PernixData nets $20M to virtualize your server-side flash
The self-proclaimed VMware of server-side flash now has more money to build out enterprise-class sales and marketing staff and to add features to its software. Read more »
It’s Larry’s world, we only live in it
Love him or hate him, Oracle CEO, billionaire, America’s Cup aficianado Larry Ellison is nothing if not interesting. Read more »
SAP to world: We’re a cloud company, no really!
To the surprise of very few, SAP plans to put make its HANA analytical database available as a cloud service. Read more »
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How to manage big data without breaking the bank
In the tsunami of experimentation, investment, and deployment of systems that analyze big data, vendors have seemingly been trying approaches at two extremes—either embracing the Hadoop ecosystem or building increasingly sophisticated query capabilities into database management system (DBMS) engines.For some use cases, there appears to be room for a third approach that lies between the extremes and borrows from the best of each. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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Sector RoadMap: Social customer service in 2013
“Social customer service” refers to those services that provide customer support via social media channels. Providing such services is no longer merely a niche or specialty sideline. Challengers, or disruptors who were early with the new technology, are working to expand and integrate their offerings into enterprise systems and processes. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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Building energy management systems: overview and forecast
Although there has been a focus on energy efficiency in commercial buildings for some years, the BEMS market can still be considered nascent. The landscape of new entrants, new technologies, and new methodologies is expanding rapidly, and even well-established market leaders are finding new ways to present and market their businesses. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
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Cloud and data first-quarter 2013: analysis and outlook
Cloud computing is finally starting to add value to business, as those in charge of cloud within enterprises are moving from talking to doing. That much was very evident in the first quarter of 2013. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Marketing automation boom continues with Marketo’s $75 million IPO filing
photo: Flickr/401(K) 2012
Marketo’s filing for an initial public offering is just the latest in a flurry of activity in the super-hot marketing automation space; stay tuned for more. Read more »
DataStax pushes NoSQL into Europe with new London-based subsidiary
Having realized that 10 percent of its customer base is in the EMEA region, DataStax has launched a subsidiary there to further push its bundle of Hadoop, Cassandra and Solr. Read more »
FWIW, Mark Hurd squelches Dell rumors
Oracle co-president Mark Hurd, in response to a question, indicates zero interest in becoming Dell CEO. Blackstone Group reportedly had Hurd on its short list of prospective picks should it win the Dell deal. Read more »
Oracle woes add up to more than a slacker salesforce
IT powers, including Oracle, face big time challenges as enterprise accounts reject old buying models and vendor lockin. Read more »
Oracle server revenue slides (again)
photo: Flickr / Peter Kaminski
Whoops. Oracle revenue from sales of Exadata, Exalogic, et. al fell again — 23 percent — in its third quarter compared to the year ago period. Read more »
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Sector RoadMap: SQL-on-Hadoop platforms in 2013
Today’s most successful companies are the ones with the ability to capture and analyze all data available to them. Enter SQL-on-Hadoop solutions, which increase the accessibility of Hadoop and allow organizations to reuse their investment learning in SQL. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Meet OX Text, a collaborative, non-destructive alternative to Google Docs
OX Text, which comes from former OpenOffice developers, will emerge in a couple of weeks as part of Open-Xchange’s app suite for service providers, although it will also be free to use under open-source licenses. Read more »
Microsoft buys into multi-lingual social analytics with Netbreeze acquisition
photo: Flickr / ToddABishop
Netbreeze promises to bring multi-lingual access and analysis to Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube streams via Microsoft Dynamics CRM. Read more »
Death of an IT salesman
photo: Shutterstock Peshkova
Enterprises have already started to change the way they buy IT but we’re still in the midst of a massive multi-year transformation. And that should worry vendors like EMC, IBM, Oracle, Microsoft and VMware. Read more »
Oracle buys private-cloud pioneer Nimbula
Oracle’s acquisition of Nimbula gives it some needed private-cloud savvy and a toehold in the OpenStack camp — should it choose to keep Nimbula’s product around. Read more »
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How fourth-quarter 2012 will affect IT spending in 2013
Worldwide IT spending finished out 2012 with a growth rate of 3.8 percent over 2011, the lowest growth rate since 2009. Fourth-quarter 2012 earnings reports and guidance were notable in their lack of any decisively positive news to raise 2013 spending expectations much. Those optimistic about […] Read more at GigaOM Pro »
How not to rank countries in terms of ‘cloud readiness’
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The Business Software Alliance has released its annual ‘Global Cloud Scorecard’. Given the source and ranking criteria, the results need to be taken with a bucket of salt. Read more »
Whatever happened to Oracle’s server business?
Oracle’s revenue from servers was down 18 percent year over year in the fourth quarter, according to Gartner and IDC. So far, the company’s high-stakes gamble on hardware isn’t paying off. Read more »
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How to use big data to make better business decisions
Companies are rushing to embrace the promise of big data to understand both their businesses and the ways in which customers interact with them. But effective data-based decisions are not made in response to simplistic data reporting; they are made in response to considered and ongoing data analysis. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Hacking Sand Hill: How the cloud will help security startups lure VCs
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Online security is big business, and is only increasing as private data moves to the public cloud. So while it’s a tough market to break into, there are also great opportunities for focused startups. Read more »
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff is still in a buying mood
photo: Rani Molla
Marc Benioff says SaaS leader will continue to buy companies and technologies — and also build internally — to bolster its marketing and services businesses. Read more »
Amazon gets (more) serious about the enterprise. No kidding
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The fact that Amazon Web Services is targeting enterprise accounts is nothing new. The company’s just getting more blatant about it. 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 »
Developers rejoice! Vagrant finds a home in the Amazon cloud
Hashicorp was already extending Vagrant into VMware virtualized environments and now it’s adding a connection into Amazon Web Services as well. This is good news for developers. 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 »
How to keep innovation alive in the smart grid
Keeping the innovation ecosystem alive in the smart grid will depend on the big players like Silver Spring taking an active role working with startups. Read more »
This week in cloud: Amazon builds up; OpenStack staffs up; Oracle updates “faux” cloud
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Amazon is reportedly on-board for a new data center build-out in Virginia; OpenStack Foundation preps for new year with board elections; another analyst declares Oracle’s cloud as a non-cloud. 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 »
Why big data will be even bigger in 2013
GigaOM Research analysts Jo Maitland and George Gilbert discuss the cloud in 2013: what to know, who to watch, and crazy predictions for the coming months. Read more »
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 »
Infusionsoft rakes in $54M to automate marketing for small businesses
photo: Shutterstock/Helder Almeida
Marketing automation SaaS vendors remain hot properties. Oracle bought Eloqua for $871 million, Hubspot nabbed a $35 million mezzanine round, and now Infusionsoft has $54M in fresh cash from Goldman Sachs and others to attack the small business audience. Read more »
This year in cloud: Amazon-almost-all-the-time and the other 5 top stories of 2012
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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 »
Amazon’s super-duper data pipeline is now ready for its close-up
photo: Barb Darrow
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 »
Oracle beefs up marketing applications savvy with $871M buy of Eloqua
For its $871 million buyout of Eloqua, Oracle will get more marketing automation expertise and access to more than 1,000 customers. The deal is expected to close in the first half of 2013 and continues Oracle’s fourth quarter buying spree. Read more »
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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 »
Ellison: “Guys, hardware’s a great business, really!”
Despite the hype around its high-end engineered “Exa” systems, Oracle hardware revenue continued to swoon in the second quarter when it was off 23 percent year over year. But, CEO Larry Ellison said that the company has just about turned the corner. Read more »
