In an afternoon chat today at Green:Net, Google Green Energy Czar Bill Weihl explained that the future of data center efficiency will not come from improved data center designs themselves, but from more-efficient hardware and cleaner sources of energy. Read more »
Amazon Web Services claims to be making significant progress in restoring functionality to a large number of EC2, Elastic Block Storage and Relational Database Service instances that went down due to a “networking event” in the early-morning hours and affected a number of popular web sites. Read more »
Just like every vendor now has a cloud product and every company has a cloud strategy in place, big data efforts also will become ubiquitous over the next couple years, and the two very well might merge in the near future. Read more »
The most interesting part about yesterday’s announcement that Groupon is using the Cloudera Distribution of Hadoop wasn’t the actual use but, rather, the insight that Groupon is “building a world-class infrastructure” of which Hadoop will be a key part. But recruiting big-data-savvy talent is getting rather pricey. Read more »
RightScale and Zend are now offering a platform-as-a-service offering for developing PHP applications in the cloud. RightScale and Zend are targeting their joint RightScale Zend PHP Solution Pack for enterprise applications that require advanced development tools and high service levels. Read more »
Nutanix startup that sells an appliance combining computing and storage on the same nodes, has raised $13.2 million. The company is developing an appliance combining computing and storage on the same server nodes, a story that should resonate with customers concerned with scalability and performance. Read more »
Cirtas Systems, a maker of storage appliances, has hit hard times. The company, which raised $32.5 million, is now cutting a large percentage of its workforce and going back to the drawing board after a contentious board meeting that left it minus at least one investor. Read more »
Internet botnets wreak much of their havoc because of the sheer number of infected machines, and a startup security service called ipTrust is trying to fight fire with fire by using many terabytes worth of log files to combat these hordes of zombie PCs. Read more »
TechAmerica’s Commission on the Leadership Opportunity in U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (CLOUD2) officially kicked off its three-month mission today to advise the Obama administration on cloud computing best practices, and pushing cloud interoperability is high on the commission’s list of goals. Read more »
The latest OpenStack code release, dubbed Cactus, is now available and generally capable of running within enterprise data centers, but underlying the project’s progress are concerns over its true commitment to the open source ethos. Read more »
Cisco today took the covers off a new Allen, Texas, data center that will serve as the foundation for Cisco’s private cloud computing effort, which it calls Cisco Elastic IT Services. The new data center is designed for maximum efficiency and to withstand tornado winds. Read more »
Last week Iron Mountain shut down its cloud-based Virtual File Store service. Iron Mountain’s hard luck in cloud storage is surprising, but it might just be another instance of an old-school company trying its hand in a new market where it couldn’t compete. Read more »
After years of debate over the role of open source in cloud computing, the possibility of a top-to-bottom, open-source, infrastructure stack now looks very real, with much of the designs and code needed to build a cloud from the ground up available free of charge. Read more »
Cloudera released version 3.0 of its distribution of Apache Hadoop (CDH3) Tuesday. CDH3 is a big reason why, despite a recent spate of Hadoop-based big data products either on the market or about to be there, Cloudera says it isn’t sweating all the new competition. Read more »
Overlooked in the buzz following a Reuters report that acquisition talks between HP and enterprise software vendor Tibco have fizzled out is the possibility that the loss represents a setback in HP CEO Leo Apotheker’s grand cloud computing vision, as well as HP’s big data strategy. Read more »
With each passing day, cloud computing — and the platform-as-a-service space, in particular — looks a lot more like a large software vendor’s game than it does a space where plucky startups might actually be able to establish a presence and remain independent for the long run. Read more »
Startup video-encoding service Zencoder has raised $2 million for its cloud-based service that lets users get their videos ready for presentation and delivery via web or mobile apps. Investors in this round include firms such as Andreessen-Horowitz and Ignition Partners, and several prominent individuals. Read more »
Microsoft today accused Google of lying about its Google Apps for Government offering being certified for use by federal agencies, which is just the latest salvo in an ongoing war to be the premier provider in the lucrative market for cloud-based collaboration tools. Read more »
Cotendo is mixing the benefits of both cloud computing and content-delivery networks (CDN) in an attempt to boost performance and speed when delivering dynamic content to users. Cloudlet could be a boon for Cotendo in the cutthroat CDN market against Akamai and Limelight Networks. Read more »
Platform-as-a-Service star Heroku has grown up since Saleforce.com bought for $212 million in December, attracting the attention of some big names in systems integration an enterprise consulting through the Heroku Partner Program, including Accenture and Pivotal Labs. The traction helps validate Ruby, Heroku and PaaS. Read more »
According to a post on Bloomberg this morning, Microsoft plans to spend 90 percent, or $8.64 billion, of its $9.6 billion annual R&D budget on cloud computing, which begs the question of where that money will land within Microsoft’s very broad definition of cloud. Read more »
