According to the 2010 Information Security Breaches Survey (ISBS) from PriceWaterhouse Coopers, there has been a big shift in the number of companies moving to hosted applications. Three-quarters of all enterprises now use services such as Software as a Service (SaaS) and cloud computing, and of these, 44 percent were entrusting critical services to third parties.

http://www.networkworld.com/news/2010/042610-cloud-and-social-media-lead.html

Companies should take better care warns PWC

http://www.executivegov.com/2010/03/microsoft-promotes-gov-2-0-through-cloud-collaboration/

As for Microsoft aiding others through new technology, the corporation announced in the beginning of February how it plans to offer U.S. scientists access to cloud computing through its Windows Azure computing system.

http://www.eweekeurope.co.uk/news/government-%E2%80%98hack-day%E2%80%99-delivers-public-data-innovation-5854

A Facebook quiz and local policing feedback board are just two of the ideas that have emerged from a government public data initiative

THE TEMPTATION, of course, is to sum up the decade in terms of brands. Thus the noughties could be seen as the period of Google’s inexorable rise, of Apple’s metamorphosis into a music and mobile phone colossus, of Amazon’s increasing dominance, of mushrooming user-generated content (Flickr, Blogger) and social networking (MySpace, Facebook, Twitter), of the emergence of Wikipedia as the world’s leading reference work, of YouTube and the BBC’s iPlayer – and of corporate stumbles (Microsoft, Yahoo, eBay, innumerable record labels and newspaper groups).

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/dec/27/web-goes-mainstream-in-noughties

The noughties have been technologically inspiring and liberating: but the threats to a wired world have also become starkly clear over the past 10 years

Private-cloud projects will put intolerable strains on existing networks and punish the ill-prepared, says Lori MacVittie.

Any IT organisations thinking about a private cloud inevitably have to examine the health of their network and its readiness to support the stresses that accompany such implementations.

As with Web 2.0, cloud computing inherently increases the use of the network – from the increase in application packaging due to virtualisation to cloud computing’s reliance on collaboration and integration across the entire infrastructure.

http://resources.zdnet.co.uk/articles/comment/0,1000002985,39938295,00.htm

A cloud-computing implementation can quickly become a Catch-22, in which customer requests and infrastructure communication create conflicting demands on performance.

Now that you’re finally backing up your computer to protect yourself from data disasters, here’s another doomsday scenario to populate your nightmares.

Let’s imagine you’re using one of any number of popular web-based services for blogging, sharing photos, writing documents or communicating with friends.

Perhaps you store all of your photos at Flickr, labeling them with captions and tags.

http://www.nj.com/business/index.ssf/2009/12/even_with_cloud_computing_serv.html

I’m gradually moving toward using “cloud” services for everything from spreadsheets to e-mail. Think of all the things that can go wrong with your own computer. Theft. Fire. Your own stupid mistakes. I tend to think a company like Google might do a better job than I would at keeping my data safe.

As we bring our Information Overload summit to a close, we have decided to name and rank the biggest culprits for the overload, the issues which more than anything else are causing companies to drown in a deluge of data.

Some of these problems have been around since the dawn of the computer age. Others are new, brought about by new technologies and different ways of working and servicing IT infrastructure. Nevertheless they all cut into the IT manager’s time.

Honourable mention: Web management

http://www.pcauthority.com.au/News/160625,top-10-issues-overloading-it-managers.aspx

As we bring our Information Overload summit to a close, we have decided to name and rank the biggest culprits for the overload, the issues which more than anything else are causing companies to drown in a deluge of data..

Managed services play a crucial role in service providers’ businesses because they can leverage their economies of scale to deliver reliable, high-performance and profitable services to their customers. Cloud computing makes similar promises and by delivering applications over the network its providers hope to make major inroads into the massive desktop software market. So can network service providers take a leading role in this new managed services market or does the over-the-top cloud computing providers’ network-agnostic approach mean they will be left out of the loop?Service providers are actually in an ideal position to benefit from cloud computing’s evolution of managed services. The concept is simple enough: by inserting themselves in the cloud computing value chain from application to consumer, the service provider can improve the experience of user-to-application transactions that far exceed cloud applications hosted on the open internet. This network-based approach to assuring services can attract a share of the adjacent market of software revenue associated with the use of the applications, which is a market currently untapped by the network provider. To do this, however, they have to ensure the essence of the cloud – the service provider infrastructure – provides embedded and perceived value to the services delivered through it.

http://www.globaltelecomsbusiness.com/Article/2308793/Sectors/25205/Capturing-the-cloud-computing-opportunity.html

Managed services are facing a new kid on the block with the emergence of cloud computing, says Nigel Stephenson, and network service providers are well placed to benefit. Co-sponsored feature: Juniper Networks.

Last week Andrea DiMaio wrote an interesting post on how Government 2.0 may be approaching the peak of the hype cycle. I’d never seen the hype cycle before and it looked fun, so I thought it might be interesting to try to map where I believe some current Canadian government 2.0 projects, a few older technologies, and a few web 2.0 technologies in general, are against this chart from a government perspective.

http://eaves.ca/2009/09/28/mapping-government-2-0-against-the-hype-curve/

how Government 2.0 may be approaching the peak of the hype cycle.