Here we go again: big changes coming to Microsoft
Microsoft is noted for big reorgs when it’s behind in a key market or markets. Well, it looks like that time is near again, according to yet another report. Read more »
Microsoft will offer Azure by the minute to take on Amazon’s cloud
At TechEd, Microsoft will keep pitching that Azure running in Microsoft data centers and Windows Server and Systems Center running at customer sites is the best of the hybrid cloud universe. Read more »
The week in cloud: Can Windows Azure disrupt Amazon’s cloud? Stay tuned.
photo: Shutterstock / Gena96
The public cloud computing landscape gets more interesting with Microsoft pushing its new Windows Azure infrastructure services vs. Amazon (and Google.) Read more »
AWS is the McDonald’s of the cloud. Who’s the Burger King?
photo: Wikipedia Commons
It’s easy to characterize the cloud computing market as being Amazon Web Services’ to lose, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. McDonald’s dominates the fast food world, but life isn’t exactly bad for its dozens of competitors. Read more »
As Amazon, Google, Microsoft beat each others brains in, who wins? The user
photo: Official U.S. Navy Imagery
It may not be pleasant for the competitors, but cloud competition is nothing but good for cloud consumers — whether they’re startups or Fortune 100 companies. Read more »
Amazon cloud watcher Newvem now watches Azure too
With Amazon beefing up its own AWS monitoring tools, it makes sense for companies like Newvem to take on other clouds. That’s just what Newvem is doing. Read more »
Google I/O: Arming for the battle of the public cloud stars
Whether or not Google officially rolls out its GCE public cloud to all takers this week, GCE will take on AWS and Windows Azure for market- and mind-share going forward. Read more »
The week in cloud: Google picks Debian; AWS console for Windows; Adobe faces wrath
photo: Shutterstock / Gena96
Google picked Debian as the default OS for the Google Compute Engine; AWS builds console to enable Windows IT admins to manage on-prem and AWS workloads, Adobe feels artists’ ire. Read more »
Laggard Rackspace growth sparks concern: is there enough cloud biz to go around?
photo: Flickr / mnsc
There are lots of potential cloud workloads out there but there are also about a zillion clouds. Is there really enough paid work to support them all? Read more »
Long a cloud kingpin, Amazon now fighting back against AWS competition
photo: Jordan Novet
Amazon Web Services’ 2013 San Francisco summit kicked off with boastful words about the public-cloud leader. Read more »
At long last, Microsoft is ready to compete head on with Amazon Web Services
Microsoft Windows Azure GM Bill Hilf calls Amazon a competitor, a partner and a neighbor: But that won’t stop Microsoft from launching an IaaS price war against Amazon Web Services. Read more »
Amazon is the cloud to beat, but Google has the cloud to watch. Here’s why.
So who will be number two in public cloud after Amazon Web Services? Smart money is now on Google Compute Engine. With caveats, of course. Read more »
Microsoft Azure storage ends the week with a bang — and not in a good way
photo: Flickr / getinet
Microsoft Azure, which started the week with kudos as the best cloud storage service, is down and out on Friday. Read more »
Who’s the best cloud storage provider? Microsoft, says Nasuni; but it still likes Amazon
photo: Flickr / Carlos Gutiérrez G.
Evaluation of five cloud storage providers showed improvement across the board, but Microsoft leapfrogged the rest — including Amazon S3 — in some criteria, says Nasuni’s Connor Fee. Read more »
This week in cloud: Office 365 goes down and Microsoft stocks up Azure store
photo: Shutterstock / winui
Another week of high-profile outages may spook some prospective cloud users but Amazon Web Services strength shows the appeal of cloud. And Microsoft keeps adding Windows Azure options. Read more »
SendGrid adds Parse, Stackmob, Azure integrations
SendGrid is inching towards ubiquity with new integrations to Parse, Stackmob and Windows Azure mobile backend services. SendGrid is popular with developers who want easy email integration for their mobile apps and who don’t want to rely too much on Amazon services. Read more »
CloudVelocity gets $5M to move biz apps to public clouds
photo: Flickr / karindalziel
Mayfield Fund is backing CloudVelocity’s hybrid cloud automation vision to the tune of $5 million in Series A funding. CloudVelocity’s very bold promise is that it will move your existing enterprise apps to a public cloud and run them there securely. Read more »
Storage: the crack cocaine of cloud computing
photo: Flickr / getinet
Storage price slashing continues as Microsoft meets cuts Google and Amazon traded last week. There’s method in this madness — lots of businesses have yet to test the cloud, and cheap storage is a way to attract those newbies. And once they’re hooked, watch out! Read more »
Ray Ozzie’s renamed startup Talko nets $4M
Former Microsoft chief software architect Ray Ozzie is still working on his super-stealthy mobile startup Talko, only now he has $4 million more to fund whatever it is he’s doing. Read more »
Apprenda gets the hybrid cloud religion
photo: Apprenda
Apprenda, a true believer in private Platform as a Service, is embracing the hybrid cloud with its latest release. CEO Sinclair Schuller said many companies are ready to test out at least some workloads in a public cloud. Read more »
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How search can unlock the power of big data
Big data tools such as Cassandra and Hadoop are transforming how data is stored and exploited at scale. But without similarly capable search technologies, enterprise adopters face challenges when it comes to gaining insights from that data. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Microsoft takes Azure to China
photo: Flickr / brandnliu
Chasing a potentially huge market, Microsoft has inked a pact with the municipality of Shanghai and with ISP 21Vianet to offer Windows Azure services in China. The deal could be huge but also problematic, given problems Google and other U.S. companies have had in China. Read more »
Now that Halo 4 will run on Windows Azure, what’s next?