Facebook’s Open Compute Project has been characterized as revolutionary, a giant push that will propel server design into the future now, but what if it isn’t actually all that meaningful? What if it’s just a cool, but niche project that won’t catch on outside Facebook? Read more »
Two of Amazon Web Services’ most-unique features have finally crossed paths with news this morning that Spot Instances are now available for Cluster Compute Instances. Spot Instances have always been ideal for ad hoc batch-processing jobs, which often run atop on-premise grids or clusters. Read more »
Dell is undertaking a sweeping effort to improve its place in the cloud computing market with several new data centers, services and a converged infrastructure system to compete with Cisco’s Unified Computing System. It’s a pretty significant change of pace for Dell, although not necessarily surprising. Read more »
After years of talking about cloud computing but offering services that bore little resemblance to the public infrastructure-as-a-service clouds with which most people are familiar, IBM is finally offering a cloud that will compete with those from Amazon Web Services, Rackspace and other major cloud providers. Read more »
The flagship private-cloud software from Nimbula, a startup created by two of the driving forces behind Amazon EC2, is now available for purchase by the public. Nimbula Director promises to give users an Amazon EC2-like IaaS experience within their own data centers or in hybrid environments. Read more »
Despite an industry-wide push for better and more-complete big data strategies, it’s beginning to look like EMC and IBM will be the two technology vendors earning the most data-related dollars once the dust settles because they’ve embraced the new big data bundle while others have not. Read more »
Incapsula is trying to democratize web site security and performance by utilizing the distributed, yet centralized, nature of cloud computing. In some ways, its namesake product is the epitome of a cloud service because it utilizes both crowdsourcing and centralization to create the best-possible experience. Read more »
Unstructured database provider MarkLogic has a new CEO with big-business experience and plans to take fast-growing company public. MarkLogic is nowhere near the size of CEO Ken Bado’s former employer, Autodesk, but it does have a healthy business that belies its relative youth and NoSQL ties. Read more »
VMware officially entered the service provider market by taking over operations of the Mozy storage service from EMC. VMware CTO Steven Herrod announced the news on his blog today, writing that “VMware has hired the team and acquired assets behind EMC’s Mozy cloud-based data protection service.” Read more »
NoSQL vendor Couchbase is targeting developers using Mac OS X with a new version of its Membase Server and an upgraded Couchbase Server designed specifically for that platform. Mac is hardly the most popular choice among developers, but its popularity appears to be picking up. Read more »
Startup medical search company Apixio is trying to save lives by bringing machine-learning and natural-language-processing techniques to medical records, giving doctors a patient’s entire relevant medical history via a simple cloud-based search engine. The goal is to make information-sharing among medical providers far more intelligent. Read more »
A handful of new releases and partnerships this week — as well as a big award — illustrate just how versatile the data-processing tool Hadoop is and how widespread its use might become. Hadoop is becoming a more viable tool for everyone from business users to journalists. Read more »
Researchers at the University of Washington utilized the Cloudant NoSQL database as part of an experiment that determined radiation levels in Seattle as a result of the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster are “well below alarming limits” at that particular location. Read more »
According to a survey by AFCOM, cloud computing is on the rise among data center operators, more than doubling since last year and expected to reach 80-90 percent in the next five years. The survey also shows that energy efficiency is driving data center decisions. Read more »
Hardware rarely comes up in discussions about big data, save for those centered on data warehouse appliances. But the omission hardly means hardware is irrelevant. In fact, big gear might become a big deal as companies look to bolster the performance of their big data systems. Read more »
The NoSQL database space is little more crowded this morning, as Citrusleaf officially launched with its eponymous product, which promises users the best of both the relational and NoSQL worlds. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also announced a reported $2 million initial round of funding. Read more »
High-performance computing leader Platform Computing hopes to capitalize on the big data movement by spreading its wings beyond its flagship business of managing clusters and grids and into managing MapReduce environments, too. Platform has a solid foundation among leading businesses, especially in the financial services industry. Read more »
One of the statements that struck me most from Structure: Big Data was CA CTO Donald Ferguson’s notion that big data represents a “very promising” opportunity for startups, particularly those targeting specific target use cases. I think he’s right, particularly with regard to the latter part. Read more »
Amazon Web Services this morning announced dedicated EC2 instances for customers using AWS’s newly upgraded Virtual Private Cloud service. This is yet another example of AWS pushing the innovation envelope despite its customer lead, although Dedicated Instances are a bit pricier than some recent free tools. Read more »
