In the run-up to the next Cloud Expo, 7th Cloud Expo (November 1–4, 2010) being held at the Santa Clara Convention Center in Silicon Valley, it's time to give my earlier list a complete overhaul. Here, accordingly, is an expanded list of the most active players in the Cloud Ecosystem. I have increased it from the 'mere' 150 I identified back in January of this year, to 250, testimony – as if any were needed! – to the fierce and continuing growth of the "Elastic IT" paradigm throughout the world of enterprise computing. Editorial note: The words in quotation marks used to describe the various services and solutions in this round-up are in every case taken from the Web sites of the companies themselves. Omissions to this Top 250 list should be sent to me via Twitter (twitter.com/jg21) and I will endeavor to include them in any future revision of this newly expanded rou... (more)

Open Letter to the President of Syria Bashar al-Assad

Thursday, July 29, 2010 Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey   To the President of Syria, Mr. and Mrs. Bashar al-Assad Mr. and Mrs. President Bashar al-Assad: At the tender age of 17 months my severely ill daughter Sofia, an American citizen, was abducted by her mother on Monday, July 26, in Istanbul, Turkey, and taken to Syria. I was informed yesterday by Sofia's mother that she will not be coming back to the United States nor will she allow Sofia to return home. Sofia has been diagnosed with a severe medical condition that requires immediate treatment in the United States. It was schedul... (more)

Case Studies: Start with the Story’s End

Every day, we encounter new stories – on TV, in books, movies and magazines, and in discussions with others. Nearly all of them build toward an end result, which isn’t clear until you arrive there. But in marketing, leading with the outcome gets the attention of distracted audiences. Just this past week, Richard Fouts of Gartner presented the webinar, "How to Tell Better Marketing Stories." In it, he offered three tips for telling stories well, with "start with the end of the story" as #1. Here’s an example: If you saw the movie "Memento," you know that it famously starts with... (more)

Let the Platform-as-a-Service Battles Begin!

Platform as a Service(PaaS) is a growing area of interest in cloud computing. The inclusion of infrastructure with industry leading middleware capabilities reduces the barrier to create and deliver innovative applications and business processes to customers. PaaS can be a game changing direction taken by start-ups, independent software vendors, systems integrators and hosting companies who are all involved in putting their solutions to end customers. Start-ups have the potential to build and deliver applications leveraging their domain knowledge with flexibility and agility never... (more)

Big Four der Wirtschaftsprüfung fordern Google als den attraktivsten Arbeitgeber der Welt heraus

KÖLN, September 28, 2010 /PRNewswire/ -- In dem heute von Universum veröffentlichten globalen Index der Arbeitgeberattraktivität ist BMW im internationalen Vergleich die stärkste deutsche Arbeitgebermarke. Insgesamt acht deutsche Unternehmen sind in dem Index vertreten. Google kann seine erste Position in den beiden Kategorien Wirtschaftswissenschaften und Ingenieurwesen weiterhin behaupten. Allerdings sind die vier grössten Wirtschaftsprüfungsgesellschaften Google auf den Fersen. Nach der Erstveröffentlichung 2009 ist es in diesem Jahr die zweite Edition des Index. "Nach einem ... (more)