Since the concept of “private cloud” was introduced, there have been efforts by certain people to prove it “wrong” or show that it doesn’t make sense when compared with the public cloud. This seems like a silly crusade — both provide tremendous value. Read more »
Solar rooftops only work in specific environments — an area with enough sun, or a roof with the right tilt — and a company called Geostellar is using big data tools to help its solar installer customers deliver more solar in places where it actually makes economic sense. Read more »
Earlier this week, cloud provider GoGrid announced that founder and original CEO John Keagy is leaving that post and transitioning into a new role, a decision Keagy told me this morning is the result of the company growing too fast. Read more »
It’s well known that the cloud has its vulnerabilities and difficulty achieving compliance, until now. FireHost has announced their Secure Cloud Servers. The world’s first secure, PCI 2.0 compliant public cloud hosting solution, built from the ground up with a no compromise attitude. Read more »
LawPivot, a Google Ventures-funded legal Q&A startup targeting small companies, is broadening its reach by becoming part of Microsoft’s BizSpark program. As LawPivot continues to grow, it could help lead a movement toward true Knowledge as a Service. Read more »
Apple has to do more than just upgrade MobileMe or match its competitors to provide a cloud offering that really catches fire with consumers on Monday. I talked with the CTO of a cloud management company to see just how far iCloud needs to go. Read more »
VirtualWorks, a Boca-Raton, Fla.-based startup from Citrix Systems founder Ed Iacobucci, has raised $8.5 million from Florida’s New World Angels investment group to tackle the problem of corporate data dispersed across servers, devices and clouds. It could also help with data portability between clouds. Read more »
Big data startup MapR is now an official corporate contributor to the Apache Hadoop project, a somewhat interesting turn of affairs given its corporate mission to lure users away from Apache’s Hadoop Distributed File System. However, other companies commercializing Hadoop shoud follow its lead. Read more »
Are you an early stage company looking to get the most bang for your buck at Structure 2011? GigaOM has a great deal for you. The Structure Startup Bundle includes tickets, research subscriptions, a pitch and a lot more for a flat, affordable fee. Read more »
NYSE Technologies is rolling out a cloud platform for financial services firms that lets them provision infrastructure and access the suite NYSE Technologies trading services and market data. The cloud is built using a variety of VMware tools, as well as EMC storage products. Read more »
Will utility customers across the U.S. be legally entitled to their own energy usage data? We’ve already seen how California is planning to tackle that tricky subject, and a Senate bill announced last week would bring the same issues to a national stage. Read more »
Facebook today published an interesting visualization of just how complex its codebase is. Actually, the visualization is part of an application within the company, but it gets the point across: Making code changes is no small feat when every module is dependent on so many others. Read more »
The new trend in cloud computing appears to be app-store-like marketplaces where software vendors and infrastructure experts can share their operational know-how. Cloud-computing management platform RightScale became the latest to hop on the trend today with its MultiCloud Marketplace. Read more »
Platform-as-a-Service pioneer Heroku, now part of the Salesforce.com cloud empire, has released a new version that expands programming support beyond its Ruby roots and gives developers more control and insight than previously available. Among the new features is full support for the Node.js framework. Read more »
It’s well known that the cloud has its vulnerabilities and difficulty achieving compliance, until now. FireHost has announced their Secure Cloud Servers. The world’s first secure, PCI 2.0 compliant public cloud hosting solution, built from the ground up with a no compromise attitude. Read more »
After years of hype, the IT industry finally had a rude awakening this spring that reminded us that cloud computing infrastructures are vulnerable to the same genetic IT flaw that plagues traditional data center operations: Everything fails sooner or later. Here’s how to build around that. Read more »
GoGrid CEO John Keagy wrote on his blog yesterday that when it comes cloud computing, things such as cheap hydroelectric power and massive-scale data centers are overrated. His theory doesn’t make sense for every cloud provider, but he does make some good points. Read more »
Apple’s hard work winning over record labels may well be rewarded. A new report says that Apple’s upcoming cloud music service will offer the ability to scan your hard drive, and then mirror your music collection on its own servers with better versions of some tracks. Read more »
The dream of open cloud computing took a couple of small steps forward in the past 24 hours with Apache promoting the Libcloud project to top-level status and with Microsoft releasing a new software development kit for PHP applications on its Windows Azure platform. Read more »
The global economy continues to face uncertainty, but despite this, many technology companies have cash on hand and are opting to spend it on mergers and acquisitions. Here we examine some likely strategies from five different companies: IBM, Oracle, HP, Cisco and Hewlett-Packard. Read more »
Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup ScaleXtreme’s cloud-based server management service is now available for early access users. We covered the company in February when the final product was still being built, but it has come a long way since then. Read more »
It’s well known that the cloud has its vulnerabilities and difficulty achieving compliance, until now. FireHost has announced their Secure Cloud Servers. The world’s first secure, PCI 2.0 compliant public cloud hosting solution, built from the ground up with a no compromise attitude. Read more »
Citrix today announced the first commercial distribution of the open source OpenStack cloud-computing software, which Citrix ix calling Project Olympus. It’s a bold move to announce an OpenStack distribution so early into the project’s existence, but Citrix must to something to combat bitter rival VMware. Read more »
One of the underlying theme’s of this year’s Structure conference is how cloud computing has matured to the point that we’re beyond arguing over whether it’s a good idea and into how to best implement it. This year’s LaunchPad finalists underscore the cloud’s new reality. Read more »
Fyels just launched a new service for file sharing through Twitter, and it comes with almost no strings attached: The service offers unlimited, free and ad-free storage, and files can be as large as 9 GB each. Almost sounds to good to be true, doesn’t it? Read more »
While Google has been at the forefront of cutting-edge green data center technology, with experimental projects like its seawater-cooled data center, Google’s big message at its second data center efficiency summit: There’s no magic involved with greener data centers. Read more »
San Jose, Calif.-based storage startup MapR, which provides a high-performance alternative for the Hadoop Distributed File System, will serve as the storage component for EMC’s forthcoming Greenplum HD Enterprise Edition Hadoop distribution. Cloudera announced an HDFS partnership of its own with compression expert RainStor. Read more »
Last week, we announced the Structure 50, a list of companies that are influencing how the cloud and infrastructure evolves. In a few weeks, you can meet and hear about these companies at Structure 2011. Read more »
Server monitoring startup ServerDensity will launch an app store for plugins to its popular cloud-based service. Like many SaaS startups, ServerDensity provides a collection of core components, but is hoping to rely on its user community to address the longtail needs of certain customer segments. Read more »
Platform-as-a-Service startup DotCloud is acquiring fellow startup DuoStack in an attempt to gird itself for a fight that’s likely to leave some casualties in the years to come. DotCloud and DuoStack are making a smart move to ensure their mutual survival while combining their innovative capabilities. Read more »
It’s well known that the cloud has its vulnerabilities and difficulty achieving compliance, until now. FireHost has announced their Secure Cloud Servers. The world’s first secure, PCI 2.0 compliant public cloud hosting solution, built from the ground up with a no compromise attitude. Read more »
Server vendor and services provider Fujitsu is bringing its global cloud computing platform to North America beginning May 31. The offering will be an Infrastructure-as-a-Service cloud complete with computing, storage and networking delivered via a self-service portal. Read more »
Google plans to start serving live traffic with its 100-percent seawater-cooled data center in the fall of this year, according to Google’s Joe Kava. Google will be hosting its second Data Center Efficiency Summit in Zurich, Switzerland on Tuesday. Read more »
German software vendor Software AG has bought Java-performance expert Terracotta with the goal of creating a cloud application platform to rival those from Software AG competitors such as Oracle, VMware and IBM. Terracotta has built a portfolio of open-source products over the past several years. Read more »
Rackspace has added virtual desktops to its collection of cloud services, a move that could prove very lucrative as the worlds of cloud computing and next-generation mobile devices converge. The new offering, called Hosted Virtual Desktop, pairs Citrix’s XenApp and XenDesktop products with Rackspace infrastructure. Read more »
Persuading consumers to pay for solar is a tough challenge. A solar electric system commands the cost of a new car but, unlike a car, it isn’t necessary. Solmentum, a more recent entrant, says it’s found a more efficient approach to reeling in customers. Read more »
As a rule of thumb, systems can grow ten times under their current architecture or paradigm, and then they must be re-architected. This 10X effect causes old technologies to become obsolete, new ones to emerge and underlies the massive shift to cloud computing. Read more »
IBM showed how it will ride the growth of Big Data to continue its momentum into the future. IBM announced a $100 million investment for future data analytics along with new services and software aimed at helping improve data analysis and new services for IT professionals. Read more »
Analyst firm Forrester published an assessment report on private cloud software this week, and Platform Computing, with its ISF software, appears to have the most-complete offering based on Forrester’s criteria. For now. Read more »
This week’s announcement of VMware’s Horizon App Manager is the latest addition to the company’s increasingly rich portfolio, but the company is not alone in wanting to strengthen its market position by expanding far beyond its original offering. Where, then, does that leave the competition? Read more »
