also noted using the cloud for document management (21 percent) as well as business applications […]