Amazon will let customers run micro-instances of Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 for free on its EC2 service starting now, according to a new post to the Amazon Web Services (AWS) blog. Such try-before-you-buy tactics have helped Amazon win converts to its cloud platform. Read more »
People think of data centers as a big, clunky category, but in the cloud computing era it shouldn’t be a surprise that the sector has been hot, with more hotness to come. As more cloud services come online, demand for webscale data centers will keep growing. Read more »
As usual, a big chunk of the news out of the Consumer Electronics Show this year revolves around bright-and-shiny devices. But this time out, those devices are acting as the Trojan horses for the hardware makers’ cloud vision. The battle’s all about cloud services now. Read more »
The wave of M&A activity swelling the cloud services sector won’t stop with in the software-as-a-service (SaaS) arena. Internap’s $30 million purchase of Voxel, announced early this week, signals a land rush for cloud services, with many smaller, capable cloud providers now in play. Read more »
On New Year’s Day, Ginny Rometty took the reins at IBM. Big Blue is on a roll: its stock outperformed Google and Apple this year, and Warren Buffett is a fan. But the IT giant faces perils as well as opportunities going into 2012. Read more »
With its new Elastic Network Interfaces, created by separating IP addresses and some key attributes from EC2 storage instances, Amazon is making its Virtual Private Cloud more flexible for companies that want to bring legacy applications to Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure. Read more »
Ask Box.net CEO Aaron Levie about his company’s cloud storage business, and you’ll hear a long, excited answer that probably won’t include the word “storage” at all. He’ll talk about sharing, collaboration and universal access — anything but the core storage infrastructure that makes Box’s service possible. Read more »
Demand for cloud computing continues to increase exponentially as consumers, businesses and government agencies seek to defer the expense of acquiring, operating and maintaining infrastructure and applications to third-party service providers. Likewise, software publishers are finding the cloud computing model an efficient and effective mechanism for delivering their products as a service and as an operational expense to their customers. For independent software vendors, cloud computing is opening up new markets and making their applications more accessible and affordable to scores of new customers. For a multitude of reasons, many ISVs are choosing to forego data center development and are partnering with hosting providers that have the infrastructure, resources and expertise in managing and delivering cloud services. This report provides ISVs with guidance on partnering with hosting companies, establishing criteria for selecting a hosting service, metrics for measuring hosting performance as it relates to cloud services delivered and an understanding of the responsibilities they retain even when outsourcing a large part of their services functions to a third party. Companies mentioned in this report include Microsoft, Google and Salesforce.com. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Rural mobile operator Viaero Wireless is preloading YouMail’s visual voicemail application into all Android phones, giving customers a compelling alternative to its standard network mailbox services. This could be the beginning of a trend that sees the mobile carriers abandoning voicemail to independent cloud providers. Read more »
Setting up iCloud on your iOS 5 device is actually pretty easy, especially because Apple gives you the option to either use your existing Apple ID or set up an entirely new account to get the process started. Here’s how it works, from beginning to end. Read more »
On Monday at GigaOM’s Mobilize 2011 event, Fjord CEO Olof Schybergson discussed the thin line between love and hate that smart services tread when dealing with a customer’s personal data. How much shared info is too much, and how can we change where that line lies? Read more »
As our demand for data increases, so too do the number of mobile devices and services. Add to that the infrastructure needed to support such connectivity, and a wide, complex picture of the mobile industry emerges. This report examines the various sectors of the mobile landscape and what the future holds for each. Hardware, cloud services, mobile search, advertising, location-based services and the growing ubiquity of the Internet of Things will all play an important role in the concept of mobility as it shifts and evolves over the next several years. With the help of more than a dozen contributors, GigaOM Pro presents a comprehensive analysis of the companies and trends that will lead us into the next era of mobile. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Buried in the talk about security, privacy and transnational data laws, it looks like the federal government’s cloud computing push also could bring progress on broadband accessibility. If Congress actually does push more, faster broadband, I think the promise of economic growth will drive it. Read more »
The Socialcast team at VMware has introduced a beta version of a new product called Strides, which aims to make task management an interactive experience. Think Basecamp, but more social, and with more visibility into what your colleagues are working on. Read more »
Apple’s executive team is undergoing some changes, and one of those changes is a promotion for Eddy Cue to Senior Vice President of Internet Software and Services. Cue will continue to oversee Apple’s online stores and iCloud and take on the challenge of iAd, too. Read more »
Software-as-a-Service startup GoodData has raised a $15 million Series B funding round for its cloud-based business intelligence product. Andreessen Horowitz led the round, along with other existing investors General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners and Windcrest Partners. GoodData has now raised $28.5 million overall. Read more »
Monster.com is getting into the cloud-computing mix with a new “semantic search and analytics platform” service called SeeMore. Merging two hot capabilities — cloud-based delivery and analytics — makes a lot of sense for Monster, which no doubt supplies many companies with a lot of data. Read more »
