Wanted: More jobs for Watson
photo: IBM
IBM’s always on the look out for new challenges for Watson to tackle. Two dozen teams of USC students recently had 48 hours to create their own business plans for the technology. Read more »
Who’s the biggest cloud of all? The numbers are in
Synergy Research ranked the top Iaas, PaaS and CDN providers by revenue for the fourth quarter. Some of the findings might surprise you. Read more »
Rackspace gussies up private cloud with new OpenCenter dashboard
Rackspace says its new dashboard, part of its latest OpenStack-based private cloud release, will speed up cloud rollouts and configuration tasks by adding point-and-click capabilities for enteprise users. Read more »
Finally: IBM drops the other OpenStack shoe
At its Pulse conference this week, Big Blue is finally providing some details about its OpenStack cloud implementation plans. Read more »
Watson goes to college: How the world’s smartest PC will revolutionize AI
photo: IBM
IBM’s Watson made waves in AI when it defeated a pair of champions on Jeopardy! Now, engineering students at RPI, Watson’s new home, hope to use the supercomputer to gain fresh insights into machine learning. Read more »
Big data can improve websites, cut energy bills, save lives
photo: Jordan Novet
Use cases at the Strata conference show that information gleaned from Hadoop and other big data technologies can bring companies new revenue streams and cut expenditures. Read more »
This week’s 10 best data stories (so far)
There has been a lot of data news already this week — some big, some interesting, and some both. Here’s a collection of the stuff you shouldn’t, or don’t want to, miss. Read more »
The growth and promise of the LED market
LED production has grown tremendously, accompanied by a significant fall in prices that will further propel the sale of this energy-efficient digital-lighting technology. But challenges remain on the road to widespread adoption. Figuring out ways to use power efficiently for lighting will be crucial for a future when the world’s population will likely be much larger. Read more »
IBM plugs big data capabilities into Deutsche Telekom’s M2M infrastructure for smarter cities
The two companies have signed a partnership aimed at providing municipalities with tools for making their cities, in particular their transport systems, smarter and more efficient. Read more »
IBM’s mobile first plan is really about cloud first. That’s all you need to know
photo: IBM
IBM’s mobile first strategy is not only about mobile, but about IBM’s attempt to remake the entire IT infrastructure at many companies to use the cloud, data, and real-time nature of social networks to serve customers. Read more »
Amazon gets (more) serious about the enterprise. No kidding
photo: Shutterstock/ tommistock
The fact that Amazon Web Services is targeting enterprise accounts is nothing new. The company’s just getting more blatant about it. Read more »
This week in cloud: Amazon upsets Apple; NTT backs Cloud Foundry; cloud taxes in dispute
photo: Shutterstock / Gena96
Amazon is numero uno in consumer appeal, beating out even Apple and Google, according to Harris Interactive. Also, Cloud Foundry gets big backer in NTT and states reconsider sales taxes on cloud services. Read more »
Watch out HP, IBM, Teradata, Oracle: Amazon Redshift is here
photo: Barb Darrow
Can Amazon take on the giants of data warehousing and win? Now we’ll be able to find out as its Paraccel-based Redshift service comes online. Read more »
Salesforce re-does Do with Dropbox, Google integrations
Salesforce.com’s Do is morphing into Do More with easy links to Google Drive, Dropbox, Harvest, Wufoo, Contactually and Desk.com Read more »
Dropbox gets more IT friendly with better controls
Dropbox wants you to know it’s serious about winning business users and has beefed up Dropbox for Teams admin capabilities to ease IT concerns. Read more »
Watson now officially fighting cancer, from the cloud
photo: IBM
IBM is turning Watson loose on lung cancer, offering up a cloud-based service designed to let doctors from around the country find the best-possible treatments for their patients. Read more »
Box trots out IBM, Oracle integrations to boost its enterprise cred
As enterprise software companies build their own Box functionality, Box is wooing them to integrate with its own file-share-sync-and collaboration service. Read more »
IBM adds analytics-specific boxes to PureSystems line
IBM is introducing a PureSystems box for analyzing big data, and the New York Stock Exchange is a customer. But other infrastructure vendors make comparable boxes, and cloud options are also available. Read more »
IBM buys big-data analytics company Star Analytics
IBM on Friday announced its plan to acquire big data analytics company Star Analytics. The IT vendor has already spent more than $16 billion on big data and analytics acquisitions since 2005. Read more »
Data for dummies: 6 data-analysis tools anyone can use
Not everyone is drowning in big data or has the know-how to deal with it if they were. Here are six free web services that help mere mortals analyze and visualize their own data. Read more »
NY Times: The Chinese hacked us!
