The role of information technology (IT) in the enterprise is changing from being a supplier of devices to becoming a supplier of pooled computing resources, with cloud computing giving IT professionals an opportunity to increase their strategic value to their businesses.

That’s the word from Microsoft’s global virtualisation director, Edwin Yuen, who will be in South Africa for a series of Microsoft Management Summit (MMS) events this month. The events, in Cape Town, Durban and Johannesburg, are expected to draw several hundred IT professionals from some of the country’s biggest companies.

“Cloud computing enables you to deploy continuous services that are always on, always available, and delivered, down to a set of connected devices,” said Yuen. “South African IT professionals should be looking at ways of evolving their roles with cloud computing to help their businesses be more competitive.”

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The African Internet has taken massive strides forward over the past three years, thanks to the large investments telecommunications operators have made in new terrestrial and submarine cables. However, there is still a lot of hard work to be done before Internet services are accessible and affordable to every person on the continent.

That’s according to Mark Simpson, CEO of SEACOM, reflecting on the state of Africa’s Internet ahead of World Telecommunications Day (17 May 2012). He says that the telecommunications industry has broken many of the bottlenecks to affordable and ubiquitous broadband across the continent.

New submarine cables such as SEACOM and the recently launched WACS have helped to boost the performance of the Internet in many African countries while driving costs down for the end user. SEACOM alone has seen more than 10-fold increases in bandwidth penetration in several of Africa’s most underserved nations, driven by drops in connectivity prices and increases in terrestrial coverage.

3G cellular network technologies have helped to boost connectivity speeds to the end user and new terrestrial networks have helped to extend connectivity from submarine cable landing points into African hinterland, once only covered by expensive satellites. Many challenges still remain, including extending the reach of the international cables into vast African territories that remain underserved, says Simpson.

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Google recently launched its foray into the world of cloud storage with Google Drive, hoping to become competitive in an area becoming more and more crowded. Although many companies around the world offer similar services, it does make a lot of sense for Google to venture into the not so foreign territory, seeing that many or their services are already cloud based, like Gmail, Google Docs, Calendar and Google Music.

That means that for people who use a lot of these services, the integration into Google Drive should be seamless. However, some factions around the world have become very vocal about the Terms of Service. Scanning through the latest terms, it’s the second paragraph that is disquieting:

When you upload or otherwise submit content to our Services, you give Google (and those we work with) a worldwide license to use, host, store, reproduce, modify, create derivative works (such as those resulting from translations, adaptations or other changes we make so that your content works better with our Services), communicate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute such content. The rights you grant in this license are for the limited purpose of operating, promoting, and improving our Services, and to develop new ones. This license continues even if you stop using our Services (for example, for a business listing you have added to Google Maps).

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Open-source software continues to grow in popularity as a result of its cost-effectiveness and functionality.

In an attempt to provide larger corporate clients with a complete, professional and low-cost load balancing solution, South African-based development outfit Snapt has joined forces with HAProxy’s commercial arm, Exceliance.

The first open-source alliance of its kind will result in a more widely accessible product offering, which will extend both the reach and functionality of Snapt’s existing HAProxy user interface, as well as Exceliance’s renowned HAProxy Enterprise Edition (HAPEE).

Plans are currently underway to release a joint product, which looks set to allay any fears companies may have about dabbling in the world of open source. Not only will the new offering provide comprehensive developer-backed support and warranties typical of more commercial software, but will make use of Snapt’s revolutionary user interface, making the product exceptionally easy to use and manage.

“This product will be the first of its kind to really deliver an open source solution with all the benefits of a more commercial offering,” says Dave Blakey, CEO of Snapt. “Not only will clients be able to enjoy the peace of mind afforded by comprehensive developer-backed support and full warranties, but they’ll be able to do so at a fraction of the price of commercial software.”

“This alliance increases Exceliance’s value proposition, enabling us to better cover market needs byaddressing the cloud computing environments” said Christophe Pouillet, Exceliance’s CEO.

