When the going gets tough, business will often cast their eyes on the next big thing to boost the bottomline.

The current hype in IT happens to be cloud computing, with nearly every player — telcos, data centre providers, software makers and IT consultants — jostling for a slice of the pie.

It almost seems like a gold rush, except we’re dealing with services powered by electrons that traverse fibre cables at the speed of light.

This week, web hosting companies, a segment of the IT industry whose margins are known to be razor-thin, gathered in Florida to hear about Parallel’s delivery platforms that promise to help them different themselves from the pack. …

If Parallel’s founder Serguei Beloussov gets his way, the technology landscape in 2022 will be dominated by mobile and social technologies, big data and the cloud.

People would interact through social networks in new ways, with 80 percent of Internet transactions taking place on ubiquitous smartphones. Mobile operators such as China Mobile may also drop per minute billing for voice calls, in favour of mobile data plans. …

According to Parallels’ SMB Cloud Insights report, SMBs will continue to lead the cloud computing wave, with small businesses three times more likely than large enterprises to choose cloud services over on-premise software. …

Symantec has discovered over a dozen apps with malicious code that could cede control of your smartphone to perpetrators.

In a recent blog post, the security company said the apps, which are hosted on the Android Market, can be used to propagate a “bot-like threat that can receive commands to carry out certain actions, as well as steal information from the device”. …

Amazon Web Services (AWS) has launched DynamoDB, a cloud database service designed to meet the growing needs of demanding Web-based applications.

DynamoDB will allow developers to launch new database tables and moderate their database capacity without downtime and performance overheads. All data is housed on solid state drives and replicated across multiple AWS availability zones to ensure high availability and durability of data. …

Enterprises using Equinix’s data centres in Singapore and Tokyo can now connect directly to Amazon’s public cloud service.

Through Amazon Web Services (AWS) Direct Connect, Equinix customers in the Asia-Pacific region can establish private network connections with Amazon’s cloud infrastructure, paying only for the network ports used and data transferred out of AWS. Data transfer into AWS is free.

Equinix, a global data centre operator, said the connectivity option will help companies cut network costs into and out of AWS, by lowering bandwidth commitments to ISPs …

eBay has partnered with SingPost and the United States Postal Service (USPS) to offer a new shipping service for eBay Singapore sellers.

Dubbed ePAC, the service lets sellers track the delivery of lightweight goods sold to American customers within six to eight working days. This service is part of eBay and SingPost’s ongoing efforts to boost trade from Singapore to the United States. …

If IBM researchers get their way, remembering passwords will soon be a thing of the past. Big Blue has recently published a video of what it thinks will become reality by 2016, such as mind reading and generating electricity from human activities, among other predictions: …

SingTel is upping download speeds on the go on December 22, with a new mobile broadband service that promises up to 75Mbps with the new LTE or long term evolution technology.

The new service will be available at Singapore’s central financial district at launch, along with other high traffic areas like Orchard, City Hall, Marina Bay and Novena. By end 2012, SingTel expects to provide coverage for 80 per cent of users, and 95 per cent by end 2013.

Rival telco M1 had launched a limited LTE service earlier this year, but it offered this only to business customers. SingTel’s service is open to consumers as well. …

Google started the building of a new data centre in Singapore on Thursday, a US$120 million facility which represents the Internet giant’s expansion of operations in the region.

“More users are coming online in Asia than anywhere else in the world,” said Julian Persaud, head of Google Southeast Asia at a launch event. Projected to go online in 2013, the new data centre promises to serve this growing demand by delivering fast and reliable access to Google services.

In addition, the data centre will boost the local job market in a small way, as Google is hiring a small team of full-time staff as well as a number of contractors in a variety of roles, including computer technicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, and catering and security staff. …