Behind Your Business

April 13, 2012 -- A US judge told the lawyers for Megaupload, the US Department of Justice, web hosting provider Carpathia Hosting, and other parties involved in a dispute over the maintainence of the 1,100 servers previously used by Megaupload, that they should discuss the situation and arrive at a resolution.

March 29, 2012 -- The US Financial Accounting Standards Board and International Accounting Standards Board has proposed new accounting rules that will automatically group IT equipment as a capital asset for customers regardless of where it is physically located.

March 26, 2012 -- Web hosting company Carpathia Hosting, which continues to host Megaupload's frozen content even after the file-sharing website was shut down, is asking for the US government's help to pay its unpaid bills.

February 10, 2012 -- An Iowa state economic development official said Thursday that the state is competing with Nebraska for a $1.2 billion data center project dubbed "Project Edge". The company hopes to break ground in May, with an initial first phase investment of $500 million.

(WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — CRM and cloud solutions provider Salesforce announced on Monday it has named former US chief information officer Vivek Kundra its executive vice president of emerging markets.

When he joined the Obama administration in March of 2009  Kundra became the first chief information officer of the United States.

During his more than two years as CIO, Kundra managed more than $80 billion in technology investments and served as an evangelist for cloud computing in the public sector.

Kundra also authored the “Cloud-First policy,” which serves as a guide for government IT organizations around the world to boost efficiencies with less resources.

Seventy-one percent of more than 400 federal agency employees on the Cloud-First policy said they felt rushed to migrate to the cloud, according to a recent study by SafeGov.org and the Ponemon Institute.

He led the Data.gov initiative which was designed todemocratize data access, as well as initiated the Federal IT Dashboard, which assesses the cost of major government IT projects.

Kundra eventually resigned from his position as CIO in June 2011 for a fellowship role at Harvard University, which was a joint program with the Kennedy School and the Berkman Center for Internet and Society.

“Vivek Kundra is an amazing technology visionary who opened the eyes of millions to the transformational power of cloud computing,” said Salesforce CEO and founder Marc Benioff. “His disruptive leadership is just what the industry needs to accelerate the social enterprise.”

Before he served as US CIO, Kundra was the chief technology officer for the District of Columbia and as the assistant secretary of commerce and technology for the Commonwealth of Virginia.