Cloud Hosting

TARZANA, CA--(Marketwire -03/27/12)- InfoStreet Inc., Cloud pioneer and provider of Cloud-based applications (apps), was chosen as provider of choice by Keys2Day Real Estate Team. When the company that managed the Web-based email servers at Syreeta Saunders-Keys' eight-year-old real estate firm kept breaking down, she realized that she needed a centralized system where she and her six employees could access email, store documents, and monitor the tasks from anywhere and at any time. Saunders-Keys was using four different vendors to host file sharing, email archiving, calendars, Web maintenance and other IT necessities; all of which cost her $750 per month. Yet, her team could only access their email via Webmail and the vendor wasn't syncing their email and calendars to all of their devices. Syreeta was frustrated that she was spending nearly all her time mired in an IT disaster instead of spending her time on her team and growing her sales base.

To reign in control, Syreeta decided to "Move to the Cloud" to solve her problems. She explored multiple options but, ultimately, chose InfoStreet to provide Keys2Day with a secure intranet system. They now employ this cloud-based software for nearly every aspect of their IT needs (from email, to email archiving, to shared Address Books, to shared Calendars, to File Sharing, and more).

"We all come from big business backgrounds, so we easily understood the value of having a central company environment where we can find everything in one place. We needed a comprehensive intranet and InfoStreet delivered," said Jeanine Whitehead, a member of the Keys2Day team. According to Tyrone Keys, head of IT for the members of the Keys2Day team, "In the end, InfoStreet made sense of our [previous] IT disaster and just made things simple. They have quickly become a vital partner for us and for our future growth."

Since implementing this technology, Keys2Day says that they've seen marked increases in efficiency, tracking, reporting, management, sales, operations and communications, both internally and with their remote staff. In fact, Saunders-Keys, who brought in $7.1 million in sales in 2010, estimates that their increased efficiencies have allowed them to be more competitive in the marketplace and can be directly attributed to about a 30-percent increase in business since the implementation and a direct savings of several hundred dollars per month.

About InfoStreet

InfoStreet is a Cloud Apps provider. Widely regarded as a pioneer in Cloud-based Apps, InfoStreet introduced its first business solution via the Cloud in 1995. InfoStreet's flagship offering, StreetSmart, delivers 100% Cloud-based business solutions that increase employee performance, strengthen customer relationships, improve communication, and reduce costs. StreetSmart includes such Cloud apps as Virus Protected and SPAM Free Email, Email Archiving, Shared Calendars, Tasks, Customer Relationship Management (CRM), File Sharing, Knowledge Base, Portal, and more. Try InfoStreet's StreetSmart apps by visiting http://www.infostreet.com or call 866-956-5051 for more information.

TAGS: move to the cloud, intranet system, iCloud, SaaS, cloud computing, Information Technology, web-based IT

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Real Estate CEO Turns to the Cloud to Solve Her IT Woes: InfoStreet Helps Rehab Keys2Day's Antiquated IT for Enhanced ...

Six out of 10 U.S. companies already have at least one application in the cloud, and 71 percent expect to increase spending on cloud services in the next 12 months, according to a recent IDG Enterprise survey of 554 IT professionals, including 357 heads of IT.

Most respondents (64 percent) agreed with the statement that cloud computing will mean higher costs in the short term, but will save money in the long term.

Barr Snyderwine, CIO of Hargrove, an events management company, says using the public cloud is his way of keeping costs down. The company is using an online collaboration tool for document sharing because "it's so cheap I can't say no," he says. "We are probably saving money in the long run on the [business] continuity side."

In fact, 84 percent of the survey respondents cited business continuity as the top business driver for their cloud investments. Snyderwine says he is also looking to put Microsoft's Exchange in the cloud as part of his continuity plan. "The comfort of having completely redundant servers is very, very attractive," he says.

In the survey, respondents said other top business reasons for moving IT to cloud services include speed of deployment, gaining the flexibility to react to market conditions, and improving customer support.

Tim Walter, CIO of CrossCom National, a retail systems provider, has a different reason: He's moving company data into a private cloud in hopes of achieving greater data consistency and integration. "You can get systems in the same cloud to talk [to each other]," Walter says.

But putting data in the cloud also carries risks: 70 percent of the respondents said security concerns are the top barrier to their adoption of cloud computing.

Walter says one challenge is having data from different types of customers in the cloud, because each customer has different security needs. "We look at who requires the tightest [security] levels and try to work everyone else toward [those]," he says.

Follow Editorial Assistant Lauren Brousell on Twitter: @lbrousell.

Read more about cloud computing in CIO's Cloud Computing Drilldown.

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CIOs Plan to Increase Cloud Spending

TeamDrive 3.0 will help enterprises implement Bring Your Own Device policies without worrying about leaking confidential data or intellectual property when employees access files on the go

Hannover, Germany - March 6th 2012 - Enterprise cloud synchronization provider TeamDrive today released a new client platform that brings security and privacy to the mobile access of cloud data. TeamDrive 3.0 adds secure clients for iOS and Android smart phones and tablets to the existing Mac, PC and Linux secure clients. It also makes significant enhancements to the underlying technology, adding RSA-2048 encryption to invitations to share AES-256 encrypted files on a TeamDrive Space.

