Always advancing in providing ways for enterprises to leverage the advantages of the cloud, Sprint has introduced a new IaaS solution that offers an appealing combination of security, flexibility, and simplicity on top of a truly cloud-aware network.

Sprint CloudCompute, announced Monday, integrates the power of CSC's virtualized utility-based computing solution in the cloud with a robust, reliable, and secure network. As a solution, CloudCompute enhances an organization's IT agility. It makes it possible to quickly turn up additional computing resources when needed, or dial them down just as quickly once particular missions are accomplished. More...

A new approach to cloud-based collaboration, with easy-to-understand plans, is making it easier for mid-sized and smaller businesses to enjoy the benefits of Sprint's Microsoft Office 365 solutions.

These new plans are not only designed to provide more choice and flexibility, but they are accompanied by 20 optional add-on or standalone products. These help a customer "co-create" the solution which best fits their needs, both current and evolving. Sprint has actually taken this co-creation theme further with our award-winning Carefree Cloud services for these add-on and standalone options. This gives the customer the needed deployment and in-life technical support for their ultimate Office 365 solutions. More...

You never know what you might find, even in familiar places, when you go exploring. I'll bet most of you didn't realize that from right here at Seamless Enterprise, you're only a click away from a most interesting graphic about cloud usage and savings.

It's true. Here it is, and in a very easy-to-read format, you can pick up a lot of information about how companies are using the cloud, the effect on their IT departments and IT performance, the savings they're seeing, and security concerns. The information comes from an international survey of 3,645 IT decision makers. More...

There was an interesting mini-debate in the March 25 Network World about whether the cloud is ready for mission-critical applications.

This side-by-side argumentation featured the "yes" position being argued by the CIO of IEEE, with the "no" position argued by the CTO of a financial trading company. You can take a look at the points each person made here.

After looking it over, we'd have to say that in many ways they are both right (do we have a future in politics, or what?). But we're not trying to just straddle the fence. For the vast majority of companies, with the right communications network in place, the answer is going to be yes. But specifically, for a financial trading company, we can understand why that type of organization would hold out for no at this time. More...

When it comes to picking a hotel for your business trip, if all your choices are similar in pricing and quality, but one has attentive concierge service, wouldn't it make sense to choose that one?

Maybe you'll need help picking the best nearby restaurant, or want to score tickets to a basketball game in town at the last minute. That's when you really appreciate the value of a concierge. More...

Call it the eight-step plan. Eight steps that move you from “that cloud sure sounds like a good idea” to true cloud readiness.

A new Stratecast/Frost & Sullivan paper available here (registration required) spells out the eight steps. The paper bills itself as a “practical guide” to a successful cloud strategy, and we have to say that the steps they describe definitely seem practical and sensible. More...

What can this year's Consumer Electronics Show tell us about the cloud, and most importantly, what does that mean to enterprises?

Full disclosure: I did not attend CES, and I’m fine with that. But I did keep my eyes open for coverage of news and developments that either weren’t entirely “consumer” or which offered insight into what such developments mean to the enterprise in the coming months.

By the way, Heidi Gigler’s latest post – she did attend CES – provides an overall look at the show and what it portends for enterprises since, as she points out, a lot of what IT departments deal with now is driven by outside, consumer-oriented advancements. More...

When your business depends on data and collaboration – and whose doesn't anymore? – it's understandable if you emphasize caution in how you change the way your people work with that data. That includes where it's kept, how you access it, and how you protect it.

So it's no surprise that a recent Forrester Wave white paper about cloud strategies found that even with online collaboration becoming much more appealing as business dynamics evolve, there is a certain amount of business customer uncertainty when it comes to committing to these collaboration solutions. More...

If there was ever a perfect example of why it's good to consult more than one news source to get the whole story, it's a little item about the cloud and people's perceptions of it.

Recently, an item in Fierce Enterprise Communications caught my eye. With the headline "Workplace of the Future Will Be in the Cloud," I plunged into the story, which concerns a Citrix-sponsored survey of just over 1,000 U.S. adults about the cloud. More...

Recently I told you about a positive cloud report from IDC Government Insights. The week this report was issued, a high profile technology professional came out that same time and "dissed" the cloud.

As reported by CNET, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak clearly isn't a fan. He used terms such as "horrendous" to describe the future of storing data in the cloud, and predicted "a lot of horrible problems in the next five years." More...