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 »
Incapsula is trying to democratize web site security and performance by utilizing the distributed, yet centralized, nature of cloud computing. In some ways, its namesake product is the epitome of a cloud service because it utilizes both crowdsourcing and centralization to create the best-possible experience. Read more »
Unstructured database provider MarkLogic has a new CEO with big-business experience and plans to take fast-growing company public. MarkLogic is nowhere near the size of CEO Ken Bado’s former employer, Autodesk, but it does have a healthy business that belies its relative youth and NoSQL ties. Read more »
VMware officially entered the service provider market by taking over operations of the Mozy storage service from EMC. VMware CTO Steven Herrod announced the news on his blog today, writing that “VMware has hired the team and acquired assets behind EMC’s Mozy cloud-based data protection service.” Read more »
NoSQL vendor Couchbase is targeting developers using Mac OS X with a new version of its Membase Server and an upgraded Couchbase Server designed specifically for that platform. Mac is hardly the most popular choice among developers, but its popularity appears to be picking up. Read more »
Startup medical search company Apixio is trying to save lives by bringing machine-learning and natural-language-processing techniques to medical records, giving doctors a patient’s entire relevant medical history via a simple cloud-based search engine. The goal is to make information-sharing among medical providers far more intelligent. Read more »
The merger between CenturyLink and Qwest officially closed today, creating the nation’s third largest phone company in a world where being a phone company means less and less. I spoke with a company executive about making cloud acquisitions and the ever-growing demand for bandwidth. Read more »
A handful of new releases and partnerships this week — as well as a big award — illustrate just how versatile the data-processing tool Hadoop is and how widespread its use might become. Hadoop is becoming a more viable tool for everyone from business users to journalists. Read more »
Researchers at the University of Washington utilized the Cloudant NoSQL database as part of an experiment that determined radiation levels in Seattle as a result of the recent Fukushima nuclear disaster are “well below alarming limits” at that particular location. Read more »
According to a survey by AFCOM, cloud computing is on the rise among data center operators, more than doubling since last year and expected to reach 80-90 percent in the next five years. The survey also shows that energy efficiency is driving data center decisions. Read more »
When is a technology company dead? It is something that has been on my mind lately. My definition of a dead tech company has less to do with the company’s numbers and more about its abilities. Of course, that is different from what others think. Read more »
Hardware rarely comes up in discussions about big data, save for those centered on data warehouse appliances. But the omission hardly means hardware is irrelevant. In fact, big gear might become a big deal as companies look to bolster the performance of their big data systems. Read more »
The NoSQL database space is little more crowded this morning, as Citrusleaf officially launched with its eponymous product, which promises users the best of both the relational and NoSQL worlds. The Mountain View, Calif.-based company also announced a reported $2 million initial round of funding. Read more »
Will Facebook rise to Green Peace’s challenge to pledge to cut coal from its data centers by Earth Day on April 22? On the day before Earth Day, on April 21 at Green:Net 2011, Green Peace will discuss its challenge, and unveil some new data. Read more »
Hadoop has been used by large web companies for applications such as search engines, but the reality is that the project is so much more. This report takes a closer look, examining what Hadoop is (and isn’t), who’s doing what to productize it and why we can expect to see the market pick up serious steam in 2011. We profile the growing number of companies — from startups like MapR to Cloudera, the arguable leader in the space — using Hadoop, the challenges still hindering widespread adoption and where potential users can expect the market to go as we move through 2011 and beyond. Companies mentioned in this report include Yahoo, Facebook, EMC, Teradata and Appistry. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Salesforce.com has agreed to acquire Canadian social-media monitoring company Radian6 for a total of $326 million in cash and stock, and says that it will make the company’s tools and services a core part of its Sales Cloud customer-relationship management dashboard for businesses. Read more »
Unlike the cap and congestion crowd, Verizon Communications keeps upgrading its network, planning for the cloud and streaming era coming up. It plans to upgrade backbone pipes in the U.S. along select routes to 100 Gigabit per second capacity before the second quarter of this year. Read more »
High-performance computing leader Platform Computing hopes to capitalize on the big data movement by spreading its wings beyond its flagship business of managing clusters and grids and into managing MapReduce environments, too. Platform has a solid foundation among leading businesses, especially in the financial services industry. Read more »
Cisco said it plans to buy newScale, a software provider that allows more control and visibility inside a compute cloud. The deal highlights the rise in M&A activity among cloud vendors as well as the need for more accountability in corporate cloud environments. Read more »
One of the statements that struck me most from Structure: Big Data was CA CTO Donald Ferguson’s notion that big data represents a “very promising” opportunity for startups, particularly those targeting specific target use cases. I think he’s right, particularly with regard to the latter part. Read more »
Ravel wants to provide a supported open source version of Google’s Pregel software called Golden Orb to handle large-scale graph analytics. Ravel COO Zach Richardson told me in the following video interview that the startup would release the Golden Orb code on March 31st. Read more »
Amazon Web Services this morning announced dedicated EC2 instances for customers using AWS’s newly upgraded Virtual Private Cloud service. This is yet another example of AWS pushing the innovation envelope despite its customer lead, although Dedicated Instances are a bit pricier than some recent free tools. Read more »
