Google take notice: Amazon Web Services is now pushing a “fully managed search service” for web or mobile app developers. CloudSearch promises to ease the provisioning headaches of web developers who need to build search into their commerce or other sites. Read more »
Meteor, a new real-time JavaScript framework targeting web app developers, is causing quite a stir on Twitter and Hacker News. One of the company’s biggest claims is that its open-source technology will enable hot code updates that won’t disturb app users. Read more »
Whatever you do, don’t compare IBM’s new PureSystems to Oracle Exadata or Cisco’s Unified Compute System. The company said it’s spent three years and $2 billion to get these systems just right for cloud computing and other workloads. Read more »
After years of beating around the bush, SAP declares that it is a database company and will take on the biggest kid on the block. It’s about time. It’s funding startups to build applications for Hana and Sybase. But beating Oracle won’t be easy. Read more »
For years, Oracle has wowed Wall Street with fat software margins: Large companies depending on Oracle relational databases pay what it takes to keep them up and running. It’s unclear whether Oracle can carry that dominance over into the Big Data era, however. Read more »
Hewlett-Packard is putting more of its chips on OpenStack as a key foundation for its upcoming public, private and hybrid cloud implementations. HP says its Converged Cloud will amalgamate existing HP technologies and OpenStack so applications can be managed uniformly across cloud types. Read more »
In a bid to build market share, Egynte is offering “paying” Box customers free storage for the rest of the year. Box claims 10 million customers, but it’s unclear how many of them actually pay for their service. Read more »
Rackspace customers can now use Cloudability’s service for free to keep tabs on their cloud computing costs. As business use of cloud computing grows, the need for such dashboards and metering services will rise as well. Read more »
Amazon’s popular S3 storage service shows no sign of slowing down. At the end of the first quarter, it was home to more than 905 billion objects, up from 762 billion for the previous quarter, according to the company’s Amazon Web Services blog. Read more »
Two major tech players — IBM and Red Hat — are ready to sign on the dotted line to join OpenStack, sources said. That should go a long way to ease the pain of Citrix’s decision to set up CloudStack as an OpenStack rival. Read more »
Mark Ayzenshtat, once a top Google engineer and the co-founder of TellApart, is joining Evernote to lead that company’s data product push. Evernote which makes it easy for users to collect and store notes, video, audio, is about to launch an enterprise push. Read more »
Now that at least some of the smoke has cleared from the blockbuster news that Citrix is putting its CloudStack technology into the Apache process to compete with former partner OpenStack, here are 5 takeaways emerging from the latest cloud kerfuffle. Read more »
Jonathan Heiliger, Northbridge Venture’s newest general partner will be all about infrastructure, just as he was when he helped scale up Facebook’s foundation to meet the needs of 800 million users. Given his super-star status, Heiliger’s hire is a coup for Northbridge. Read more »
OwnCloud 2012 service lets IT pros move and manage corporate data in their cloud of choice while giving end users a “Dropbox-like” experience, according to OwnCloud CEO Markus Rex. The software supports WIndows, Linux and Mac desktops and iOS and Android mobile devices. Read more »
The fact that perennial PC power Dell is buying Wyse Technologies for its thin client and desktop virtualization smarts shows just how much the power equation has shifted from low-margin PCs to cloud computing and other services in recent years. Read more »
A new Gartner list of cloud computing trends shows how nervous the burgeoning use of cloud makes IT departments, which traditionally controlled what applications and data ran and on what devices. That’s all changed and now IT has to change too. Read more »
You’d think at this stage of the game, most computer users would be savvy enough to have a data backup plan in place. But you’d be wrong. That’s why every storage, disaster recovery, backup vendor on the planet has glommed onto World Backup Day. Read more »
Software developers in search of a platform still wonder whether Google is really serious about Google AppEngine. Google’s Greg D’alesandre insists that Google — up to and including CEO Larry Page — is all-in with GAE Read more »
At this stage, most companies know some of the benefits of cloud computing. But many still aren’t sure what applications and data should make the trip first. That’s why Rackspace and other cloud providers are providing more consultative services and lining up systems integrators. Read more »
Google under CEO Larry Page will focus on easy, intuitive user experience, according to VP Marissa Mayer. Taking her at her word, could the company please, please get to work on its productivity applications and really fix Google Docs and Gmail? Read more »
For anyone interested in cloud computing, Adrian Cockroft’s recent presentation on how Netflix uses a combo of Amazon Web Services and its own home-grown PaaS is a must read. Cockroft is director of cloud architecture systems for Netflix, the giant streaming media company. Read more »
