XaaS = Anything as-a-Service (some refer to it as "everything-as-a-Service"). The term is not new; it’s just that it is tangible today. Like a movie trailer that is released far ahead of the movie, XaaS has been talked about for years. I even found reference to XaaS from 2008, long before much of anything was in the cloud. The reality is that just about anything today can be done in the cloud. Just take a look, says Networkworld: More...

They say "good things come to those who wait," but for the impatient – at least those who register for Sprint's 2012 Open Solutions Conference by August 31 – there's a good discount to be had.

It's that time again, and even though the 12th annual conference itself is two months away (October 24-25 at the San Jose Convention Center), the deadline for an early registration, with significant savings, is coming up in just a few days. The registration fee is $175 until August 31, and $350 afterward. More...

There is little doubt that the promises of “big data” comes with risk. Steve Durbin, global vice president of the Information Security Forum (ISF), breaks down these risks into five areas: cybersecurity, data in the cloud, consumerization, interconnected supply chains, and privacy.

Cybersecurity is primary, because cybercriminals are getting more organized and are using more sophisticated techniques and tools. Even if the risk is small, a breach can wreak havoc within an organization, damaging reputations, creating substantial legal liability, and in the worst case, ruining companies financially. More...

If you ever dreamed of having your office in the cloud(s), the forces of gravity notwithstanding, those dreams have just come true.

The office we're talking about is Microsoft Office 365. Sprint announced on August 20 that it is bringing 365 to small and medium-sized businesses, as the latest in a series of cloud-centric offerings. All courtesy of the reliable, secure, and powerful Sprint network. More...

When you've been talking about SIP Trunking as long as we have around here, it's hard to think of the technology and the adoption of it as being in the "early stages." But that is the assessment contained in a new report on the state of the SIP union.

The Webtorials report, authored primarily by Steven Taylor, is based on a survey of 300 enterprise IT professionals, who were queried about their perspective and deployment status of SIP Trunking and SBCs, session border controllers. More...

The term "shadow IT" refers to the adoption and use of technology without the formal approval or knowledge of the central IT organization. This is becoming ubiquitous throughout organizations. Today, information technology is pervasive, easy to use, simple to access, and inexpensive. For many business units, it is simply faster to purchase and implement solutions directly themselves. More...

One of the biggest drivers of the converged network is “big data,” as enterprises capture massive amounts of data from every customer interaction and analyze it to predict future sales. One company managing this data really well today is Netflix.

I originally registered for Netflix streaming for research purposes. I have spent a lot of my career developing algorithms to capture the relationship between countless variables that drive business productivity.More...

Like the Chicago Bulls in the 1990s, Sprint is racking up the titles year after year in the Nemertes Research Pilothouse Award for MPLS Services competition. We may not be able to claim our own Michael Jordan, but we can attribute our success to our skill at three-pointers (in this case, the three points being customer service, technology, and value).

For 2012, Nemertes named us the Top Provider among Market Challengers, thanks to superior scores in the customer service and value categories. This is the fourth year for this award, which is based solely on the judgment of some 1,500 IT decision makers surveyed by Nemertes, and Sprint has now taken the top honor for MPLS services for three of those years. More...

We talked the other day about the cloud and compliance issues, and after writing that, we came across an item that drives that point home.

According to this article at the Bank Info Security website, the Federal Financial Information Examination Council is casting a wary eye at the cloud model, in light of past and potential data breaches. It has produced a four-page resource document designed to help financial institutions "better understand and address (the) unique risks posed by outsourced cloud-based services." More...

The rapidly-growing mobile payments industry is expected to more than double in just two years from $171.5 billion to $617 billion in transactions by 2016, according to Gartner. Simply, mobile payments is an “umbrella term that refers to a wide variety of approaches such as: a smartphone equipped with a special chip; a credit card number stored in a phone app; or a key-fob size device that turns a phone or tablet into a credit card processor,” says USA Today. Though still in the early adopter phase, startups, carriers, and big businesses are investing heavily in this innovative space. More...