photo: Getty Images / Mario Tama
The Gray Lady said Chinese hackers broke into its systems repeatedly over the last 4 months as the company published an expose on Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Read more »
Bringing big data to bear on big security
photo: Shutterstock / mkabakov
Vendors from tiny startups to giants like RSA, IBM and Cisco are rushing to incorporate big data expertise to beef up IT security. Read more »
IBM gives small university a Watson all its own
photo: IBM
IBM is giving Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York its own Watson system similar to the one that crushed its human competitors on Jeopardy!. The goal is to give Watson new skills and push it into new industries. Read more »
Yahoo vets back Tomfoolery to put some pizzazz in enterprise software
Tomfoolery aims to make enterprise apps mobile and fun; now it has $1.7 million from Jerry Yang, Brad Garlinghouse and others to get started. Read more »
This week in cloud: VMware-EMC shuffle and Cisco-Netapp tighten ties
photo: Flickr / akakumo
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 »
GE to IBM: Watch your data, we are coming
photo: Flickr/ Bleucho
General Electric, the massive industrial conglomerate, will not be content to let IT leaders like IBM and Google hog all the glory in the internet of things era. Read more »
IBM says its cloud biz is growing like crazy but provides no real numbers
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 »
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The fourth quarter of 2012 in cloud
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 »
SAP marries transaction processing with analytics by putting Business Suite on Hana
SAP’s customers, used to running its enterprise software on the likes of Oracle, now have an in-house in-memory alternative. It’s a bid for relevance on SAP’s part and, according to chairman Hasso Plattner, mobile is the big driver. Read more »
How HR can make the case for workforce analytics
Helping to redefine this talent management is workforce analytics, a powerful combination of highly sophisticated computer algorithms and predictive models. Linking this market to business success can help HR professionals convince corporate bean counters to bankroll the crunching of human-capital data. Read more »
The 2013 task management tools market
The task-management market is growing, in part because users need to coordinate with teams via mobile. In this case, heavier-weight solutions like Yammer, IBM Connections, and Podio don’t always suffice. But the demand for digital to-do lists that can be shared across project teams is increasing. Read more »
All computing isn’t equal: Here are the four types
photo: Flickr user Keith Ellwood
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 »
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How to compete with Facebook in 2013
Specialist networks cater to diverse consumer segments, but Facebook’s sheer ubiquity means 94 percent of all social networkers use it. The bottom line: If any generalist network is going to gain mass-market traction, it will be at the expense of Facebook, not in addition to it. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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How direct-access solutions can speed up cloud adoption
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 »
This year in cloud: Amazon-almost-all-the-time and the other 5 top stories of 2012
photo: Flickr / karindalziel
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 »
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Big data 2013: key trends and companies to watch
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 »
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Social 2013: The enterprise strikes back
With investment souring on consumer-focused companies, 2013 will be more about the social enterprise, with a different set of companies driving innovation and perhaps a little disruption. Look for the likes of Salesforce.com, Jive Software, and other enterprise players to make headlines in the new year. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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Cloud computing 2013: how to navigate without a map
The way the industry will use cloud-computing technology in 2013 will require following the existing adoption patterns and trends into the New Year. Those trends include the rise of standards, big data’s role in the cloud, industry-specific clouds, security, and more. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Real “touch” screens and tasteful computers: IBM predicts the future
photo: Barb Darrow
IBM’s latest “5 in 5″ list picks technologies the IT giant feels will hit the mainstream in the next 5 years. Its 2012 choices all center on richer data input and output that give computers the ability to taste, smell, touch, and feel. Read more »
EMC follows VMware, rest of world into OpenStack
With the storage leader now formally aboard the OpenStack Foundation, it’s almost easier to count the IT vendors who have not climbed aboard this open-source cloud bandwagon. Read more »
