How much does it cost to migrate a government agency to the cloud?

This week, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration of the U.S. Department of Commerce announced it is migrating its 25,000 e-mail inboxes to a cloud-based solution which will integrate calendar, contact, and collaboration tools. The total cost of the migration will be $11.5 million for three-years, contracted to Earth Resource Technologies, a Maryland-based science and innovation contractor who as well works with NASA, USAID, and the Army Corps of Engineers.

"The cost to the taxpayer will be 50 percent less than an in-house solution," said NOAA Chief Information Officer Joseph Klimavicz. "As the new standard, cloud computing has great value allowing us to ramp up quickly, avoid redundancy and provide new services and capabilities to large groups of clients."

The second time in less than 48 days

For the second time in less than 48 days, IDC has forecast that Windows Phone will be No. 2 in smartphone operating systems in 2015 -- all based on the Nokia deal, which hasn't produced even one WP7 handset.

Joe Wilcox offers his initial reaction to the first mass-market tablet running Android 3.1. Is it as good out of the box as iPad 2?

Classification as pointless as the feature itself

It may seem like a classification as pointless as the feature itself, however I have come to regard the presence of a kickstand as an immediate indicator that a smartphone is too big to carry in my trouser pocket.