The lithium air battery has long been over hyped — now add a pot of gold to the end of that rainbow. Scientists at the University of Saint Andrews in Scotland have been using gold to make a prototype of a lithium air battery. Read more »
Organizations are coping with the challenge of processing unprecedented volumes of data. However, the processes involved with using a large cluster to run applications like Hadoop are error-prone. So IT managers are turning to cluster-management solutions to automate tasks associated with cluster creation, management and maintenance. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
If you’re reading this in Los Angeles right now, there’s a decent chance you’re doing so while stuck in traffic on a packed freeway. Well, help might be on the way if efforts from companies such as Xerox to make sense of traffic flows work out. Read more »
Remember when there were just two or three cloud computing platforms to choose from, and just about as many cloud databases? Well, as clouds have proliferated, so have the database services built on top of them. Here are the available services and where they’re running. Read more »
In cloud and big data, the second quarter of 2012 featured several high-profile deals and product launches that could reshape the marketplace for everyone. Google and Microsoft launched Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings, software-defined networking took off, and all eyes stayed fixed on the continuing promise of data analytics. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
The OpenStack cloud computing project turns two this week. That means the open-source project — which fancies itself the Linux of the cloud — is entering a critical stage of its development process. The opportunity is huge, but the challenges are too. Read more »
Slowly but surely, health care is becoming a killer app for big data. Whether it’s Hadoop, machine learning or natural-language processing, folks in the worlds of medicine and hospital administration understand that data is the key to helping them take their fields to the next level. Read more »
Hadoop is on its way to becomig the de facto platform for the next-generation of data-based applications, but it’s not without some flaws. Ironically, one of Hadoop’s biggest shortcomings right now is also one of its biggest strengths going forward — the Hadoop Distributed File System. Read more »
With the OpenStack project turning two years old soon amid what will no doubt be a ton of vendor-generated hoopla, Ignacio Llorente wants the world to know that the more mature OpenNebula open-source cloud continues to evolve, just with a lot less noise. Read more »
NuoDB has $10 million in Series B funding led by Morgenthaler Ventures and adds database pioneer Gary Morgenthaler to its board. The company will use the funding to widen the beta of its webscale database and get it out broadly this fall. Read more »
Software as a service is a great for deploying applications across a company. The flip side is that it ends up creating data silos across vendors. Roger Sippl’s Cloud Connection aims to bridge those silos so users can use their data as they see fit. Read more »
Somewhere in the mountains of Chile scientists want to build a telescope capable of taking roughly 1,400 photos daily of the night sky consisting of 6 gigabytes of information each. But getting all that data off the mountain will require better broadband and smarter algorithms. Read more »
Boston picked the brains of a gaggle of IBM engineers who came in to figure out how to consolidate and analyze existing traffic data feeds as well as new data sources including Twitter, to ease the city’s notorious traffic jams. Read more »
According to physicist Geoffrey West, the world’s cities have what one might call a growing problem. As they grow bigger, their problems grow worse, which means it takes an ever-faster pace of innovation to keep things in check. Big data techniques might provide the answer. Read more »
If you haven’t heard IBM Fellow Jeff Jonas talk about how the right algorithm can help you figure out who’s who among a sea of data points, you’re missing out. The good news is Jonas’s vision is now a product. Read more »
IBM’s Watson will team up with Memorial Sloan Kettering this fall and plans to launch in a handful of cancer care centers this year, but Dan Cerutti, IBM’s VP of Watson Commercialization, said today at GigaOM Structurethat Watson could be used in other fields too. Besides […] Read more »
As we move into the age of webscale and cloud computing the traditional data center architecture is blowing apart, according to execs of startups that have built new kinds of disruptive data center gear and software at the Structure conference on Wednesday in San Francisco. Read more »
Discussions about the cloud now involve more than just the IT department. New developments in hardware architectures, more-energy-efficient data centers, regulatory concerns and simplifying analytics are all discussions currently circling through the industry. Here’s what to consider when thinking about your business in the cloud. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Server giant HP promised new low energy servers — under the Project Gemini code name — based on Intel’s 64-bit Atom Centerton chips, actually systems on a chip or SoC. The servers, due late this year, can be modified to handle new workloads. Read more »
So your company is trying to be more social, leveraging new ways of communicating to break down barriers to collaboration and information sharing. Great, but what role should HR play in mandating or refereeing that process? IBM’s VP of social software weighs in. Read more »
