On June 4 IBM acquired cloud computing infrastructure provider SoftLayer. This report analyzes the deal and discusses how the greater IT ecosystem will be affected and the benefits and challenges IBM now faces. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
News flash: The public cloud “ain’t all that,” says every cloud provider in the universe (except for Amazon Web Services.) Read more »
Joyent isn’t being coy about it: It wants to compete head on with Amazon and that means it will offer many more options including some, it says, are cheaper than analogous AWS services. Read more »
The private cloud world hasn’t been the same since OpenStack sucked the air out of the room. Here’s a look at the companies doing private cloud before OpenStack and how they’ve fared. Read more »
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 »
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 »
This quarter saw Amazon Web Services finally relaxing its public-cloud-only stance and launching services to support hybrid-cloud deployments. Meanwhile, Hadoop players moved to make their platforms more accessible to mainstream BI analysts and database administrators. A new quarterly report analyzes these trends and provides a near-term outlook. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new flock of vendors is offering capabilities that would enable private-to-public cloud bursting, or federation between clouds, to meet data privacy mandates, offer high availability to customers, and provide geographic reach. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Cloud computing provider Virtustream, a hot player in the enterprise cloud space, with a cloud platform designed for mission-critical and heavy-duty enterprise applications such as SAP, has raised another $15 million in investment capital. The money brings Virtustream’s total funding to $75 million. Read more »
Continuing a yearlong trend, the fourth quarter in big IT was all about big data, and Hadoop in particular. Still, many are beginning to recognize the software framework’s shortcomings, which is why this quarter also saw more attention for startups claiming easy analytics and real-time processing. Elsewhere in infrastructure, SaaS startups made out well and valuations for these companies are getting higher, and naturally there was news from the AWS camp. This quarterly wrap-up examines these events and more, including the quarter’s dark spot, the hike in prices in the hard-drive manufacturing space due to the floods in Thailand. Companies mentioned in this report include Calxeda, Heroku, Rackspace, Salesforce.com and Tier3. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Virtustream, a fast-growing enteprise cloud provider, is buying cloud-computing pioneer Enomaly for an undisclosed amount. Enomaly, which launched in 2003, sells one of the first private-cloud management products, Elastic Computing Platform, and in the last year launched an infrastructure resource exchange called SpotCloud. Read more »
Last quarter we highlighted the fast maturation of the Platform-as-a-Service and big data spaces. Those two trends only picked up speed during the third quarter of 2011. Joining them on the cusp of IT greatness, though, are the OpenStack project and flash storage. The former gathered serious validation from big-name companies, while the latter saw less funding than last quarter but a significant number of product launches. Of course, the third quarter wasn’t all lollipops and rose petals. We saw new computing technologies and delivery models such as tablets wreak havoc on both HP and Cisco, and there are concerns (aren’t there always?) about how the Internet will handle our increased use of streaming video and cloud computing. Unfortunately for HP and Cisco, the latter problem might be an easier fix than the strategic woes facing them. Additional companies mentioned in this report include CloudBees, Rackspace, Engine Yard and Joyent. For a full list of companies, and to read the full report, sign up for a free trial. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
It looks like Zynga’s infrastructure strategy is rubbing off on gaming startups. Digital Chocolate, purveyor of social games such as Millionaire City and Pro MMA Fighter, is following in Zynga’s footsteps of launching games in the cloud, then bringing them back in house when demand levels. Read more »
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 »
Virtustream, a cloud computing provider focused on hosting enterprise applications, has raised $10 million in a Series B round. The round was funded by existing investors Intel Capital, Columbia Capital, Noro-Moseley Partners, and TDFunds, which invested $49 million in Virtustream’s Series A round last year. Read more »
Cloud provider Tier3 announced this morning that it has secured $8.5 million from Ignition Capital and Madrona Venture Group to fund its “enterprise platform-as-a-service” offering, a term that might not be entirely accurate, but that might actually be indicative of a forthcoming trend in cloud marketing. Read more »
The second quarter of 2010 belonged to the little guys and the new guys. Almost across the board, from processors to virtualization to cloud services, relatively small vendors and startups had the market cornered on innovation and mindshare. And where there’s tinder in the forms of customer demand, products, funding and a greater societal movement toward environmentalism, something is bound to catch fire. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Internal clouds are real and they’re here, but many efforts are still in their early days. The problem is that transitioning to a cloud-enabled environment can involve large degrees of technical, cultural and budgetary evolution, and it is of utmost importance that organizations deploy the right solution.
With this in mind, customers need to consider many things, and we profiled numerous solutions and companies to create a guide for deploying the right cloud solution to the right enterprise. We examined cloud application platforms, hypervisor-based clouds, internal infrastructure-as-a-service clouds, and high-performance computing clouds, in addition to looking at hybrid cloud solutions and underlying server architecture. Companies profiled include Appistry, Red Hat, Microsoft, VMware and CA Technologies, among others. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Put simply, life is good for cloud computing and big data vendors because there’s plenty of money to be made. Whether it’s from VCs, big IT suitors or (gasp) customers, someone wants to invest in your vision. Want evidence? This week offered plenty. Read more »
Cloud computing has played a starring role in the technology press for two or three years, but it’s now moving from the haven of startups or random corporate side projects to the enterprise, so get ready for another round of acquisitions and investments. Read more »
