Cloud industry shares drop

The cloud computing industry dragged down the Nasdaq after a leading company in the emerging tech sector, Equinix, says it had to lower prices to keep customers, reports Reuters.

Companies in the fast-growing cloud business, a term encompassing the shift toward providing software, computing power and data storage online, have seen values grow in the past few months amid a wave of technology acquisitions.

But the shares fell this week after data centre services company Equinix warned that its third-quarter sales would be lower than its last forecast as it cuts prices to retain customers.

More businesses will adopt cloud-based data security services over the next 12 months as they look to cut IT costs, it has been claimed, writes Ontrack.

Andy Wright, sales director at IT solutions provider NonstopIT, claims cloud computing will become more popular as staff numbers are cut.

He says: "More and more people, as they're slimming down their IT infrastructure and IT support departments, [are] going to want to put more data in the cloud".

Fujitsu Australia has unveiled an enterprise-grade cloud computing service from two data centres in Sydney, with government and financial sector organisations clearly in its sights, according to ITNews.

Once signed up, the locally-based infrastructure-as-a-service platform offers IT administrators the ability to spin up virtual machines within minutes, with granular control over the amount of processor, memory and storage required for any given application, says the company.

Fujitsu general manager Cameron McNaught says the service should appeal to large government and finance sector organisations, which are restricted by regulations on data outsourcing.