We’re number 1! An IBM supercomputer topped the semi-annual list of the 500 top supercomputers for the first time in three years. Sequoia, an IBM BlueGene/Q System using 1,572,864 processor cores scored 16.32 petaflop/s on the Linpack Benchmark used to rate such things. Read more »
Microsoft’s reported deal to buy Yammer for its enterprise social networking savvy isn’t done yet, but the move — despite what many see as a too-hefty price tag — could make sense. Pairing Yammer with the Microsoft Office juggernaut could be a winner. Read more »
The world of information technology is always changing, but in the last six years it has started to change more rapidly. We celebrate the people who are orchestrating this change. Here’s ten innovators that are changing the game of Internet infrastructure. Read more »
Now six years old, the Apache Hadoop platform for storing and processing huge amounts of data, perhaps the catalyst of the current big data movement, appears ready for its closeup. According to the companies leading the Hadoop charge, they’re already beating away customers with a stick. Read more »
Wipro’s latest IT foray — a global infrastructure as a service for enterprises — shows how the giant Indian outsourcers are striving to become strategic cloud partners for their business clients and compete for cloud implementation money with IBM, CSC, as well as their in-country rivals. Read more »
IT professionals besieged by demands to support all manner of non-corporate tablets and smartphones in the workplace really want users to know that there’s a reason for their reluctance: BYOD, they say, isn’t easy in an era of cut-rate IT budgets. Read more »
Enterprises unnerved by the bring-your-own-device movement that many had promoted are now trying to lock down employees’ own devices for security purposes. The unintended consequence is that many of those employees, frustrated by these restrictions, just use unsanctioned devices instead. Read more »
IBM has made a lot of noise about its lithium air battery, which it says can hold as much energy in a given volume as gasoline can. But General Motors isn’t all that convinced that lithium air battery technology is worth the investment. Read more »
All right all you big data nerds — it’s time to suit up for the NIST’s Big Data workshop slated for next week. The event will focus on what state-of-the-art core technologies will drive big data and how to ensure accuracy of big data processes. Read more »
The adoption of tablets, social media and new interfaces and the changing nature of the TV itself mean the digital living room will continue on its path of rapid change, thanks to new ways of creating, viewing, bundling, distributing and selling content. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud storage player gets $13.6 million from newbie OpenView Venture Partners and existing investors with the conspicuous exception of Amazon, which ponied up $9M last time out. Sonian will use the money to bring CAD and medical images into its managed/searchable cloud service. Read more »
Consumers are feeling pretty perky about things going into Memorial Day, according to new IBM sentiment analysis. That means stores and hotels might have reason to smile over the holiday weekend, as people seem to want to travel — and shop — over the long weekend. Read more »
Cloud storage provider Box adds a more advanced administrative console, enterprise-wide search, enterprise license agreements and support for multiple email domains to its service. Enterprise features like these are a battle ground for cloud service providers trying to convince IT to make the cloud move. Read more »
Brocade joined the parade of vendors, large and small, trumpeting their software defined networking strategies. The company laid out a strategy that offers a Brocade-specific fabric as well as an ability to operate an OpenFlow network simultaneously with an existing network. Read more »
The bring-your-own-device trend may cause as many problems as it solves, according to IBM CIO Jeanette Horan. BYOD, in which companies let (even encourage) employees to use personal smartphones or tablets to access company applications, boosts productivity. It also causes big IT headaches. Read more »
With news that Google and Microsoft plan to take on Amazon Web Services with infrastructure services of their own, you have to ask: How many clouds do we need? Legacy vendors IBM, Microsoft and HP are hoping at least a couple more. Read more »
Welcome to the concept of the superstack — which acts to circumvent the openness that the Internet and the digitization of content has enabled and once again lock consumers into a single platform for their content determined in part by the hardware they choose. Read more »
E-procurement player Coupa Software netted $22 million in a Series E funding round led by new investor Crosslink Capital. Companies use Coupa’s cloud-based services to track supplier contracts and requisitions. Read more »
Ask a VC about big data and she will probably tell you about visualization of the user interface. We’re talking about intuitive UIs that let users visually work with data using charts and tools, not algorithms. It’s hard to do right, but the payoff could be huge. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
There are expected to be over 9 billion on the planet by 2050 and you can expect that to strain the world’s resources like energy, water and food. But big data tools will be able to help organizations track and attempt to solve this problem. Read more »
