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 »
Seagate today agreed to buy Samsung’s hard drive business in a deal valued at $1.375 billion in a deal that highlights how broadband adoption, the cloud and mobility are changing the dynamics of the storage industry. 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 »
There’s a significant opportunity for companies that are looking to connect the often siloed systems that manage the energy used to run servers as well as the gear used to cool, ventilate, back up and convert power for data centers. Read more »
The angels who wrote the first check to Google were also the first backers of startup IO Turbine, which comes out of stealth mode today with details about its fundraising, its founders and its planned product for speeding up I/O bottlenecks on virtualized servers. 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 »
Microsoft has launched the public beta of Office 365, an online suite of collaboration and office tools aimed at small businesses. It includes access to Office Web Apps, plus access to hosted versions of SharePoint Online, Exchange Online, and Lync Online. Read more »
Turns out Facebook has been eying clean power after all for its new data center. Well, a very small amount of solar compared to the sizable power needs of its data center. According to Data Center Knowledge, Facebook has built a 100 kW solar panel array. 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 »
Encoding.com is introducing a new, faster way for its customers to process files into as many formats as they need. Its “Instant Encoding” feature cuts the time it takes to transcode large files in half, giving it an edge against other cloud encoding firms. 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 »
Cloud computing, a surge of smartphone growth and increased wireless connectivity have created an ideal environment for the introduction of the media tablet — a consumer-grade device best suited to leisure-based computing activities such as gaming and social networking. This report forecasts the media tablet market, which is expected to grow at a 54 percent compound annual growth rate over the next five years. We forecast revenues and regional growth, including China’s growing importance in the market, and provide a competitive analysis of tablets from Cisco, Research in Motion, Apple, HP and others. Additional companies in this report include Samsung, Dell, Microsoft and Motorola. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Data centers are becoming greener across the board, and the latest proof of this came from Facebook. Here’s a list of 10 innovations from entrepreneurs and engineers that are leading to more energy efficient, and less carbon intensive, data centers. Learn more at Green:Net 2011! Read more »
The usage of term “cloud” has been hijacked for marketing purposes, thanks to indiscriminate labeling of anything and everything on the Internet. Urs Hölzle, Google’s infrastructure czar tells us what the Cloud really is and what it is supposed to do. 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 »
VMware has entered the cloud game by offering an open-source package called Cloud Foundry, a platform as a service that should strike fear in the hearts of its compeitors, especially the likes of Salesforce.com, Microsoft and Rackspace. 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 »
Last week, Facebook opened to the world the details of its energy efficient data center in Prineville, Ore., complete with custom-built servers, power delivery and backup, and cooling system. What’s the mix-and-match potential? Read more »
We decided to rebuild our dashboard framework in server-side Javascript, using node.js. This decision was driven by a realization: the LAMP stack is dead. In the two decades since its birth, there have been fundamental shifts in the web’s make-up of content, protocols, servers, and clients. 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 »
The biggest deal about Facebook’s open compute project isn’t the project, it’s the wave of innovation this can bring forward at the systems level — which will affect everyone from the chipmakers to the giant systems vendors and data center operators. 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 »
Facebook has shared the details of its server and data center design, taking its commitment to openness to a new level for the industry by sharing its infrastructure secrets like it has shared its software code.And that data center? It has a PUE of 1.07. 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 »
Microsoft and Toyota are jointly investing $12 million in a bid to build a cloud-based platform that will connect cars, homes and the electrical smart grids. The joint venture will be run out of Toyota Media Services and will leverage Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud services. 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 »
Ever wondered how big data, smart grid and cloud computing will impact an average person? Now you can, thanks to Opower, which molds terabytes of data into delightful insights, shares them with many of us, hoping that we will do our bit as willing conservationists. Read more »
Cisco is in trouble. It screwed up, and John Chambers acknowledged as much in his memo to employees Monday, which was later published on the company’s blog. The company’s biggest problem is that it has strayed from its core competency, a focus on networking. 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 »