The new TeamDrive 3.0 clients, downloadable from the TeamDrive website, will be on show at CeBIT in Hannover, Germany this week. TeamDrive's iPhone and iPad apps are in the final stages of testing and will be live in the App Store in March. Android and iOS customers should register on the TeamDrive website to receive an email as soon as the apps are available in Android Market or the Apple App Store: http://www.teamdrive.com/teamdrive3. Support for Blackberry and Windows Mobile Phones will be available this summer.

TeamDrive's approach to cloud storage for the enterprise is highly secure: All of the data are encrypted on your computer before they are uploaded. Furthermore, unlike similar cloud synchronization tools, businesses can use TeamDrive with their choice of server, whether it is private cloud, public cloud, TeamDrive cloud or on-site. Instead of being pushed into a public cloud, in other words, companies can use TeamDrive to run their own private service with the contents remaining fully under company control, on company-owned and company-managed servers.

TeamDrive is currently the only cloud synchronization tool with a data protection seal of approval.

Volker Oboda, CEO of TeamDrive, said, "The issue around BYOD is in fact LYOD. Our new smart phone apps will make it easy for enterprises to implement Bring Your Own Device policies without worrying about employee Losing Their Own Device incidents. The freedom to use your own server and securely access your TeamDrive Space from a smart phone makes TeamDrive the best cloud synchronization tool for enterprises that want to share files, but still want to protect their intellectual property."

TeamDrive customer Dr. Anthony Beck, DART Project Champion and Research Fellow in the School of Computing at the University of Leeds, commented on why the University of Leeds uses TeamDrive.

Dr. Beck said, "Instead of our data being held on Dropbox's servers in the cloud (Dropbox actually uses Amazon's cloud service), we can host them on our own servers. Therefore, we all access local files from a 'shared space'. In theory, this means we all work on the most up-to-date information. We can't use Dropbox or other cloud data storage companies that are not a signatory to Safe Harbor. As everything is maintained on our own servers, TeamDrive is Safe Harbor compliant."

He added, "The ability to use our own servers for shared cloud storage is fantastic. Essentially we have an unlimited storage capacity which we can easily share with colleagues throughout the world at any institution. This really helps collaboration. The smart phone application will provide the final piece allowing us to access data whilst 'on the go'."

The new TeamDrive smart phone applications have many built-in features, such as a photo-sharing tool, that make it much easier to ensure secure, seamless collaboration. These feature-rich mobile applications are perfect for enterprises seeking the most secure way to enhance remote collaboration and offer always-on access to office files, photos, music, videos and more - even when offline.

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TeamDrive 3.0 Unveiled at CeBIT: Brings Enterprise-Grade Security to Cloud File Sharing on the iPhone, iPad and Android

Cloud computing presents both challenges and opportunities for personal computing giants. Microsoft is "re-imagining" Windows for cloud-connected devices. Meanwhile, Intel rethinks its microprocessor strategies for mobile devices and servers, seeking to embrace the cloud at both ends of the consumption supply chain. For these incumbents that defined the personal computing era, the post-PC era future requires leaping from the past, not clinging to it.

Where the "Wintel" marriage is likely to remain strongest is the server. Microsoft's post-PC -- what I call cloud-connected device -- strategy is two-fold: Providing direct, hosted services or applications businesses can host internally and expanding Windows's support for additional chip architectures. For its part, Intel develops microprocessors for more device categories, while optimizing server chips for cloud applications and services, such as the recently announced Xeon processor E5-2600 product family.

For a time, Intel and Microsoft will diverge on desktop and mobile PCs, particularly tablets. Windows 8 "is a completely reimagined operating system for us as an organization", Microsoft COO Kevin Turner says, in his keynote last week during Convergence 2012. "It not only runs great on Intel and x86, it will also be the first operating system on the planet that also runs on ARM and system-on-a-chip. So, the ability to have multiple architectures that we support with a consistent user experience is something that we're just very, very excited about".

Meanwhile, Intel plays catch up in microprocessors that compete directly with ARM. Intel specifically designed the Atom processor Z2460 platform, which some of you may know as "Medfield", for smartphones and tablets.

In January, Intel struck a multi-year, multi-device deal with Motorola Mobility, now owned by Google, for the processor family and others like it. Motorola -- and Lenovo, too -- plan to ship Intel-powered smartphones in the second half of this year.

"By developing the Medfield chip for mobile devices, Intel will open the doors for further innovation for mobile device OEMs by providing a very capable alternative to existing ARM based chipsets," Wayne Lam, iSuppli analyst, says. However, Intel still must solve some power-consumption issues that ARM already has surpassed, as well as gain share as virtual newcomer.

Serving the Cloud

It's the server where there is opportunity pursued but often overlooked in analyses of the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company's chip strategy for cloud-connected devices.

Intel is the overwhelming x86 chip market leader. During fourth quarter, PC and server microprocessors generated $10.9 billion in sales, up 14.2 percent year over year, according to IDC. Intel's overall market share was 80.3 percent, but much higher for servers: 94.5 percent.

As cloud connectivity increases so do demands for servers and storage capable of handling the load. This year, spending on digital technology products will account for 10 percent of the average household's disposal income -- or $2.2 trillion in total, says Gartner, which projects spending to reach $2.8 trillion by 2015.

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Intel rises to the cloud