Silver Spring embraces cloud, software-as-a-service for smart grid
Silver Spring Networks is beefing up its energy data software services for utilities by focusing on real time access via software-as-a-service and the cloud. Read more »
Smart grid VC funding has been “extremely weak”
Investments by venture capitalists into smart grid companies — or firms that are adding digital intelligence to the power grid — has remained “extremely weak” over at least the last three quarters, according to research firm the Mercom Capital Group. Read more »
Silver Spring Networks still chugging along
Despite that smart grid network company Silver Spring Networks has yet to go public, the company is chugging along and had a pretty good quarter, according to the latest amendment to its S-1. Read more »
Kurion acquires nuclear to glass cleanup tech
Kurion, a startup that has developed technology that cleans up nuclear waste and is one of the most successful cleantech firms you haven’t heard of, has been acquiring more cleanup tech. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
This quarter the EV market struggled to find its footing. Meanwhile, the smart-grid sector solidified and low-power technology proved itself important in the data center. Read more to learn what these news pieces and others mean for the larger space over the next few months. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Kurion dominates Fukushima radioactive water cleanup
Nuclear waste cleanup startup Kurion (which I once called the most successful greentech startup you haven’t heard of) says it’s responsible for removing 70 percent of the radioactivity from the waste water at the Fukushima nuclear plant after last year’s disaster. Read more »
Subscriber Content
One year later: Fukushima and the Japan cleantech opportunity
The one-year anniversary of the Fukushima disaster, which claimed the lives of 19,000 and left another 325,000 without permanent housing, was observed on Sunday. In the wake of the disaster, Japan has reassessed its energy policy, and there’s now a massive cleantech opportunity in the country ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Silver Spring raises $30M from Hitachi
While smart grid networking company Silver Spring Networks announced last week that it had partnered with Japanese giant Hitachi, more details of the financial deal are now public. According to a filing, Silver Spring has raised $30 million in an option and debt from Hitachi. Read more »
Startup Kurion says Japan nuclear water cleanup is working
In June, a group of tech companies, including Silicon Valley startup Kurion, started cleaning the contaminated water at the nuclear power plants in Japan. Now Kurion says that the efforts are working and that cesium levels in the water have dropped by more than 40 percent. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Infrastructure Q2: Big data and PaaS gain more momentum
Big data and Platform-as-a-Service offerings highlighted the second quarter, suggesting that we can expect to see a shift in enterprise IT practices around application development and analytics very soon. On the PaaS front, we saw new projects like DotCloud and Cloud Foundry gain incredible momentum in just a few short months. The big-data activity ranged from major new Hadoop vendors to heavy investment in flash storage that will speed the serving of data to processing engines. In other areas, we saw an uptick in cloud-computing plans from large vendors, OpenStack continued to mature and pick up both contributors and users, and Facebook caught our eye by launching an open-source project around the designs for its specialized servers and data centers. Additional companies mentioned in this report include VMware, Salesforce.com, IBM, Heroku and Calxeda. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
No easy road for mining rare earth elements
Japanese scientists have pinpointed large deposits of rare earth elements that are necessary for all sorts of cleantech gear. The discovery gives hopes that China’s chokehold on the rare earth supply could be over, but accessing those minerals will be difficult. Read more »
Personal cloud options for iOS users grow with Hitachi G-Connect
Hitachi unveiled its G-Connect wireless media storage drive, designed for use with mobile devices like the iPad and iPhone. It follows the example set by Seagate’s GoFlex battery-powered mobile streaming hard drive, and both represent an alternative to cloud computing that’s gaining momentum. Read more »
Tech companies to begin cleaning water at Japan nuclear plants
A group of nuclear tech companies on Friday afternoon (Japan time) are poised to begin cleaning the contaminated water in the turbine buildings at the Fukushima nuclear power plants in Japan that suffered damage in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami. Read more »
Report: Johnson Controls Divorcing Saft Over Grid Battery Market
The automotive battery joint venture between Johnson Controls and Saft has gone sour and according to analysts with Needham & Company Johnson Controls is unhappy because the Saft deal is holding it back from the power grid battery market (and Hitachi might be a better partner). Read more »
Pan-Pacific Smart Grid: Japanese Giants Move to Maui
Maui is set to become a smart grid showcase, courtesy of Japanese giants like Hitachi, Sharp and Hewlett-Packard Japan. These companies are among the partners that signed on to a long-range project announced Tuesday, aimed at integrating the Hawaiian Island’s renewable power and plug-in vehicles to come. Read more »
Landis+Gyr at Any Price? Smart Meters’ Second Act
Landis+Gyr is on the auction block, and big smart grid suitors like General Electric, Toshiba and Honeywell ABB are rumored to be interested in paying $2 billlion-plus for the smart meter giant. Strategic buyers could find value by integrating into their own lines of business. Read more »
Seagate Deal Shows How Broadband Is Changing Storage
Seagate today agreed to buy Samsung’s hard drive business in a deal valued at $1.375 billion in a deal that highlights how broadband adoption, the cloud and mobility are changing the dynamics of the storage industry. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Big Data, ARM and Legal Troubles Transformed Infrastructure in Q4
Some might call this past quarter in the infrastructure space transformative. The rise of ARM-based processing suggests the days of x86 dominance might be coming to an end, while the Amazon Web Services-WikiLeaks controversy cast new light on the legal aspects of cloud computing. Big data got bigger, meanwhile, as the Hadoop ecosystem expanded, and amid all these cutting-edge technologies, two archaic topics — Novell and Java — proved they aren’t going anywhere soon. Companies mentioned in this report include Intel, AMD, Amazon Web Services, IBM, Yahoo, Appistry, VMware, Joyent and Microsoft. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
What's Left of Nortel Today?