The newly formed alliance also brings good news for existing clients of both companies. Snapt’s existing clientele can look set to enjoy the benefits of full support, whilst current HAPEE clients will also enjoy the increased ease of use afforded by Snapt’s HAProxy user interface.

Snapt and Exceliance’s new joint-product will be made available in May 2012. Annual subscription packages will start at USD 5,000 for the bronze, 2 server plan and scale up to USD 40,000 for large enterprise clients.

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Cheap computing power, paired with ubiquitous connectivity in nearly every corner of the world, is creating a global, intelligent fabric of network services and applications that will transform the way we live over the next three to five years.

That’s according to Stafford Masie, technology entrepreneur and Co-Founder of a content and cloud enabling company with SEACOM. He says that the Internet is rapidly evolving into a Sensory Membrane of Ubiquitous Real-time Federated Subsystems (Smurfs) that delivers rich services and applications that were the stuff of science-fiction just a decade ago.

“A range of technologies are maturing and meshing together into a rich network that already has immense capabilities. Just think about doing a Google search on your phone. The device does none of the processing, yet you have access to a wealth of information within a few seconds of starting the search,” says Masie.

Within the next 18 to 36 months, we can expect to see a range of machine to machine applications as well the growth of big data completely change users’ expectations of what the global network can do for them.

So what exactly is this “Smurf” village he is talking about?

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For a long time, the only major file syncing service with a decent cloud backup option was Dropbox, and its cross platform compatibility across all your devices made it a firm favourite. Google was always rumoured to be readying “GDrive”, but it just never appeared. But a few days ago Microsoft announced that they are finally bringing Skydrive syncing clients to other platforms than Windows, so it was only natural that now was the perfect time for Google to also jump into the file syncing pool.

Google Drive is free, and users will get 5GB of cloud based storage for free. Google of course has the advantage of having pretty decent editing tools available in the shape of Google Docs, and Google Drive will also have some pretty great collaboration services as well. For example – if you share and collaborate on a document, you can keep track of comments from other editors in the document, regardless of the type of file, be it video, photo, PDF etc.

Just like Dropbox, you sync your Google Drive across devices, and your stuff is also safely stored in the cloud, in case anything happens with it. But Google’s Search speciality makes the cloud storage even more powerful – using OCR (optical character recognition), Google can scan your documents for all their included text, and then you can just search for text. Very much like Evernote.

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My Broadband has reported that Samsung’s video-on-demand (VOD) Hub Service that will be launching on the electronics company’s Galaxy Tab 2, will now let South Africans rent and purchase movies and tv series.

Paulo Ferreira, Samsung SA’s head of mobile product and software solutions, revealed that they plan to launch Video Hub in 2012 during the unveiling of the 7-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 for South Africa.

According to Samsung, Video Hub, offers over 1,000 film titles for purchase or rent and provides reviews, trailers, and recommendations. Ferreira says that users can start viewing content event before it has even downloaded fully.

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A newly uncovered patent design from the “quietly brilliant” HTC indicates that the mobile phone maker could be developing its very own Android-powered media player.

The submission, that was initially discovered by Patent Bolt, reveals that the company applied for the patent in Q1 of 2011 with the design of the rumoured device appearing to fall in line with that of HTC’s recent smartphone offerings.

The front face of the device has speakers across both the top and bottom, the backside has yet another set of speakers and a camera as well as the familiar HTC kickstand. While there so no mention of the Micro-USB and/or Micro-HDMI ports, they can be clearly seen in the image below. The device also boasts a touch screen, a feature that will put it up against that of the iPod Touch and one that has been attempted by other companies with very little success.

While this device may look like a smarthphone at first glance, Patent Bolt points out that the patent makes no reference to mobile network access or other phone features and given that it only suggests Wi-Fi connectivity, it is possible that the device will be similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy Player.

Considering HTC’s investment in Beats by Dr. Dre technology, it was only a matter of time before this type of device emerged.

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