A screen shot of the front page of Hosting.com’s 2011 Cloud Industry Trends and Best Practices Report (WEB HOST INDUSTRY REVIEW) — Web hosting provider Hosting.com ( www.hosting.com ) announced on Wednesday it has released its 2011 Cloud Industry Trends and Best Practices Report.  The report is based on data Hosting.com collected over a five-week period. The survey targeted company executives and IT professionals, which attracted nearly 600 individual responses. The 2011 Cloud Industry Trends and Best Practices Report introduces significant insight into the cloud marketplace – including consumer expectations of Cloud Computing, intended uses, obstacles, and expected timeframes for implementing cloud-based solutions.  Some of the findings from the report include 44 percent said cloud computing was an executive priority, BCDR services were cited a thes top reason for investment in the cloud and up to 5 times growth in the next 18 months, over 30 percent reported that their cloud services provider must provide integration with their existing services, and 80 percent said they are likely to consider cloud servers to replace physical servers.

Microsoft cites no-email crawl pledge Microsoft has a big responsibility in maintaining users’ data as part of the company’s hosted applications such as Hotmail, said Tim O’Brien, Microsoft senior director of platform strategy, on Tuesday. But unlike Google, Microsoft pledges not to scan users’ email as a way to tailor advertising, he said. With cloud applications, a level of trust now exists between provider and customer that is “almost unprecedented,” O’Brien stressed at the SaaSCon 2010 conference in Santa Clara, Calif.