Grazed from VentureBeat. Author: Jordan Novet.

Cloudways, a startup that sets up and manages components for applications on top of cloud-computing infrastructure, has learned that developers want to try out the Google Compute Engine public cloud. So Cloudways is adding support for it, even though it’s still young in comparison with, say, Amazon Web Services (AWS).

“They have slashed their prices drastically — by 40 or 50 percent — and are trying to give a hard time to AWS,” cofounder Aaqib Gadit told VentureBeat in an interview. The price cuts have brought more attention to the Google cloud, Gadit said, but it’s got “many, many complex options.” So it makes sense for Cloudways to simplify application deployment on Google…

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

Once again, IBM received more patents than any other company in the world over the past year, and again Big Blue broke a record for the number of patents received in a year. IBM announced that it received a record 7,534 patents in 2014—marking the 22nd consecutive year that the company topped the annual list of U.S. patent recipients.

IBM inventors earned an average of more than 20 patents per day in 2014, propelling the company to become the first to surpass more than 7,000 patents in a single year. The company’s record-setting 2014 patent output was led by more than 3,000 patents—40 percent of its annual total—covering a range of cloud computing, analytics, mobile, social and security inventions…

Grazed from SysConMedia. Author: Liz Macmillan.

Citrix announced on Monday that is has completed its acquisition of Sanbolic, a provider of workload-oriented storage virtualization technologies. Sanbolic technology enables customers to software-define storage to optimize the delivery of application-specific workloads, from any media type – SSD, Flash and hard drives in NAS, SAN, server-side and cloud deployments – improving storage load balancing, application availability and delivering the highest-performance end-user experience.

The acquisition of this robust set of workload-oriented infrastructure technologies, combined with its XenDesktop, XenApp and XenMobile products, enables Citrix to develop a range of differentiated solutions. These solutions will improve the economics and reduce the complexity of Windows application delivery and virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) deployments…

Grazed from TechTimes. Author: Quienten Plummer.

Microsoft’s presence in GameStop stores is moving beyond Xbox consoles. The company will prop up in-store beacons pushing video and promotions via the Azure cloud to customers’ mobile devices as they shop in the retailer’s brick-and-mortar stores. Microsoft is the latest company to sign on as a partner in the GameStop Technology Institute (GTI). Microsoft’s Azure cloud will also fuel employee tablets with customer data.

The "magic" begins as soon as a customer enters a GameStop location and an Azure-connected beacon pushes a "digital welcome message" to a shopper’s device. The welcome message will detail in-store promotions and deliver a map of the store’s other beacons, which will serve up game trailers and other product data…

Grazed from CloudWedge. Author: Hadley Jones.

At the beginning, cloud computing was the promise of additional, more affordable IT resources for many organizations. Flexible, scalable and pay-as-you-went, cloud computing was the ideal add-on to cope with data growth and in-house servers that were struggling with workloads. On top of the infrastructure resources being offered, providers also created innovative business applications. IT power that had hitherto been reserved for only the largest corporations became available to the mid-sized and the small businesses too. Now the opportunity is open to beat the competition by not just bolting these online resources onto what you already have, but by directly basing your business in the cloud.

Not Just Cost Advantage, but Strategic Too

While cloud computing can be a better IT solution per se, there’s much more to be gained too. Cloud and collaboration go together. Opening up business processes to third parties (with appropriate security, of course) can reinforce partnerships, cement customer loyalty and increase business resilience…

Grazed from EnterpriseTech. Author: George Leopold.

IBM said Monday (January 12) it has been awarded more than 7,500 patents in 2014, including more than 3,000 related to cloud computing, data analytics and online security. The company also took credit for topping the annual list of U.S. patent recipients for the twenty-second consecutive year.

Since 2010, IBM claimed it has more than doubled the number of patented technologies in sectors like cloud computing and big data. Of these, more than 500 covered emerging computing technologies that could help propel its Watson cognitive computing effort. The annual patent race underscores the growing importance of intellectual property as the coin of the technology realm…

Grazed from BusinessWeek. Author: Aaron Ricadela.

SAP SE reported fourth-quarter cloud-computing sales that beat analysts’ estimates as more users of traditional business software bought programs delivered through the Internet. The shares rose the most in more than a year. Revenue from cloud subscriptions and support rose 72 percent to 360 million euros ($426 million), the world’s largest maker of business-management software said today, citing preliminary figures.

That exceeded the 319.6 million-euro average estimate compiled by Bloomberg. Software and related services revenue, which captures newer cloud products, traditional on-premise software as well support sales, rose 8 percent to 4.73 billion euros, also topping estimates. The numbers show that Chief Executive Officer Bill McDermott is convincing clients to add cloud products to the SAP software they already run in their data centers…

Grazed from TheStreet. Author: Rebecca Borison.

For the first time in Golden Globes history, an online streaming service took home an award, sidestepping the old media giants. Amazon’s (AMZN) original show Transparent snagged the "Best TV Series, Comedy or Musical" award, with its star Jeffrey Tambor also taking home the "Best Actor in a TV Comedy" award.

Amazon has been producing original content out of Amazon Studios since 2010, but yesterday marked the first time that it actually emerged as a true contender in TV and film. After backing Studios with more than $100 million in the third quarter of this year, Amazon has been going at the original content space at full throttle, and yesterday’s win signals that we can only expect bigger and better things in the future…

Grazed from V3.co.uk. Author: Daniel Robinson.

Amazon has made available new C4 virtual machine instances on its Amazon Web Services (AWS) public cloud platform, designed to offer a higher level of processor performance for customers with demanding workloads. First announced last year, the new C4 instances are being delivered from infrastructure based on a custom version of Intel’s latest Xeon E5 v3 processors, created specifically to meet the requirements of the Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service, according to AWS.

The new instances are available from today in seven AWS regions covering the US, Europe, and Asia Pacific, the firm said, with charges starting at $0.116 per hour for the smallest c4.large instance with two virtual processor cores (vCPUs) and 3.75GB of memory. This scales up to 36 vCPUs on the c4.8xlarge instance with 60GB memory, which is charged at $1.856 per hour…

Grazed from MarketWire. Author: PR Announcement.

BrightLine CPAs & Associates, Inc., a leading provider of cloud computing compliance and attestation reporting services, will be a sponsor and exhibitor at the Federal Cloud Computing Summit. The event, scheduled for January 14-15, will take place at the Marriott Metro Center in Washington, D.C. BrightLine professionals will be on-hand to discuss compliance initiatives, including FedRAMP and FISMA as well as complementary assessment programs such as SSAE 16, SOC 2/3, ISO, PCI, and the Cloud Security Alliance STAR Certification and Attestation programs.

The Federal Cloud Computing Summit provides Federal Government and private sector technology subject matter experts an opportunity to discuss the latest tools, trends and strategies driving the adoption of mobile, cloud, virtualization and big data technologies throughout the government. The sessions provide collaboration and learning through panel discussions, round table discussions, breakout sessions and a showcase featuring demonstrations of cutting-edge technology and professional services.