SaaS leader Salesforce.com is growing so fast that the company is considering the possibility of building its own data centers within the next few years, Rich Miller reported at Data Center Knowledge. The company currently hosts about 3,000 servers across the globe. Read more »
Cloud provider Tier3 announced this morning that it has secured $8.5 million from Ignition Capital and Madrona Venture Group to fund its “enterprise platform-as-a-service” offering, a term that might not be entirely accurate, but that might actually be indicative of a forthcoming trend in cloud marketing. Read more »
Chinese telecommunications equipment vendor Huawei has plans to invade the enterprise IT market. A Deutsche Bank analyst expects the company to introduce a line of servers, low-end switches, security, VoIP and storage products designed for the enterprise before the end of this year. Read more »
Private cloud software startup Cloud.com announced that both Tata Communications and Logicworks have selected Cloud.com’s CloudStack software as the foundation of their IaaS offerings, suggesting that it’s still service providers that seem to be buying the most cloud computing software. Read more »
Fusion-io, which makes enterprise class solid state hard drives, filed to raise up to $150 million through an IPO. It rides three big trends: real-time data delivery, storing big data and greener data centers. The threat of an IPO also boosts the cost to acquire it. Read more »
NEC has delivered a new type of experimental switch to European research institutions based on OpenFlow packet routing. The goal of OpenFlow is to fundamentally re-architect the Internet in a way that allows networks to be more flexible even as more data goes over them. Read more »
VMware has expanded its cloud computing reach once again by acquiring WaveMaker, a startup focused on letting users build cloud applications without having to write code. It’s just the latest move by VMware to grow its platform business by bringing in all the developers it can. Read more »
The giants of the web are taking on the giants in the telecommunications industry when it comes to optical networking. Google and Facebook are unhappy with the way the optical gear makers are building their wares, citing a slow time frame for products and uncessary features. Read more »
Hot private-cloud startup Nimbula is getting in on the ecosystem act, announcing this morning a partner program currently comprised of Opscode, Puppet Labs, Scalr, enStratus and Cloud Cruiser. It’s more proof that it’s very difficult to go it alone in the cloud computing software space. Read more »
Rackspace is now offering official support services for the OpenStack cloud platform under the moniker of Rackspace Cloud Builders. Until now, companies wishing to deploy OpenStack-based cloud offerings had to either rely on community members for informal support or seek out third-party consultants. Read more »
NoSQL has been able to withstand the trappings of its newfound popularity and maintain a communal spirit, an observation proved once again by the NoSQL Tapes. But how long until they become like many open-source movements, united under the same banner but jockeying for position? Read more »
All the cool data centers are deploying solid state drives that use Flash memory as opposed to janky old hard drives, so why is Western Digital shelling out $4.3 billion to acquire the old-fashioned hard disk drive business of Hitatchi ? Read more »
OpSource stepped up its enterprise cloud push again today, bundling advanced networking and security capabilities into its public cloud offering free of charge. Giving away what once commanded a relatively high fee seems like a bold move, but it has everything to do with staying competitive. Read more »
A battle rages for the hearts, minds and wallets of cloud computing’s users. Public, hybrid and private clouds each deliver clear value for today’s enterprise customers, but it can’t be many more years before the public cloud’s ubiquity and economies of scale win over alternative models. Read more »
We’re in the midst of a computing implosion: a re-centralization of resources driven by virtualization, many-core CPUs, GPU computing, flash memory, and high-speed networking. We have a lot to watch over the next few years: what I like to call the coming of the Super Server. Read more »
It seems like when it rains for cloud storage startups, it pours, and this week was no exception. Egnyte closed a $10 million round, Scality closed a $7 million round, and RightScale chose Gluster to provide scale-out NAS within RightScale’s cloud management platform. Read more »
Although it has been around for more than 20 years, Objectivity thinks the advent of NoSQL and companies trying to emulate Twitter’s ability to determine relationships among disparate pieces of data via graphs might finally propel it into the database big time. Read more »
Facebook is working on a real-time analytics dashboard to let users determine which content is getting the most attention from visitors. As described in an educational session on Wednesday night in Facebook’s Seattle office, the service is built atop HBase and tracks about 100 metrics. Read more »
Rackspace is opening the OpenStack board to participation by a greater number of contributors. Issues arose after Rackspace bought Anso Labs last month, giving Rackspace an overwhelming majority of Project Oversight Committee seats, leading some to suggest Rackspace was making a play to have complete control. Read more »
Open source database vendor EnterpriseDB is taking the fight to database market leader Oracle via a survey showing that respondents generally don’t trust Oracle on prices, think Oracle is bad for Java and don’t really like Larry Ellison. Read more »
