Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Maureen O’Gara.

Microsoft is buying Perceptive Pixel Inc. (PPI), which makes large-scale, multi-touch displays, a new hardware line for the software giant.

Terms were not disclosed. 3M is understood to be an investor in PPI.

Kurt DelBene, president of Microsoft’s Office Division, said in a statement Monday that "PPI’s large touch displays, when combined with hardware from our OEMs, will become powerful Windows 8-based PCs and open new possibilities for productivity and collaboration."…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: Steven D. Jones.

Cloud computing is lifting the cloud over software mergers.

Recently SAP AG SAP -1.15% bid $4.3 billion for Ariba Inc. ARBA -0.08% , a manager of online purchasing networks. A day after that announcement, Oracle Corp. ORCL -0.31% said it was buying privately held Vitrue Inc., a maker of cloud-based social marketing software, for an undisclosed sum. A couple of weeks later, Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.93% announced it would acquire social networking provider Yammer Inc. for $1.2 billion.

Even cloud companies are buying cloud companies. Salesforce.com Inc. CRM -3.34% announced it would purchase Buddy Media Inc. for $689 million. The company makes software that manages ad campaigns on social media such as Facebook FB +1.58% , Twitter and YouTube…

Grazed from TechTarget. Author: Clive Longbottom.

The advantages of private cloud services are plentiful. But so are its hurdles. Understanding its promises and problems right at the beginning is crucial to use cloud effectively. Otherwise, IT is just replacing one chaotic infrastructure with another.

Cloud computing services may be less fuzzy now for some IT pros who have worked out what it actually means and how it could work for them. But, for many, cloud computing is still a confusing term because of the conflicting messages from vendors, users and analysts. Your best bet is to learn all you can about private cloud services and its problems.

The promise of private cloud is reasonably simple: It has to do with moving from a one-application-per-physical-server (OAPPS) approach to a shared-resources model. This means that IT will be investing in fewer servers, storage systems and network equipment, and will improve business flexibility by reducing functional redundancy…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

The database category hasn’t been all that exciting over the past 20 years, with market leaders Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Sybase (now SAP trading off incremental updates every year or so. But that period of stasis ended with the advent of cloud computing, open source software and big data — a perfect storm that reinvigorated the field.

Now NuoDB, a new-look database company that seeks to take advantage of that convergence is taking in $10 million in Series B funding, led by Morgenthaler Ventures with additional contributions from existing backers Hummer Winblad Venture Partners and Longworth Venture Partners. The company also added database pioneer Gary Morgenthaler, a partner at Morgenthaler Ventures, to its board, joining another database luminary, Hummer Winblad partner Mitchell Kertzman…

Grazed from PC Advisor. Author: Ben Dyer.

Cloud computing is currently one of the most talked about topics for many business, for a large percentage of whom it is the perfect solution. For a startup, low costs and simple entry are appealing features – while large corporates have the clout to mould cloud services to their will. However there is a third, multi-million pound market for which the cloud may not suit. Visit: Business Advisor.

For mid-market online companies, though, all that glitters definitely isn’t gold. The cloud can become a nightmare for security, data privacy and more – and many are returning to standalone self-hosted solutions to bring control back into their own hands.

The complexities of choosing a cloud provider are numerous – issues such as security management, attack response and recovery, system availability and performance, the vendor’s financial stability and its ability to comply with the law all need to be considered. But should your business even be thinking about moving to the cloud at all?…

Grazed from RenewableEnergyWorld.com. Author: Richard Baillie.

Cloud computing, where software is delivered as a service to end users over the internet, is currently receiving a lot of attention. The term describes data-processing operations that are outsourced to server farms, instead of being powered on-site. These range from websites and remotely hosted networks, to digital storage space and individual documents.

Such are the developments, that software delivered over the web looks very similar to software operating on a personal computer, and is accessible from any computer in the world. Consequently, some IT sector analysts are predicting the death of the personal computer while others believe it will simply become another device to access the on-line world. Increasingly, the engine of the IT sector is composed of large-scale data servers that are driving the cloud-computing revolution forward. With regard to energy, cloud computing should result in lower costs for users and fewer greenhouse gas emissions by streamlining information-crunching into single facilities on speedy machines…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

‘Helix Nebula – the science cloud’, set up earlier this year to support the massive IT requirements of European scientists and create a cloud computing market for the public sector in Europe, has today announced the initial deployment of its first flagship applications in high energy physics, molecular biology and natural disaster recovery.

A collaboration between big science and big business, Helix Nebula joins the forces of leading IT providers and three of Europe’s leading research centres (CERN(1), EMBL(2), and ESA(3)), and has now received EUR1.8 million funding from the European Commission. The initiative strongly supports the Commission’s Digital Agenda for Europe: It stresses a unified approach to data protection regulations and lightweight, efficient governance; it also has ambitions to support European economic development by making its services available to the wider community.

First results of the initiative’s on-going Proof of Concept (PoC) phase now show that CERN, EMBL and ESA succeeded in deploying challenging scientific applications each involving tens of thousands of jobs running at data centres operated by Atos, CloudSigma and T-Systems…

Grazed from InfoWorld. Author: David Linthicum.

Despite some setbacks, such as the recent Amazon Web Services outages, cloud computing is beginning to cross from the experimental phase to production systems that businesses can rely on. This has not been an overnight occurrence: Enterprises have been quietly getting smart about cloud computing technology and applying it where appropriate.

Despite years of cloud hype by vendors, you rarely hear about enterprise successes. That’s because when enterprises make cloud computing work, they view the application of the technology as a trade secret of sorts, so there are no press releases or white papers. Indeed, if you see one presentation around a successful cloud computing case study, you can bet you’re not hearing about 100 more…

Grazed from CIOL. Author: Editorial Staff.

Considering the major industry buzz and media hype around cloud computing over the past three years, the actual uptake of the solution has not been warranted, finds Frost & Sullivan.

In a rush to maximise cloud revenue and attract customers, providers are now creating platform-as-a-service (PaaS) services that ride on top of their cloud infrastructure services, or underlie their cloud software services.

In addition to development platforms, providers are offering platforms that comprise functionality for delivery, administration, and integration of software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based software. Moreover, in the complex ecosystem that exists to deliver SaaS applications to business users, PaaS services represent an important jump-off point for collaboration and integration among multiple vendors and participants…