We’ve been expecting Microsoft to offer a new Windows 8 preview for some time now, so you can imagine how excited we were when Microsoft revealed earlier today that it will offer a Windows 8 “consumer preview” later this month on Leap Year Day (February 29).

Ask Jay Atkinson, CEO, AISN, what has attributed to record sales growth at his company in the last year, and he would likely respond: “The demand for cloud computing.” Cloud computing demand is driving unprecedented sales growth at AIS Network, compelling the hosting pioneer to double the size of its public cloud months earlier than anticipated. AISN is a rapidly growing leader in enterprise-class cloud hosting solutions.

Today, global cloud computing company, CloudShare, released news that their customers have provisioned 150,000 SharePoint servers since March 2011, when CloudShare released their CloudShare ProPlus solution for software developers. The CloudShare team is both pleased with and impressed by the influx of new clients. “CloudShare’s phenomenal growth in the SharePoint developer community is great proof for how important the cloud has become for developers and testers of software. The cloud is irreversible; the genie is out of the bottle,” said Guri Stark, CEO of CloudShare in a press release today.

N-able Technologies has furthered its already successful alliance with NTRglobal, by announcing this morning its decision to integrate NTR Cloud into its N-central RMM platform. Through its cloud-based API, NTRglobal enables ISVs to seamlessly integrate its secure remote connectivity technology. By leveraging this flexible interface, N-central now includes NTR Cloud unattended remote control functionality as part of its overall service offering. Available now, the powerful remote desktop module allows support technicians to securely connect to and manage a wide range of remote devices in seconds. It is also proven to reduce support queues, optimize workflow and boost time to repair by 50 percent or more by enabling faster, more effective incident resolution.

We already have Facebook. And for those of us who prefer plain text and simplicity, we have Twitter. There's Picasa and Flickr for folks who style themselves amateur photographers, and YouTube for sharing videos. Oh, and let's not forget LinkedIn either for those professionals among us. With all of these options, is there really a need for yet another social media Website?

Today, leading private cloud hosting company, ScaleMatrix, announced the release of the ScaleMatrix Channel Partner Program, an offering designed to encourage all variety of company to adopt high density hosting, enterprise-level data security and private Cloud to their current service menus. Director of Channel Sales and Strategic Relations for ScaleMatrix, David Shepard, is excited about this latest program. “The ScaleMatrix Partner Program will drive innovation and deliver end-to-end cloud and data security solutions, while helping to define the industry as it expands to include new partners and product solutions,” he said in a press release earlier today.

Symantec yesterday announced that it is delivering a new approach to data protection and introducing NetBackup 7.5 with new options, including NetBackup Accelerator to speed backups by up to 100 times while delivering “Instant Full Recovery” capability, NetBackup Replication Director to integrate NetApp Snapshots with backup, and NetBackup Search to allow simple search and recovery of backup data and selective legal hold. NetBackup is available as a single integrated appliance for the data center, remote office and virtual environments, providing customers with simplified deployment and operations. -- Written by Kenneth Corbin