Lots of personnel moves at and between VMware and parent company EMC (and spinoff Pivotal Initiative as it gets ready to launch.) Also: Cisco and NetApp launch more FlexPods. Read more »
Is there there really a model for predicting the success of Kickstarter campaigns? A new interactive model from machine learning service BigML offers a fun way to try, although the dearth of public data from Kickstarter might affect its accuracy. Read more »
Entrepreneurs spoke about the value of Amazon Web Services, took home prizes and destroyed servers at AWS’ sixth annual Global Start-Up Challenge event on Thursday. Read more »
IBM, and every other tech company in the universe, likes to tout its cloud computing revenue without actually disclosing it. For its Q4 IBM claimed a whopping 80 percent growth rate in cloud revenue but no real numbers. Read more »
GoDaddy has been undergoing a transformation lately as it tries to become more valuable to its customers by providing higher-level services than just web hosting. Its latest product is a CDN that it claims can help significantly decrease pageload times for its small-business customers. Read more »
Cloud provider Joyent has a new Hadoop offering that the company claims can outperform most others on the market. However, the company says Hadoop is just its foray into big data and is promising bigger, better things to come. Read more »
Amazon Web Services has introduced its latest instance — an 88-core, 240 GB SSD, 244 GB RAM and 10 GbE behemoth designed for real-time analytics with software like SAP HANA, as well as demanding scientific workloads. Read more »
James Urquhart explains the concept of anti-fragility and how modern IT departments are trying to achieve through a variety of means, including the implementation of devops. However, he cautions, anti-fragility might not the answer for every system. Read more »
Nine enterprise-focused companies — including two focusing on cloud infrastructure — pitched investors at Alchemist Accelerator’s demo day. Alchemist Accelerator is a new incubator created by Stanford’s Ravi Belani and focused on enterprise technology. Read more »
Amazon’s cloud services are a huge hit among startups with thin IT budgets. But Amazon wants be a for-real platform for important enterprise-class applications as well. Should it launch an enterprise challenge? Read more »
The last quarter of 2012 saw the rise of cloud-based databases, the cloud awakening of software giants such as HP, and many cloud outages that have left question marks. Enterprises found more IT dollars, and they will focus on the cloud for much of that spending. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
VMware CTO Steve Herrod is leaving his post to join venture capital firm General Catalyst, where he’ll be managing director. I think this is a big loss for VMware, which has already been hemorrhaging technical talent to younger, nimbler companies. Read more »
The audacity of a database startup: NewSQL vendor NuoDB dares to propose an update to E.F. Codd’s 12 rules of relational databases, the blueprint for SQL databases for decades. Read more »
The issue of resiliency in the cloud has gained new life after Amazon experienced an outage that took out Netflix on Christmas Eve. Hybrid clouds are the answer to the problem, but how do you know what applications deserve such treatment? Read more »
Want to hear about the latest and greatest in Netflix’s home-grown technology? The company will host an open-source open house for developers on February 6. The goal is to recruit top-flight developers and to encourage construction of alternatives to Amazon Web Services. Read more »
James Urquhart kicks off a discussion about system resiliency by outlining the key concepts — devops, complex adaptive systems and anti-fragility — that affect it in the cloud computing era. Read more »
The use of Open Compute hardware by government agencies got a boost this week when Hyve Solutions, which specializes in Open Compute design, was added to the GSA schedule of approved IT vendors. And, Microsoft Hotmail and Dropbox suffered major outages. Read more »
Amazon Web Services is, depending on who’s talking, the bedrock and revenue-generating engine for Amazon, or it’s a thin-margin sideline for the giant retailer. Either way, does it make sense for Amazon to spin it off a la EMC and VMware? Read more »
Netflix is at it again, this time showing off its homemade architecture for running Hadoop workloads in the Amazon Web Services cloud. It’s all about the flexibility of being able to run, manage and access multiple clusters while eliminating as many barriers as possible. Read more »
Mirantis CEO Adrian Ionel says the fact that it’s getting financing from Dell and Intel, along with WestSummit Capital, does not negate it’s ability to deliver vendor-agnostic OpenStack clouds. Read more »
Demand for programmers with Scala expertise continues to grow, according to job postings on Indeed.com. But things aren’t that simple. If you cut the data other ways, you can pretty much see what you want to see. Read more »
