Skandia has awarded Logica a three year, £12.5 million, contract to provide private cloud-based infrastructure.

The solution provides capacity on demand and also reduces Skandia’s carbon footprint.

Netsuite suffered a 30 minute service outage on the 27th April preventing access to its cloud-based applications to customers worldwide.

The Netsuite service has been highly reliable in the past but with growing customer numbers there is a question mark overwhether the company provided sufficient information about the outage.

The outage is reported to have been caused by network issues and Netsuite is still investigating.

easyJet has signed a multi-year subscription to use Proofpoint's cloud-based email security solution, Proofpoint ENTERPRISE™.

Proofpoint's SaaS (Software as a Service)solution will provide protection from spam, viruses, phishing attacks and other email-borne threats.

Highlighting that moving to the cloud is still far from straightforward, Royal Mail's head of infrastructure gave his account of their journey.

Speaking on the first day at the Cloud Computing Congress in London, Adrian Steel discussed some of the obstacles they encountered whilst negotiating the migration to Microsoft's BPOS service.

The Royal Mail is currently replacing its old Lotus Notes systems which provide email and collaboration applications to 30,000 users.

CSC has named Google as a key partner in its cloud computing strategy.

CSC is building on its relationship with Google which began last December when the systems inntegator rolled out Google Apps together with CSC's secure cloud services to a US government department.

Under the partnership CSC will offer Google's SaaS applications including Gmail, Google Calender and Google Docs.

CSC's cloud service will integrate and manage the overall solution for clients, and provide first line support.

Seemingly at odds with Larry Ellison's protestations, Oracle have launched a series of 1 day seminars offering to teach organisations how to take advantage of cloud computing.

Inviting IT professionals to "..break through the haze around cloud computing" the events are being staged around the world.

Cloud computing is THE buzzword in the IT industry at the moment. Promising faster system implementation, flexible pricing, no hardware or software - even lower energy costs. It seems too good to be true.

CODA Group announces that it has completed a successful beta programme for CODA 2go, and is offering a free 30 day online trial and demo at http://www.coda2go.com/freetrial

CODA 2go is the first international SaaS accounting system developed on salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. The service is integrated with Salesforce CRM applications and runs on salesforce.com’s global service infrastructure.

According to CIO magazine the Telegraph Media Group is moving the accounting for its media sales group to FinancialForce.com, a cloud based accounting service.

This is the Telegraph's second foray into the cloud. They moved from Microsoft Office and Exchange to Google Apps in 2008.

Invoices for the media sales group will be created by FinancialForce.com which will then update the Telegraph Group's main ERP systems, Agresso.

There are also plans to integrate FinancialForce.com with the Salesforce.com cloud platform used by the media sales department.

Research from Sterling Commerce suggests that over 75% of major European organisations are planning some form of cloud based B2B integration in 2010.

The research is based on interviews with 300 senior IT executives in France Germany and the UK.

Over 50% of respondents stated that cost reduction and predictability are the main drivers. However, they continue to be concerned with security issues around cloud computing.