The week in cloud: Google and Microsoft spar while IBM and SAP play hot hands
photo: Shutterstock / Alexey Repka
Google and Microsoft slapfest continues; IBM pushes Watson for third-party apps; SAP bets big on HANA for ERP. Read more »
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AWS is the McDonald’s of the cloud. Who’s the Burger King?
photo: Wikipedia Commons
It’s easy to characterize the cloud computing market as being Amazon Web Services’ to lose, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. McDonald’s dominates the fast food world, but life isn’t exactly bad for its dozens of competitors. Read more »
As Amazon, Google, Microsoft beat each others brains in, who wins? The user
photo: Official U.S. Navy Imagery
It may not be pleasant for the competitors, but cloud competition is nothing but good for cloud consumers — whether they’re startups or Fortune 100 companies. Read more »
So Google Compute Engine is out, your move Amazon
Now that GCE is available to all — complete with by-the-minute charges and a new NoSQL database service, we eagerly await Amazon’s response. Make no mistake, there will be one. Read more »
Amazon cloud watcher Newvem now watches Azure too
With Amazon beefing up its own AWS monitoring tools, it makes sense for companies like Newvem to take on other clouds. That’s just what Newvem is doing. Read more »
Google gains appeal for cloud services, but there’s this company called Amazon
photo: Jordan Novet
Even as Google makes moves to compel developers to try out the Google Cloud Platform, developers see Amazon Web Services as the clear cloud to beat, at least for now. Read more »
Google’s growing cloud just got a NoSQL database
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Google is expanding its cloud platform with a “NoSQL-like” database called Cloud Datastore. It’s a fully managed database that’s replicated across data centers and built to scale. Read more »
Amazon staffs up to give Trusted Advisor more powers
AWS has big plans for its Trusted Advisor and other enterprise support offerings but giving more metrics to customers will irk third-party service partners. Read more »
Google I/O: Arming for the battle of the public cloud stars
Whether or not Google officially rolls out its GCE public cloud to all takers this week, GCE will take on AWS and Windows Azure for market- and mind-share going forward. Read more »
The week in cloud: Google picks Debian; AWS console for Windows; Adobe faces wrath
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Google picked Debian as the default OS for the Google Compute Engine; AWS builds console to enable Windows IT admins to manage on-prem and AWS workloads, Adobe feels artists’ ire. Read more »
Laggard Rackspace growth sparks concern: is there enough cloud biz to go around?
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There are lots of potential cloud workloads out there but there are also about a zillion clouds. Is there really enough paid work to support them all? Read more »
From Amazon’s cloud guy: 6 hiring tips for startups
photo: Jordan Novet
Amazon Web Services’ Andy Jassy knows a little something about staffing an internal startup; he shared lessons learned with entrepreneurs Wednesday morning. Read more »
SAP to world: We’re a cloud company, no really!
To the surprise of very few, SAP plans to put make its HANA analytical database available as a cloud service. Read more »
EMC plots software-defined data center journey from ViPR storage virtualization base
photo: EMC Corp.
EMC says ViPR will abstract out a company’s storage and automate how it gets divvied up by the workload. The company will roll out its software-defined data center plan this week. Read more »
The week in cloud: So much for a million clouds; AWS chief takes on private clouds
Shhhhh, it looks like cloud computing is not immune from industry consolidation and Amazon Web Services gets testy about private cloud adoption. Read more »
API-crazy Amazon adds a new tool to boost support for enterprise AWS customers
photo: Barb Darrow
Amazon says its new API will help businesses on support contracts automate how their support calls are set up and handled. Read more »
One Linux over all: Mark Shuttleworth’s ambitious post-PC plans for Ubuntu
Canonical Founder Mark Shuttleworth has really big, plans to put Ubuntu on your smartphone, on your tablet and (via OpenStack). What he doesn’t offer is details on revenue. Read more »
Long a cloud kingpin, Amazon now fighting back against AWS competition
photo: Jordan Novet
Amazon Web Services’ 2013 San Francisco summit kicked off with boastful words about the public-cloud leader. Read more »
Stackdriver opens its cloud monitoring service for business
If you run your applications in AWS or Rackspace clouds, you probably want to monitor their performance and get real-time alerts should things go awry. Stackdriver says it has a service for you. Read more »
Say what? Microsoft Azure’s a $1 billion business?
