Joël Van Hoolandt — Fractional CTO | Magma Consulting

A very good idea from the European institutions is to propose a centralized page with different legal frameworks and texts that are applicable in the ICT and European Union. Basically, you will find legal information about: Current general legal framework Regulatory framework. Competition. Digital Strategy, i2010 Strategy, eEurope Action Plan, Digital Strategy Programmes Internet, Online activities and ICT standards Internet and Online activities. Fight against illegal online activities. Network security and information system. Coordination and standardisation. Data protection, copyright and related rights Radiofrequencies Mobile communications. Radio spectrum. Interaction of the information society with certain policies The use of ITC for road safety. The use of ITC for electronic commerce. The use of ITC for payment systems. The use of ITC for research. The use of ITC for public health. Enlargement Ongoing enlargement. Enlargement of January 2007. En...

Have you checked the new SharePoint Pro web site ? A lot of resources are already available about SP2013!

Cloud has finally started to move beyond the hype and into the fundamental fabric of today’s enterprise. As a result, organizations around the world are now gaining valuable insight, not only into the potential benefits of cloud, but also the practical challenges of adopting these evolutionary and highly disruptive technologies.   Emerging complexities   According to The cloud takes shape, organizations are finding particular challenges with data management, systems integration and the management of multiple cloud providers.   The report finds that there is a growing recognition that business process redesign must occur in tandem with cloud adoption if organizations hope to achieve the full potential of their cloud investments. A comprehensive view of the current cloud environment   The cloud takes shape also provides practical and actionable advice on cloud for enterprises and their executives. Read a summary of the key chapters below.   Sett...

The European Commission has issued a third Open Innovation book. The 3 parts of the book focus on policy development trends and weak signals in service innovation cases and open innovation development in EU countries and regions What strikes me in the third part is that one of the case is about cloud computing that can take service innovation to next level . Let's see what does that means exactly... Cloud computing will boost our European economy with an accelerated time to market for new applications (installation time of a Database is today around 12 minutes; the deployment of new applications passed from some months to some days...), rapid information delivery and efficient data analysis. For the non service economy, enhanced connectivity and cloud solutions can help to bring local products faster to the local markets, in a more efficient way (think on logistics and transport). On the regulatory side, the European Union needs to harmonize the different national lega...

Where is Europe in a strong cloud computing strategy? hmmm...., 'not that far' I would say, but there is some hope in the decisions and in the implication of the European authorities and the lack of a mandatory clear vision of regulating the question. If you're interested in what the European Parliament is doing on the Cloud Computing question, have a look at the official publication. You can download the report here .

Read about the Berkeley project and the "Web privacy census", aiming to measure online privacy (based on the cookies found on the most popular sites)... Click to read the Blog post in NYT .

New strategy to create single set of rules for cloud computing and increase EU GDP by €160 billion annually by 2020. Many of us are using ‘cloud computing’ without even realising it. Web based e mail, Facebook and Spotify all use the technology to store data such as pictures, videos and text files. The files are stored in massive data centres containing hundreds of servers and storage systems that are compatible with very nearly all computer software. When you wish to access your information, you simply connect to the ‘cloud’ from your PC, smartphone or tablet.The advantages are numerous – users don’t have to buy or maintain expensive servers and data-storage systems. Over 80% of businesses already using the technology have reported a drop in IT costs of 10-20%, while 20% have seen savings of 30% or higher. In addition to lowering IT costs, cloud computing saves office space and reduces the need for in-house IT support teams. But the EU is not yet reaping the full potential of cl...