The storage wars continue with Box calling in the cavalry. The business-oriented cloud storage vendor aggregated 30-plus applications to be accessed from mobile devices and used with Box’s flagship service. But Box is not alone — there are dozens of rivals in the fight. Read more »
Big data must really be big to get its own White House-sanctioned research and development initiative. The White House Office of Science and Technology Policy will host a live webcast Thursday to outline how the government can “help big data” efforts. Read more »
Basho, a startup that’s already jumped into the NoSQL database deep end, just released cloud-based storage services built on that NoSQL foundation. Expect the competition to be fierce: RiakCS joins a huge pool of cloud storage offerings from everyone from Amazon to Zettanet. Read more »
Programmers like to visit Facebook, but they don’t want to live and work there, according to an informal poll posted to Hacker News. Respondents said they’re more likely to turn to Github, Twitter or Google+ to keep abreast of what’s going on in their field. Read more »
A new survey of 600 large companies by Tata Consultancy Services shows that potential cost savings of a cloud computing move isn’t the primary motivation for a migration. Most companies simply want to standardize all of their applications and processes across their businesses. Read more »
Morphlab’s latest mCloud uses uses all solid-state disks while also claiming Amazon Web Services-like pricing. The company’s newest offering, which is part of a partnership with Dell, targets service providers that want to add private cloud computing capabilities that interoperate with AWS as needed. Read more »
Configuration management player Opscode nets $19.5 million in new Series C funding led by Ignition Partners and names Ignition’s John Connors, former Microsoft CFO, to the board. With its cash infusion, Opscode hopes to build its engineering staff and enterprise business. Read more »
Amazon’s Eucalyptus deal, which gives it a better hybrid cloud story and solidifies the dominance of the AWS API, plus the ever-growing AWS feature set, aren’t necessarily all good news to PaaS and other partners that run their services on Amazon infrastructure. Read more »
Two star hires and a well-reviewed phone-and-tablet operating system do not necessarily remake a company, but they do ease the perception — prevalent in recent years — that Microsoft is on its last legs. Could the once-dominant software giant be on the comeback trail? Read more »
Machine-generated data, the non-intelligible zeros and ones that are generated by sensors and other devices, is no longer just for geeks. While it looks like gibberish forward-thinking consumers are already pressing that “gibberish” data into service, according to speakers at Structure: Data 2012. Read more »
Pivotal Labs will keep on doing what it does best after EMC’s acquisition, according to Pivotal CEO Rob Mee. There has been concern over Pivotal’s future as part of the EMC behemoth, which Rob Mee did his best to alleviate at Structure: Data 2012. Read more »
Businesses understand now that big data can help them wring revenue out of once-unproductive assets. But that just fuels an exploding demand for bigger, faster, and more precise big data applications, experts speaking at Structure:Data say. Read more »
Raghu Ramakrishnan, who was the top scientist for several of Yahoo’s key technology efforts, is now a technical fellow with Microsoft’s server and tools unit. This is the latest sign that Yahoo is struggling to retain key technologists. Read more »
When it comes to moving massive files between storage clouds, performance depends — a lot — on what clouds you use, according to new research. For it’s bulk data migration report Nasuni repeatedly transferred 12 TB of data between Amazon S3, Rackspace and Microsoft Windows Azure. Read more »
More businesses are putting at least some data in the cloud and a growing pack of vendors is fighting for that business. The latest entry is Egnyte’s updated hybrid cloud offering which supports up to 10B files and 10,000 concurrent users per account. Read more »
Last April, Microsoft promised an Azure-based ERP product. Fast forward a year, it’s still not here, but the company said Dynamics NAV 2013 for Azure will go to beta in May and be broadly available by year’s end — as will Dynamics GP 2013. Read more »
It seems like every cloud storage company really, really want to be the Dropbox of the enterprise when it grows up. It’ s easy to see why. Dropbox, which now claims 50 million users, is the sweetheart of the cloud storage, file-share-and-sync world. Read more »
David Girouard, who led Google’s push into enterprise applications, is leaving the company for a startup called Upstart.com. An eight-year veteran with the search giant, Girouard led Google’s push to take on Microsoft in desktop applications and email. Girouard posted the news to Google+ Friday. Read more »
Allan Thorvaldsen, a serial entrepreneur who co-founded and sold his third startup, Softscan, to Symantec in 2009, is bringing his latest venture from Denmark to San Francisco. At least parts of it. His engineering team will remain in Europe. Read more »