Almost a year after Nortel filed for bankruptcy, we take a look at what’s left of the 114-year-old company that began as Northern Electric and Manufacturing to sell telephones to Canadians. All that remains are some patents and an IP phone joint venture with LG. Read more »
Subscriber Content
3-D Untethered: A Look at Mobile 3-D Technology
The mobile computing space has become the new center of innovation and new products after years of shifting away from desktop computing. Mobile technology has been domain of 2-D content and viewing, but we see prospects for a sharp increase in 3-D in coming months and ... Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Nielsen Preps ‘Internet Meters’ for Cross-Platform Measurement
Nielsen is taking steps to integrate its measurement of TV and online video viewing, telling clients that it will soon install Internet meters into Nielsen homes to come up with cross-platform metrics for what content consumers are viewing. As part of a new initiative called “TVandPC,” […] Read more »
Report: Green Data Center Design Strategies
Data centers are a critical component of many businesses these days, but because of the amount of electricity they consume, they are extremely expensive to run. However, a great deal can be done both to cut costs and reduce their environmental footprint, simply by making them more energy efficient. Online technologies and applications are creating skyrocketing demand for new data centers, and most enterprises are now seeking “greener” solutions, both in their own facilities, and in the facilities with which they do business. This report looks at innovations in green data center design and identifies key players — from major data center operators to startups solving specific issues — leading the charge. Read more »
Subscriber Content
Report: The Future of Data Center Storage
The last decade has seen tremendous evolution and innovation in storage array technology — from the introduction of thin provisioning and ultra-wide data striping to storage virtualization in various forms of deployment, along with new generations of disk arrays, creative data retention and tiering. Many of the technologies introduced have caused significant disruption in the storage market and brought new and creative value propositions to corporate data centers the world over, lowering both storage array purchase costs and the extended cost of managing them. Many of the new innovations have enabled IT enterprises to reduce power and cooling costs, consolidate data centers and floor space, and repurpose storage assets and extend their useful life. However, even with all the advancements in storage technology, there are still gaps that need to be filled — such as in the areas of security and data de-duplication. This report looks at current key players in the storage market, highlights market drivers and the technology gaps that present opportunities for companies in the space, and forecasts the relative potential of key players going forward. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
13 Battery Startups Hitting the Road With Lithium-ion
With billions of dollars in government funds coming down the pipeline for advanced batteries courtesy of the stimulus package, and the auto industry gearing up to make its first real go at marketing plug-in vehicles for the masses, the race to build lithium-ion batteries for vehicles […] Read more »
Subscriber Content
Will Storage Go the Way of The Server?
The storage industry is on the cusp of the biggest structural change since networked storage began to substitute for direct-attached storage a decade ago. Despite being one of the fastest growing technology sectors in terms of capacity, the economics for many participants are deteriorating. Several major technology shifts will radically redefine the economics of the industry leading to slimmer margins for all but the most innovative, software-driven players. In essence, the future of storage is about storage software that increasingly absorbs intelligence that used to be hard-wired in a proprietary storage controller and array, which in turn is increasingly becoming an abundant pool of commodity disks. It is the pace of this transition that is at issue. In this report, we show how the different customer segments and associated workloads will evolve at different paces, and examine the associated opportunities for both incumbents and new market entrants. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