Microsoft says it’s sold a billion dollars worth of cloud services. But as is usually the case, the value of cloud sales depends on what your definition of cloud is. Read more »
More fun facts about AWS usage, this time from Cloudyn
Companies like Cloudyn want to make Amazon Web Services less of a mystery to its users, but they have lots of competition — including from Amazon itself. Read more »
Eucalyptus supports Netflix tools to prove its Amazon cloud compatibility
Eucalyptus wants to be the most compatible of AWS-compatible private clouds and says its support of Netflix OSS tools proves it is just that. Read more »
The week in cloud: the argument for lots of clouds; mobility rules; catching up with Dell
photo: Shutterstock Brian A Jackson
RightScale research says one cloud won’t fit all; mobile development landgrab continues with Facebook-Parse deal; Michael Dell talks up cloud opportunity. Read more »
If Amazon Web Services is a sideline, it sure is a big one
photo: Flickr/Will Merydith
No one outside of Seattle really knows how big Amazon Web Services is. But we do know that its overall category hit the $750 million mark last quarter. Read more »
Opscode gains momentum with IBM, Microsoft deals
IBM is integrating Chef into SmartCloud and Microsoft is adding support for Azure as well in a sign that enterprises are fully aboard the devops bandwagon. Read more »
Actian buys Amazon database partner ParAccel
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Analytic database vendor ParAccel has been acquired by a relatively quiet database company called Actian. ParAccel targets big data with its scale-out architecture, and it counts Amazon as both an investor and user. Read more »
Joyent says Chef support will make cloud workloads mobile
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The cloud provider is banking that its new full integration of Opscde Chef, which is also supported by Amazon Web Services, will make it easier for AWS customers to move to Joyent Cloud. Read more »
Hadoop startup Qubole raises $7M for Hive as a Service
photo: Albert Chau
Hadoop experts Qubole have just closed a Series A funding round for their service, which lets users run Hive data warehouse jobs in Amazon’s cloud. Read more »
The week in cloud: SAP stakes cloud claim; legacy and new-look vendors arm for battle
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Sometimes we forget: cloud adoption is just in the baby step phase; SAP says it’s profiting from cloud; battle for legacy and new app workloads gets more nuanced. Read more »
What HP’s new cloud guy wants you to know about HP’s new cloud
Saar Gillai says HP’s darkest days are behind it and with its new OpenStack cloud, the company is hitting its stride. Then again, what else would he say? Read more »
Amazon S3 goes exponential, now stores 2 trillion objects
Less than year after hitting the 1 trillion object mark, Amazon S3 is now storing more than 2 trillion objects. That’s a lot any way you slice it and highlights AWS’s role as an underpinning of today’s web. Read more »
Cloudability tool gives Amazon customers more detailed, custom looks at their cloud costs
Cloudability says its new AWS cost analytics tool can handle the deluge of hourly cost data Amazon churns out and help customers nip budgeting and other usage problems in the bud. Read more »
At long last, Microsoft is ready to compete head on with Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Windows Azure GM Bill Hilf calls Amazon a competitor, a partner and a neighbor: But that won’t stop Microsoft from launching an IaaS price war against Amazon Web Services. Read more »
Rackspace to telcos: build your OpenStack cloud on us
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Telcos and service providers wanting to compete with Amazon in public cloud services can jump-start that effort by tapping Rackspace, says Rackspace. Read more »
The week in cloud: Bezos rationalizes AWS feature churn; OpenStackers cue up news
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Amazon’s chief vows to keep up the AWS feature race; OpenStack gets two more big backers as vendors cue up news for the OpenStack Summit. Read more »
Amazon takes another step to suck up more enterprise data
Amazon Storage Gateway can now run in Microsoft Hyper-V as well as VMware ESXi (and of course Amazon EC2) environments. Welcome to the world of blurred boundaries. Read more »
Cloud adoption: It’s not about the price, stupid
photo: Corbis / Don Mason
Remember when the decision to go to Amazon Web Services was all about saving dough? Smart consumers now know that’s not the real reason to move workloads to the cloud. Read more »
Cloud wars to rage on with dueling OpenStack, AWS events next week
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Can’t get enough cloud? Just wait till next week when OpenStack and Amazon Web Services host simultaneous events 3,000 miles apart. Read more »
Upstart Server Density sets sights on RightScale with new cloud management goodies
Scrappy London startup Server Density is adding AWS and Rackspace provisioning capabilities to its existing monitoring service, says co-founder and CEO David Mytton. Read more »
Promising to remake cloud databases for web scale, ParElastic gets $5.7M
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A startup called ParElastic thinks it can change the cloud database game by helping companies scale their MySQL environments without resorting to sharding or deploying an entirely new database. Read more »