In a new research note, Macquarie Capital contends that Amazon Web Services is not only profitable, it would be a $19 billion business if it were counted as a standalone entity. That’s not peanuts. Amazon, of course, isn’t saying boo. Read more »
Amazon brings its AWS management console to Android, but not iOS, devices; Hewlett-Packard SEC filing opens up an old can of worms; and Dell will wait for OpenStack to mature before bringing out its public cloud implementation Read more »
Any cloud vendor that does not try to take advantage of Amazon Web Services’ US-East woes is probably guilty of malpractice. But most tread carefully — it’s fine to talk up your uptime and service, but vendors in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. Read more »
Despite the idea that a server is a server, the needs of different computing customers differ widely. For those thinking about selling infrastructure, software or even services understanding the difference in computing and IT styles will help you hone your pitch and find your buyer. Read more »
I recently spent 11 days in Beijing meeting lots of companies trying to make it in cloud computing and big data. Here are seven with which I had a chance to sit down and learn about their businesses and how to sell cloud computing in China. Read more »
Our friends at GigaOM Research break down the big winners and losers in the cloud space and the trends you need to know about for the coming year: consumer-oriented cloud, big data and government adoption and more. With Adam Lesser, David Linthicum and Paul Miller. Read more »
Both Amazon Web Services and Netflix — its most-prominent customer — have released details on AWS outage that took down Netflix’s streaming service on Christmas Eve. AWS attributes the issue primarily to human error. Netflix just wants to avoid this situation again, whatever the cause. Read more »
Startups and enterprises alike face barriers when it comes to cloud adoption. This includes security, speed of access to cloud resources, and runaway network costs. However, multiple solutions for direct access are being provided to address this issue for companies big and small. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Last year, AWS saw big success and big snafus; Superstorm Sandy prompted worry about data center location; legacy IT giants bought their way into SaaS; VMware regroups; the OpenStack crowd got their clouds off the ground; and Europe starts to buy into cloud. Read more »
Cloud computing’s increased performance cannot be sustained if the corresponding cost to the service provider (SP) for delivering this performance also increases. What service providers need is a way of delivering low latency, fast response, and increasing performance while minimizing the cost of the network. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
This shift in WAN requirements is placing increased cost and performance pressure on traditional WAN solutions, which either pose the exorbitant costs of private WAN services or are burdened by the unreliability of the public internet. WAN optimization and virtualization can address and improve this in enterprises. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Jeff Bezos, who founded Amazon 16 years ago, is the second-best CEO on the planet, according to Harvard Business Review’s latest rankings. Last month Fortune named him its Business Person of the Year. Read more »
Besides the skyrocketing growth of data itself, there are several key technology trends we will be watching in 2013. That list includes a renaissance in the database market, next-generation SaaS-based BI and visualization tools, and data warehousing as a service. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Big problems with Amazon Web Services’ Elastic Load Balancing service in its US-East data center nailed Netflix and Heroku on Christmas Eve and carried over into Christmas. Netflix competitor Amazon Prime Instant Video appeared to be unaffected. Read more »
Most financial services companies officially forbid the use of public cloud (aka Amazon Web Services) completely. But the forward thinkers among them — like State Street — keep their options — and minds — open about such deployment in the future. Read more »
Red Hat’s $104M buyout of ManageIQ gives it a stronger cross-cloud management story; Developers love their Amazon EC2 instances and will likely use more of them next year, according to new Forrester research. Read more »
Amazon’s Data Pipeline, which promises easy, automated consolidation of data from many sources, is now available — or at least you can sign up for it. Amazon also unveiled a new instance type for data-intensive applications. Read more »
Confused by the glut of new NoSQL, NewSQL, post-SQL, structured, unstructured database options that came out over the past year? 451 Research’s Matthew Aslett maps it all out for you. Read more »
The Atlanta-based integrator will use its new funding to keep up with what it calls accelerating demand for cloud applications and to keep serving existing Salesforce.com and Google Apps customers. Read more »