CloudCow.com

Grazed from Talkin Cloud. Author: Chris Talbot.

Rackspace (NYSE: RAX) is the latest company to make an investment NoSQL database-as-a-service (DBaaS) provider Cloudant. The Rackspace investment of an undisclosed sum follows three months after Samsung Ventures made a similar strategic investment in the company.

According to a blog post by Pat Matthews, Rackspace's senior vice president of Corporate Development, the investment in Cloudant has been made to reinforce the important of DBaaS and to help developers spend their time on building new features rather than maintaining databases. That's where Cloudant's DBaaS comes into play. The service was designed to "let developers focus on new development and not on operations."...

Grazed from NetworkComputing. Author: David Hill.

One problem with multitenant public cloud environments is the "noisy neighbor" phenomenon, when one or more customers monopolize available resources and thus significantly degrade the performance of other customers' systems. One way to address this problem is via storage-based quality of service that provides defined service levels to all tenants. An infrastructure-as-a-service provider, CloudSigma, is using all-SSD arrays from SolidFire to create an architecture to eliminate noisy neighbors.

CloudSigma has decided to replace all of its Tier 1 primary storage hard disk arrays with SolidFire all-SSD arrays. In addition to this significant move, the company also offers solid-state drive storage at the same price as hard disk for the same capacity. How can CloudSigma do this when flash memory is more expensive on a per-unit basis than hard disk?...

Grazed from NetworkWorld. Author: Brandon Butler.

Google, attempting to build its reputation as an enterprise and developer-focused cloud computing provider, today said its cloud platform is open for anyone to signup for, and can be used with a new by-the-minute billing scheme. Google Compute Engine (GCE) is a pure-play infrastructure as a service (IaaS) offering that includes both virtual machine and storage pay-as-you-go resources. The service has been in limited beta – first available through invite-only, and then more recently only with a Gold Support package, which cost $400 per month. Today, GCE is open for shop in an “open preview,” meaning anyone can sign up to use it though. (Check out Google's cloud platform blog.)

In addition to the GCE news, Google also launched a cloud database for non-relational database, new security measures for its cloud, and support for a new language on its Google App Engine platform as a service (PaaS). “Over the last 14 years we have been developing some of the best infrastructure in the world to power Google’s global-scale services,” wrote Urs Hölzle, Google’s senior vice president for technical infrastructure at Google, and one of its chief cloud builders...

Grazed from BizTech2. Author: Editorial Staff.

According to the new International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Black Book just released, IT spending was slightly below expectations in the second half of 2012 and first quarter of 2013.
Economic uncertainty surrounding the US government sequester, European debt crisis and weakening GDP in China has resulted in volatile spending patterns across most segments of the market, with many IT vendors reporting difficulty in closing deals at the end of Q1 2013. IDC now projects worldwide IT spending growth of 4.9 percent this year in constant currency, down from the previous forecast of 5.5 percent growth and representing a slowdown from the 5.6 percent growth recorded in 2012. As a result, IT spending will reach $2.06 trillion in 2013. Including telecom services, ICT spending will increase by 4.5 percent to $3.7 trillion.

The strength of the US dollar may continue to have an adverse impact on the reported revenues of US-based IT vendors. In 2012, IT spending increased by just 2.9 percent in US dollars, a significant downturn from 9.5 percent US dollar growth in 2011. Based on average exchange rates from Q1 2013, this year’s growth is on track to increase by 4.2 percent in US dollar terms...

Grazed from BusinessWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The escalating number of attacks on web services in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which is one of the most spammed countries worldwide, has lent impetus to the cloud computing security market in the country. The growing use of cloud services in the next few years, especially in non-traditional verticals such as retail and logistics, will drive the demand for cloud computing security solutions in the country.

Upcoming analysis from Frost & Sullivan (http://www.networksecurity.frost.com), State of Cloud Computing Security in the UAE, finds that the market earned revenues of more than $8.7 million in 2012 and estimates this to reach $72.3 million by 2019. Large enterprises are set to be the chief revenue generators for cloud security suppliers in the long run. To get more insights on Frost & Sullivan strategic recommendations for the Cloud Computing Security Market in the UAE and view a recording of the recently hosted complimentary Webinar, click here...

Grazed from WKZO.com. Author: Alistair Barr.

Apptio, a start-up that helps big companies like Boeing Co track billions of dollars in technology spending, said on Wednesday that it raised $45 million from institutional investment firms including Janus Capital Group. T. Rowe Price; The Hillman Company, the investment firm of billionaire Henry Hillman; and existing venture capital backers including Andreessen Horowitz, Greylock Partners and Madrona Venture Group, also invested.

Apptio, led by Chief Executive Sunny Gupta, has raised a total of $136 million so far. The previous funding round valued Apptio at about $600 million and this latest round was a "significant" increase on that, Gupta said, while declining to give a specific number...

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Chris Talbot.

GigaSpaces Technologies is has launched a new testing and development service designed for OpenStack-based clouds and aimed at taming even the most complex, multi-tier big data applications. The new service is now available as a free cloud-based services on both GigaSpaces' own Cloudify platform, as well as on HP Cloud Services (NYSE:HPQ).

Cloudify Player is meant to make testing and development as simple as playing a video on YouTube, according to the company. The service's source code is available as an open source project on Github and was developed in collaboration with HP Cloud Services...

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

The Cloud Security Alliance (CSA), a not-for-profit organization with a mission to promote the use of best practices for providing security assurance within Cloud Computing, today announced at the CSA APAC Congress that its APAC region leadership team has published its research roadmap for 2013-2014. The research roadmap is being led by Dr. Ryan Ko, CSA APAC Research Advisor and a Senior Lecturer with the Computer Science department as well as the leader of the Cyber Security Lab with the University of Waikato.

Under the strategic guidance of Dr. Ko along with support from other strategic advisors and chapter leaders, CSA APAC will focus its research agenda on four key areas over the course of the next year:...

Grazed from Compliance Week. Author: Bruce Carton.

The SEC brings dozens of financial fraud cases each year. Usually the cases involve companies that, in an effort to make the numbers expected of them by investors, violate GAAP in order to recognize more revenue, hide expenses, inflate assets, etc. In most cases, of course, there is an underlying business at these companies that management is trying to make look better than it really is through financial shenanigans. But not always!

Sometimes, as in the case the SEC filed last week against Subaye, Inc. and James T. Crane, the supposed business is simply non-existent. In a complaint filed May 8, 2013, the SEC alleges that although Subaye represented to investors, its auditors and the SEC that it was operating a cloud computing business with thousands of customers, over 1,400 sales and marketing employees and revenues of $39 million, an investigation found that this business was completely "imaginary."...

Grazed from BAI. Author: T. Lacoma.

According to reports from Bloomberg, CRN and other sources, computer group Lenovo is in talks to purchase the IBM server division. This would be the second major IBM purchase that Lenovo has made in the past several years as IBM focuses more on core competencies and Lenovo expands into tablets, smartphones and business storage equipment. While the first IBM deal gave Lenovo PC power and propelled the Chinese computer maker to the second-largest producer of personal computers in the world, acquiring the server division could concentrate the business on more corporate markets, especially markets interested in cloud computing investment.

Traditionally, the IBM server division has sold x86 processor servers, which are designed primarily for mid-sized to large companies looking for inexpensive data storage and network options. More cloud computing means more server storage, especially for major cloud computing companies like Amazon and Google. As a result, finding low-cost, low-energy servers is a key goal for such cloud providers, and the IBM servers aim to meet the demand...