The next release of Microsoft’s popular Halo game will run on the company’s own Windows Azure platform-as-a-service. Inquiring minds want to know when more of the company’s bread-and-butter services will follow suit. Read more »
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Data markets: in search of new business models
A number of new data markets have emerged in the past few years that provide access to data for decision making. It’s early days, however, with plenty of kinks to work out on both the technology side and with business models. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Google: App Engine is energy efficient & carbon neutral
Buying IT services should be the opposite of how you buy produce: “No you don’t want to consume your IT locally. Trust us,” says Google’s Peter Magnusson. That’s because products like Google’s platform as a service App Engine are energy efficient and carbon neutral. Read more »
Microsoft opens Office and SharePoint up to web developers
With the next release of Office and SharePoint, developers can build add-ons that run in Windows Azure (or Amazon, or other clouds.) A bigger question is when Office and SharePoint themselves will make the transition into Microsoft’s multi-billion-dollar cloud. Microsoft still isn’t saying. Read more »
Microsoft updates explanation of Azure outage
Microsoft issued a fuller explanation late Thursday for the 2 hour outage that afflicted Windows Azure in Europe a week ago. If vendors want to bring more businesses into their respective clouds they need to be fully forthcoming about operational issues and their causes. Read more »
Microsoft pins Azure outage on network miscue
A misconfigured network device caused Windows Azure to crash and burn in Europe yesterday. In a blog post, Microsoft said it is still digging into the root cause of the outage and will report back next week. Read more »
Google Talk is silenced
The popular Google Talk app is down for most users on Thursday morning. This snafu, which cut many people off from their instant messaging/video chat app of choice, along with today’s WIndows Azure snafu in Europe, show the dark side of cloud computing. Read more »
Windows Azure outage hits Europe
For anyone needing a reminder that no computing cloud is perfect — Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud went down in Europe on Thursday. Few details are available, but Microsoft says it’s on the case. Read more »
AppFog lets you pick your cloud, (almost) any cloud
For companies wanting to put workloads on a public cloud without having to sweat the details, Appfog has a bold proposition. It says its new PaaS will abstract out all that annoying tweaking and tuning for loads running on Amazon, Rackspace, Microsoft or HP clouds. Read more »
For its new cloud, Google learns old tricks
For years, tech vendors built complicated partner programs to sell, support and maintain their stuff and break into new markets. Now Google, Amazon are following suit with new-look partner programs. The goal is to bring new customer business into their respective clouds. Read more »
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Takeaways from the second quarter in cloud and data
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 »
Take that, vCloud: Microsoft opens Windows Azure to web hosts
It looks like Microsoft is serious about becoming the operating system for cloud computing. At its Worldwide Partner Conference on Tuesday, the company announced what amounts to a white-label version of its Windows Azure cloud platform targeting current Windows Server-based web hosts. Read more »
Microsoft’s Nadella: We will democratize big data
photo: Pinar Ozger
Microsoft plans to bring big data to the little guy, said Satya Nadella, the executive directing the company’s gigantic Windows Azure cloud effort. It’s backend work with Hadoop is a big piece, but the linkage to Excel will bring big data to the masses. Read more »
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Cloud computing infrastructure: 2012 and beyond
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 »
Microsoft Azure gets a big assist from small PaaS companies
Windows Azure, Microsoft’s huge platform-as-a-service, is getting a big boost from Appfog and Apprenda, two small PaaSes that will make it easier to run hybrid clouds using Azure back-end services. That addresses a concern among business customers that want to run apps in house. Read more »
Mobilize.net aims to renew .NET apps for mobile, cloud use
Mobilize.net aims to bring .NET applications to the Azure (or other) cloud and to the mobile devices of the customer’s choice. The company knows from Windows and .NET — between them, its CEO and VP of business development spent 40 years at Microsoft. Read more »
Microsoft puts Azure accelerator in Bangalore to woo startups
In its push to get traction for Windows Azure as a platform for cloud services, Microsoft is opening an Azure accelerator in Bangalore. The goal is to find and help startups across India and Southeast Asia — and get them aboard the Microsoft PaaS. Read more »
Scoop: Google, Microsoft both targeting Amazon with new clouds
Google is hard at work on a cloud computing offering that will compete directly with the popular Amazon EC2 cloud, I have been told, although Microsoft probably will beat it to the punch. The timing for Google is TBD, while Microsoft should announce on June 7. Read more »
