Cloudera netted big bucks to accelerate its Hadoop push into enterprises and around the world. The Palo Alto, Calif. company says its framework is the most widely deployed of several available Hadoop distributions. Read more »
European vacation rentals site HouseTrip has everything going for it right now: not least fast growth and a fresh new round of funding. Co-founder Arnaud Bertrand lays out why he thinks his site can carry on winning — and reveals the scale of his ambition. Read more »
A new startup called Trifacta, founded by UC-Berkeley professor Joe Hellerstein and Stanford professor Jeffrey Heer, wants to eliminate much of the hassle of making messy data usable. The company combines machine learning and human-computer interaction, and has raised $4.3 million from Accel Partners. Read more »
Data is a hot topic among the startup community, which is why stealthy startup RelateIQ has a bunch of people excited about its product and plans. The startup has some big data street cred with executives from Palantir and LinkedIn’s former data scientist DJ Patil involved. Read more »
Qualtrics, a decade-old marketing research company has raised a $70 million first round of venture capital. This isn’t a growth capital deal, despite Qualtrics’ age and the large amount. This is designed to scale Qualtrics like a startup — from 200 to 450 employees. Read more »
Cloud-based presentation service Prezi kicked up a fuss when it offered a dynamic alternative to dreary formats. Now, two years after launch, the Hungarian startup has scored a serious round of funding to take the battle to PowerPoint. Read more »
Europe’s web scene is now thriving, and we’ve compiled a list featuring some of the best and brightest European web startups — what we’re dubbing the GigaOM Euro 20. Depending on how closely you watch Europe’s online scene, some of these companies may be familiar to you. Others you may not have heard of. But all of them are worth watching closely. In this report, we profile the 20 startups that we feel best represent Europe’s current tech scene. We have organized our list around perception, and as lists go, it is intended to be a guideline rather than a rule book. It’s not exhaustive, and clearly, with such a diverse and vibrant continent as our playing field, it never could be. Companies mentioned in this report include GetJar, Huddle, Made.com and Songkick. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What happens when you promise end-users a persistent connection to data, applications and services regardless of the device they’re using? Mobile cloud computing aims to deliver just such a promise. Mobile access to popular web-based services such as Facebook and Gmail, combined with next-generation smartphones like the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android devices, is driving broad adoption of mobile data. However, the center of economic gravity is shifting. Historically, access to the mobile network was the service. But as users have expanded the uses for those bits, what the user does in a given session becomes fundamental to how much the service provider can charge the user or a third party (e.g. an advertiser). Thus, it’s likely that the mobile, IT and MCC sectors will continue their current marriage of convenience to attack a rare convergence of both short-term and longer term opportunity. However, in the process of adapting to an Internet that’s becoming more global, mobile and web-based by the day, the mobile and IT industries will be forced into new ways of doing business. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
On Aug. 10, 2009, VMware announced a definitive agreement to acquire privately held open source Java application framework and platform developer SpringSource for $420 million ($331 million in cash, $31 million in equity for vested options, $58 million for unvested stocks/options). Customers will ultimately care about ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Policy makers, entrepreneurs, investors, automakers and others are paying increasing attention to long-overlooked energy storage technology, and they’re pouring billions of dollars into the sector in hopes of snagging a piece of the market as it develops. But for startups looking to break into energy storage ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