When the smoke clears, Dropbox’s newfound focus on transparency could turn out to be a great thing. Especially if it triggers an avalanche of other web-service providers following in its footsteps, making life easier for consumers and getting the federal government off their backs. Read more »
If I were a cloud-service provider, I’d consider investing in television advertising. If I didn’t know better, TV, and the media, in general, the cloud is a fairly useless and highly insecure place to store my data. Perhaps worse, I might think it’s a joke. Read more »
We’ve all heard stories about cloud-service fees run amok, only spotted when the bill comes due. Cloudability, part of Structure 2011 LaunchPad, wants to keep companies abreast of what they’re spending in the cloud with a free app that shows them what’s being spent and where. Read more »
Microsoft has now launched Office 365, its suite of collaboration and office tools that aims to take on Google Apps for Business. But with a product that costs more than Google’s offering and is coming much later to market, will Office 365 be a success? Read more »
Being able to crunch terabytes of data is great, but having someone else do it for you is even better. HPCC Systems, which launched last week to challenge Hadoop’s big data dominance, is planning to do just that with a cloud service for big data processing. Read more »
Enterprises that express unwillingness to use cloud services are probably already using the cloud — they just don’t realize it, said Netflix founder Dave Hitz at Structure today. But instead of avoiding creating policies around new services, they need to embrace them for the future. Read more »
Xeround’s cloud-based MySQL service enters general availability today, becoming the first cloud-based third-party MySQL distribution that actually requires customers to pay for the service. If it’s successful, there are plenty of other cloud database startups waiting in the wings to ride the SQL-in-the-cloud wave. Read more »
Web service creator Seven Scale today opened its Papertrail cloud-based log-management service to the general public. Log files have always been important for troubleshooting, but are seeing increased interest with the advent of big data because companies can draw business-level insights from the data, too. Read more »
Apple officially launched its much-hyped iCloud suite of services at its Worldwide Developer Conference today, and although the capabilities are sure to be the talk of the town, it’s Apple’s cloud infrastructure that makes it all work. Steve Jobs said as much during his WWDC keynote. Read more »
iCloud is mostly being looked at as a potentially ground-breaking consumer cloud service suite. But Apple is introducing it at WWDC, where it shows off new tools for developers to use in their apps. iCloud, then, could be a huge deal for developers, too. Read more »
Apple is now the confirmed owner of iCloud.com, as originally reported by GigaOM. Trademark applications are also underway, and reports of what’s in store for Apple’s cloud service are gearing up ahead of Monday’s announcement. Here’s what might be in store for consumers. Read more »
Palo Alto, Calif.-based startup ScaleXtreme’s cloud-based server management service is now available for early access users. We covered the company in February when the final product was still being built, but it has come a long way since then. Read more »
Server monitoring startup ServerDensity will launch an app store for plugins to its popular cloud-based service. Like many SaaS startups, ServerDensity provides a collection of core components, but is hoping to rely on its user community to address the longtail needs of certain customer segments. Read more »
Microsoft’s recent acquisition of Skype is the largest the company has ever made, and it’s raised many questions in the process. This research note examines Skype’s overall value and where it fits strategically into the world of Microsoft. From Office 365 and Bing to Xbox Kinect and Windows Phone, there are numerous ways in which Microsoft can leverage the functionality of its newest addition — and numerous risks it could incur in the process. Additional companies mentioned in this report include Cisco, Panasonic and Google. For a full list of companies and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Apple is very close indeed to locking up every major music label in advance of launching its own cloud music service, according to Bloomberg. Sony Music is reportedly on board, leaving just Universal Music Group to join up before a service can be unveiled. Read more »
Software-as-a-Service startup New Relic has added a new, and free, capability to its application-performance management product that lets customers monitor their users’ experiences in real time. The bigger picture is how New Relic continues to show the way to do SaaS in a cloud-computing world. Read more »
Apple does indeed appear to be planning big changes to its cloud services package, according to references found in the latest developer preview of Mac OS X Lion. French blog Consomac discovered code referring to something codenamed “Castle,” described as an upgrade to MobileMe. Read more »
Friday morning, John Paczkowski of Digital Daily confirmed Om’s report earlier this week that Apple acquired the domain name iCloud.com. Apple has acquired and not used domain names in the past, but if Cupertino is planning to use the iCloud brand, what should that trademark encompass? Read more »
Despite building a massive data center and the expected launch of cloud-based music storage, the troubled history of Apple’s online services suggests the company has yet to come up with a plan for the cloud. How can Apple provide the kind of experience its customers expect? Read more »
Since my business runs on iCal, I approached the CalDAV upgrade for MobileMe Calendar users (which becomes mandatory May 5) with reluctance and some healthy fear. Here are my recommendations and a walkthrough of the process that should hopefully make the task less daunting for you. Read more »
The $30 rebate on MobileMe and iWork for new Mac purchasers is now discontinued, according to a leaked internal memo provided from “a source within Apple.” If true, the end of these rebate programs is a good sign that updates are on the way. 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 »
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 »
