Knowledge, due diligence are the keys to using the cloud
From infrastructure-as-a-service (Iaas) all the way up to software-as-a-service (SaaS), more and more companies are heading into the cloud.
There are plenty of good reasons. Using a cloud offering can often reduce a company's technology capex, and pay-as-you-go pricing is an attractive proposition for companies burned in the past by large, expensive technology initiatives.
Microsoft's cloud faces outage
Cloud computing may be significantly changing the way many companies do business on the internet, but it isn't perfect.
As we've seen time and time again, the cloud infrastructure can fail, leaving users which made poor architectural decisions in a bind. There are also security and financial concerns that the cloud raises, some of which companies fail to deal with intelligently.
Square wants to outfit taxis with tablets
The battle between traditional payment processors and financial institutions and upstarts looking to dethrone them is on.
The upstarts, obviously, have their work cut out for them. Entrenched players like Verifone have significant marketshare, and are increasingly employing interesting strategies in an attempt to ensure they always have a seat at the dinner table.
That means one thing: the upstarts have to get clever and creative. And that's just what they're doing.
Is Amazon's cloud a dangerous jungle?
Amazon is not just the kingpin of online retail. Increasingly, thanks to Amazon Web Services (AWS), the Seattle-based company is at the center of many companies' clouds.
The rise of AWS is impressive, and Amazon owes much of its success to the breadth and depth of its cloud platform, which is used by hundreds of thousands of customers, large and small.
Hack attack: how to protect and prepare your company
Another day, another hack.
From Sony to the IMF, the internet is starting to resemble the wild wild west as hackers assault high-profile companies and organizations.
Why misleading your customers is a bad strategy
Cloud file storage and syncing service Dropbox is arguably one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. It recently hit two big milestones: 25m users, and 200m files saved each day, and appears to have a very bright future.
But it also has a bit of explaining to do following a change to its Terms of Service.
How to do e-commerce right
With online sales predicted to top £11bn this Christmas, it's incredible how many retailers still offer websites that are mere online catalogues and don’t allow you to shop.
In fact, even some high street chains are only now taking their first steps in e-commerce.
Five lessons from the Gawker, McDonald's data breaches
What does online gossip rag Gawker have in common with fast food restaurant chain McDonald's? In the past several days, both have fallen victim to hackers who gained access to user databases.
The Gawker hack, in particular, has garnered a lot of attention because the hackers seem most interested in humiliating the popular blog. They have released the emails and passwords of more than 1m of Gakwer's registered users.
Marketers are downloading data on 100 million Facebook users
Facebook's privacy woes continue. This week a man harvested and published the profile details of 100 million Facebook users. If that weren't bad enough, he then made the file available for free download. You'd think that a lot of companies would be interested in acquiring such data. And you'd be right.
But this is less a case of nefarious marketing tricks than a factor of Facebook's privacy settings. And things are only going to get worse as Facebook grows.
Is Norton SafeWeb a danger to etailers?
Online florist Arena Flowers recently fell foul of Norton, with its SafeWeb product flagging its website as unsafe for users due to an issue with the site's WordPress blog.
The problem was fixed promptly by Arena Flowers, but the process of contacting Norton and getting the warnings removed was far from perfect, and could have had a serious effect its sales and reputation.
