PaymentCycle is a collaborative web based software application that tracks and analyzes referrals and applications through all phases of the workflow environment. Account conversion and help desk tools are also integrated into the workflow management suite. This application is the only mass market solution that performs these tasks while also providing collaboration between companies. PaymentCycle gains some of its uniqueness from the fact that it covers the entire referral and application environment, addresses all human roles in that environment, can include internal/external parties, and can be aggressively updated to address the ever changing nature of the payments sector. The application is accessed through a Web browser from a SAS 70 Type II Data Center, is tailored to different roles, and gives quick and easy performance and status reports.

http://news.prnewswire.com/DisplayReleaseContent.aspx?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-05-2009/0005072092&EDATE=

New solution provides unique collaborative approach for referral and workflow management between payment companies and customers.

Yes we got things like global search, hi-def support, cool animations and visual effects, but where are the revolutionary ideas that should be popping up. While our hardware is getting more and more powerful, our software seems to lag in support for such features. Operating systems do a pretty good job of the basics, intermediate and advanced, but I think it’s about time we see some better integration between our electronic devices.

http://www.ghacks.net/2009/08/05/the-reinventing-of-the-operating-system/

I know what you’re thinking, this would be impossible to implement in a short amount of time. But quite the contrary.

Two general trends are pushing cloud deployment to the front of every CIO’s to-do list: the falling price of hardware and the increasing expense of managing that hardware as a single resource. Managing infrastructure at scale is where the grid middleware vendors come in, and at this stage it is these companies that see nothing but green field between high performance computing and the rest of the commercial enterprise market.

http://www.hpcwire.com/blogs/Surveys-Says-Cloud-Computing-Is-Awesome-52474502.html

It’s worth noting that no mention was made of the lack of standards as a barrier to cloud computing.

According to a new study from ABI Research, mobile cloud computing will generate annual revenues of more than $20 billion by the end of 2014, making current mobile operating systems essentially obsolete.

http://www.edlconsulting.com/newsdetail.php?id=335&headline=Mobile_cloud_computing_to_generate_$20b_in_annual_revenue_by_2014

“Cloud computing will bring unprecedented sophistication to mobile applications,” said ABI Research senior analyst Mark Beccue.

Zoho, the upstart provider of online Web applications, seems to be continually integrating and upgrading its products in the cloud, says China Martens, an analyst with The 451 Group. Martens jokes that it’s as if all of the Zoho developers sit in separate rooms for several months, each one pounding away at his respective application (Zoho Mail, for example, or Zoho CRM), only to have the walls come tumbling down just as the developers are ready to join their applications. Raju Vegesna, Zoho’s key evangelist, says that taking down those application walls is the company’s primary goal. “We are focusing more on integration within native applications,” he says. To date, Zoho offers 10 productivity applications, such as Zoho Mail and Zoho Chat, and nine business applications, such as Zoho CRM and Zoho Invoice. 

http://www.destinationcrm.com/Articles/CRM-News/Daily-News/Are-You-Ready-to-Zwitch-to-Zoho-55413.aspx

The productivity suite provider integrates email and CRM, beefs up its Projects application, and entices Salesforce.com users to switch over.

51% of Internet users, who have done a cloud computing activity, say the major reasons are convenience, flexibility, and ease of deployment. 41% of cloud users say the major reason they use these applications in a cloud computing environment is because of the ability to access data from any computer or remote location. 39% cite the ease of sharing information as the top reason to use a SaaS application. 63% of Internet users involved with any kind of application in a cloud expect superior customer service and performance and would quickly switch to another provider if they felt the level of service was not up to par.

http://pr-usa.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=244953&Itemid=28

53% of Internet users involved with any kind of SaaS application find that the expense involved with cloud computing is a fraction of what it would cost a company to buy and operate a similar system on their own.

The cloud is an elastic computing and data storage engine, a virtual network of servers, storage devices, and other computing resources. It’s a major milestone in on-demand or utility computing, the evolutionary progeny of computer timesharing, high-performance networks and grid computing. The computer timesharing industry that emerged four decades ago pioneered the model for on-demand computing and pay-per-use resource sharing of storage and applications. More recently Ian Foster and Carl Kesselman advanced the concept of the grid to make large-scale computing networks accessible via a service model. Like computer timesharing and the grid, cloud computing often requires persistent storage so open source projects and commercial companies have responded with data store and database solutions.

http://www.ddj.com/database/218900502

The New York Times project that created the TimesMachine, a web-accessible digital archive, is a prime example of a one-off cloud project requiring massively scalable computing.

Quattro, however, was perhaps better placed than most companies to make the leap. As a specialist in IT and “cloud” services, it turned towards a web-based solution for an accounting system that could tie in with its customer relationship management (CRM) system.

http://www.theage.com.au/technology/biz-tech/browse-for-a-software-solution-20090803-e768.html

“Gone are the days where you had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to integrate systems,” Harper says

There is no choice. With the world getting “smarter” through today’s technologies, IBM believes more IT vendors and organizations will follow its “Smarter Planet” stance, an advocacy to achieve innovation by being more open and collaborative.

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=ADF67879-1A64-67EA-E4120798BEEBC7F6

Chung said driving transformation in these times of crisis is never easy because of cultural resistance. Yet she claims now is the best time to restart the business to be competitive, to outdo one’s legacy and success, and to find ways to enlarge businesses in between.