Data warehousing giant Teradata today agreed to acquire Aster Data, a data analytics provider, proving that it’s no longer enough to be able to store and access a lot of data quickly, one must also be able to analyze it quickly. But now, who’s left. Read more »
Canonical is on a quest to make Ubuntu the go-to server OS for cloud computing. If it succeeds, it will validate the stance that there is definite place for open source in cloud computing, and it’s at the OS and IaaS layers. Read more »
Does the future of energy-efficient, broadband-connected cities lie in the cloud? Cisco, IBM and Microsoft certainly seem to think so — and pilots they’re doing now could lead to the notion of green cloud cities of the future. Read more »
Macheen, a company trying to provide retailers and device makers with mobile broadband service, launched today and could possibly fill a much-needed niche as more and more people buy connected devices but don’t want to sign up for more data plans. Read more »
Infochimps is attempting to build a data market, and in doing so, the company is wading into some of the messiest and most unstructured data around, attempting to clean it up and put it up for sale. I talk to co-founder Flip Kromer about the challenges. Read more »
Hosting provider Peer1 the Map of the Internet. Unlike cute maps showing sites or personal viewpoints this map illustrates what ISP is connected to what Internet Exchange or university network across a vast array of networks stretching around the word. And it’s pretty. Read more »
After all the talk over the past few weeks about IBM’s Watson, it’s becoming clear that Watson is not HAL of big-screen notoriety. But when used in concert with predictive analytics software, technologies like Watson can become part of a very complete big-data architecture. Read more »
With the number of cloud-based mobile services expected to explode in the next few years, Finnish stealth startup Blaast — which says it is working on the world’s first true cloud operating system for phones — has raised a substantial seed round from European investors. Read more »
Flexible PaaS startup DotCloud has raised $800,000 in angel funding, although it should be seeing a lot more if its alignment with the evolution of the platform-as-a-service space is any indication. DotCloud prides itself on simplicity, but it sets itself apart by providing a flexible platform. Read more »
Athletic apparel brand Puma is running Puma.com and related sites on a Eucalyptus-powered private cloud. Puma is another well-known customer win for Eucalyptus, and that it’s running a web site on Eucalyptus infrastructure might also help suggest what the first round of private-cloud-hosted applications will be. Read more »
Over the weekend, Google apparently accidentally deleted some 150,000 Gmail accounts. We’re all growing increasingly reliant on the cloud. If a cloud vendor accidentally deleted your data, locked you out of your account, or shuttered one of your favorite services, what would you do? Read more »
DynamicOps has raised $11 million in Series B funding from Sierra Ventures, Next World Capital and investment bank Credit Suisse’s Next II venture group. Given its already-solid foundation, the new capital could go a long way toward making DynamicOps a household name in the private-cloud space. Read more »
SeaMicro has introduced its second high-density server, and the biggest news about this server is that Intel has manufactured a chip to go inside the SeaMicro box –– perhaps the first time Intel has built a chip designed for a startup. Read more »
Data marketplaces add value when they combine facts drawn from different data sets. However, as new products are created to accomplish this, the relationship between suppliers, the original data and those who download or buy it changes, with trust becoming a critical part of that relationship. Read more »
Cloud pundit Simon Wardley expressed on his blog today his now two-year-old theory that VMware could end up selling off its flagship virtualization business to focus on its platform business. It’s a far-fetched idea, for sure, but Wardley’s idea isn’t without merit. Read more »
We can cross off another item from the list of features that Amazon Web Services doesn’t offer, as this morning it announced an automated template feature called CloudFormation. It might not be the be-all, end-all of cloud templates, but it might not need to be. Read more »
People are complicated organisms that have evolved systems of feedback and governance to ensure our minds and out bodies perform well. As computers gain more cores, MIT scientists are building an operating system to create a similar system of feedback to ensure the machine performs well. Read more »
Southern California Edison has installed a 100TB Teradata data warehouse setup to store and serve data from customers’ smart grid meters. It’s not the last such deal we’ll see, as the market for smart-grid data analytics is predicted to reach $4.2 billion by 2015. Read more »
After hemorrhaging cash for the better part of a decade and filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy twice in three years, it looks like storied server and supercomputer maker SGI might actually turn a profit again. It’s plan involves everything from diversification to, unfortunately, cutting personnel costs. Read more »
An invention that can run data centers more efficiently and cut electric use is no doubt dear to Google’s heart. So it’s not surprising that Google Ventures became a lead investor in a startup called Transphorm, which made its public debut Wednesday. Read more »
