Companies will spend more on cloud-based services in the next few years, but the growth for one of the biggest technologies to greet the workplace in recent years is expected to slow down, according to research firm Analysys Mason.

It predicted that the global market for such services will grow from US$18.3 billion in 2012 to US$31.9 billion in 2017. However, the 17 per cent year-on-year growth rate it expects for 2013 is likely to be lower in the next five years, even as the market expands.

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The Asia-Pacific IT industry is entering a ‘nexus of forces’, where the integration of big data, cloud computing, social collaboration and mobile technologies will drive innovation and new business models in the region, according to Gartner.

During a keynote address at Gartner’s Symposium/ITxpo in Australia this week. Gartner senior vice president and global head of research Peter Sondergaard noted that as the global economy improves in 2013, Asia will remain as one of the bright spots of the global IT market. …

“The future of everything is mobile and social,” said Colin Miles, Chairman of MEF Asia and Vice President of InternetQ.

Speaking last Thursday at UNWIRED 2012, Singapore’s only independent mobile and wireless conference, Miles’ enthusiasm in the cloud was infectious. He detailed the ways in which the metaphor “cloud’ has made it easier for the layman to understand the concept of delivering software and services over the network.

In a lively discussion with representatives from HP, Google, and the Singapore Industrial Automation Association (SIAA), the panel also touched on how companies should not jump on the social cloud bandwagon just because they can. Instead, each available option should be duly considered and only the most appropriate implemented. …

Microsoft today opened a S$23 million technology centre in Singapore to enable companies to test out new technologies such as cloud computing and unified communications before rolling them out at their own premises.

The first in Southeast Asia, the centre joins another 26 worldwide in showcasing and concept-proofing the software giant’s new offerings to corporate customers.  …

The Asia-Pacific region appears more keen to adopt cloud computing than Europe and the United States, according to a survey of industry leaders revealed by HP today.

Fifty-eight per cent of chief information and technology officers in China have plans to move to cloud computing, while 56 per cent of these key decision makers are keen on the new technology in India, it said. This compares with 34 per cent in the United States and 32 per cent in Europe, according to HP executives at a regional media event in Singapore.

The reason: Asia has fewer legacy systems and thus can move faster without worrying about junking old investments. …

Amidst the brouhaha surrounding the spat between Oracle and Salesforce at Oracle Openworld this year, Oracle unveiled a public cloud service to strengthen its position in the SaaS market. The world’s second largest software maker also announced significant products that would help companies make better business decisions by making sense of the growing avalanche of corporate data. Here’s a rundown of the key announcements and what they mean for enterprises: …

The growing rivalry between Salesforce.com and Oracle reached a pinnacle this week when Oracle reportedly canned a Salesforce.com keynote at its annual confab.

In a statement today, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said Oracle cancelled his Wednesday morning address (U.S. time) at Oracle OpenWorld 2011 held in San Franciso’s Moscone Center. Instead, Benioff will organize a separate session at a nearby restaurant. …

Salesforce has unveiled a slew of new tools and services to lure developers to its cloud-based platform.

Leading the pack is Database.com, a cloud database that can power apps built for Android and iOS-based devices. These apps can be hosted on Salesforce’s own Force.com or other cloud-based platforms including Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure.

Database.com can also be used to run social media applications using a social data model that holds and manages data for social feeds, user profiles and status updates. Developers can specify followers for database records or request data feeds to display real-time data updates through social APIs. …

Salesforce.com is deepening the social connections that underpin its suite of cloud computing products.

Starting this October, its customer relationship management (CRM) customers will be able to see social profiles of customers with data mined from social networks such as Twitter and LinkedIn.

Chatter, Salesforce’s enterprise social networking tool available for almost two years now, will also support instant messaging for the first time.

This means Chatter users will soon be able to chat with fellow workers, share screens, collaborate with partners and approve requests directly from their Chatter feeds. …

Yesterday was not a regular day for the Internet. When I tried to check my tweets in the morning, I found that Hootsuite, the browser-based social media management tool, was down. Oh well, I thought, maybe Reddit will get me some interesting links instead. But to my horror, it was suffering from an outage as well.

Then came the straw that broke the camel’s back and convinced me that something, somewhere is terribly wrong: I couldn’t check in to anywhere on Foursquare!

It turned out to be an issue with Amazon EC2, a cheap and scalable cloud service that many, many websites and services depend on for their hosting. On top of the above-mentioned Hootsuite, Reddit, and Foursquare, other sites affected include Q&A site Quora, location-based mobile game SCVNGR, iPad music app Discovr, social media monitoring app Wildfire, and more. …