Infrastructure

Cloud storage startup Nasuni entered public beta today, bringing with it a new, but familiar, approach to storing primary data: It sells software that looks and acts like a traditional file system but stores data in cloud offerings from Amazon, Rackspace, Nirvanix and Iron Mountain. Read More »

Needed: Infrastructure to Make the Web Personal

The web is becoming more dynamic, context-aware and personalized by the day, and the amount of information consumed by each person is increasing exponentially. But software infrastructure is not keeping pace. We need to develop data processing architectures that go beyond technologies like memcache, MapReduce, NoSQL. Read More »

This week Microsoft finally launched its Azure cloud computing platform. The offering is distinct for a few reasons not directly connected to the platform, but more linked to Microsoft as a whole. Azure may well stand out and drive significant cloud revenues in 2010. Read More »

Even after Microsoft reported record earnings a few days ago, one of its former executives has effectively written the company’s obituary in a NYT op-ed piece. Is Microsoft not savable? Here are three surprise scenarios that could have a lot of upside for the company. Read More »

Cisco vs. All Comers

Cisco has been dominant in all types of networking devices for more than two decades, so its move into adjacent markets in order to expand its footprint beyond networking made perfect sense. What’s surprising is how flat-footed and weak the counterattacks from the competition have been. Read More »

Microsoft on Tuesday opened up its Azure cloud computing platform, after more than a year of development. Derrick Harris takes an in-depth look at Azure over at GigaOM Pro to see what exactly Microsoft is offering and how it compares with other clouds. Read More »

Whether it fails or succeeds, Google’s upcoming Chrome OS will be one of the biggest technology stories of this year. As predictions of its promise in tablets and elsewhere proliferate, though, the hurdles that this operating system faces become clearer. Read More »

More Must Reads

With HipHop, Facebook Gives PHP a Turbo Charge

Facebook has come up with HipHop for PHP, a source code transformer that programmatically transforms PHP into highly optimized C++ and uses g++ to compile it. It was developed to boost the performance of Facebook and lower hardware costs and is now being open sourced. Read More »

Obama Budget Spells Benefits for the Cloud

In President Obama’s budget announced yesterday, the feds may have opened a window of opportunity for cloud computing companies large and small hoping for some government largess. The federal budget hopes to increase spending on IT in 2011 by 1.2 percent to $79.4 billion. Read More »

Amazon CTO Werner Vogels on Amazon’s Web Services, Startups and Innovation

At the DLD Conference in Munich, over a cup of tea, when I sat down for a casual chat with Werner Vogels, chief technology officer of Amazon, I asked him about the company’s role as a catalyst of innovation. Here are some of his thoughts. Read More »

Microsoft Finally Opens Azure for Business

Microsoft today finally opened up its cloud platform, Windows Azure, for business. Today the rubber meets the road — and we will soon see how Azure does against larger players such as Amazon and Rackspace, as well as how it affects Microsoft’s margins and other businesses. Read More »

Where Are the Network Virtual Appliances?

While servers and applications have gone virtual, migrating into cloud computing environments, networking technologies remain bound to physical hardware and data center racks. As server virtualization moves into the enterprise and cloud data centers, when will networking follow with virtual appliances? Read More »

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