Thanks to the amazing viral powers of Twitter, I found a series that CNN is running on cloud computing, complete with stories (I liked the one on server huggers) and fun video about an oddly named dog. The goal clearly is to explain cloud computing to the masses, but when you show someone hosting a photo at Picasa or Flickr and say, “You’ve just started cloud computing,” you’ve just messed up. Continue »

Cisco, EMC and VMware, the trifecta of companies putting their own proprietary stamp on cloud computing for the enterprise, today created a partnership to offer equipment called Vblocks and support a new joint venture called Acadia that will help business customers and service providers build out clouds based on the Vblock gear packages. The partnership can be read as an attack on hardware providers building gear for the clouds and a potential threat to cloud providers like Microsoft Azure and Amazon’s cloud services that aren’t building VMware clouds. Continue »

The innovation coming out of the cloud computing market has, in many ways, made infrastructure startups interesting to venture capitalists again. Despite our excitement over the potential of cloud computing to transform IT, however, weighing on the minds of many in the VC community is what sort of time frame we should expect for exits. To put it more bluntly, we want to know when it’s going to rain — when VC investments in cloud computing will result in acquisitions or even an IPO. Continue »

While when it comes to cloud computing, no one has entirely sorted out what’s hype and what isn’t, nor exactly how it will be used by the enterprise, what is becoming increasingly clear is that Big Data is the future of IT. To that end, tackling Big Data will determine the winners and losers in the next wave of cloud computing innovation. Continue »

While just 10 percent of U.S. companies have either adopted cloud computing or have immediate plans to do so, Software as a Service is being used by a whopping 68 percent, according to the results of a new cloud computing survey released by business service provider Avanade (PDF) today. Even more interesting: By a ratio of 4:1 (2:1 on a worldwide basis), respondents said they would prefer to have their applications delivered as services from internal platforms. Is SaaS the “killer app” for internal clouds? Continue »

Love it or fear it, there is no denying the impact cloud computing is having on IT practices. Despite a summer full of high-profile outages, cloud computing spent the season continuing its march toward ubiquity, as our third-quarter wrap-up at GigaOM Pro showed (subscription required). Continue »

If you are a fan of the BBC, then odds are that you have seen the dark and comical series, “The Worst Week Ever of My Life.” It is the story of Sam Briggs, a man who wants to impress his bride-to-be’s family. And as one would expect, bad luck and hilarity follow him. I wonder if the guys in charge of Microsoft Mobile feel like Briggs after the week they just had. Upon launch, Windows Mobile 6.5 couldn’t have received worse reviews. Some of them are so mean that even I am feeling bad for Ma Windows. Here is a sample of what folks said about WinMo 6.5. Continue »