Grazed from MarketWired. Author: PR Announcement.

Fusion (NASDAQ: FSNN), a leading provider of cloud communications, cloud connectivity and cloud computing services, announced today that it has closed on the purchase of all of the outstanding shares of stock of PingTone Communications, Inc., a provider of integrated cloud-based communications services headquartered in Herndon, Virginia. Founded in January 2001, PingTone generated LTM revenue of $8.1 million as of June 30, 2014 and pro forma adjusted EBITDA of $2.1 million, giving effect to anticipated cost synergies.

The PingTone transaction is Fusion’s third acquisition in twenty-four months. It reflects the success of the company’s strategy to grow through acquisition as well as organically, and meets its acquisition criteria in several significant ways. The acquisition will be immediately accretive to Fusion’s EBITDA. In addition, it adds a loyal and growing enterprise customer base with high ARPU, positions the company to impact organic growth with a talented team of managers and staff to further help the company scale, provides a strong cross-sale and up-sale opportunity and can be tightly integrated into the company’s existing infrastructure…

Read more from the source @ http://www.marketwired.com/press-release/fusion-acquires-cloud-services-provider-pingtone-nasdaq-fsnn-1963656.htm

Grazed from MacRumors. Author: Juli Clover.

Apple acquired Seattle-based cloud networking startup Union Bay Networks sometime in the last couple of months and has opened an office in the city that houses more than 30 engineers, reports GeekWire. The site uncovered Apple’s acquisition and Seattle office after former Union Bay Networks co-founder Benn Bollay posted a job opening for a Systems Software Engineer that read "Ever wanted to work at Apple, but didn’t want to live in Cupertino?"

Apple later confirmed the acquisition of Union Bay Networks to The Seattle Times, providing its standard acquisition statement: Apple "buys smaller technology companies from time to time, and we generally do not discuss our purpose or plans." Union Bay Networks was a stealth startup focused on "enabling the next generation of networking for cloud computing and software defined datacenters," and seven out of nine former employees are said to have been hired by Apple, moving to an unknown office location…

Read more from the source @ http://www.macrumors.com/2014/11/03/apple-union-bay-networks-seattle/

Grazed from WSJ. Author: Alistair Barr.

Google Inc. built one of the world’s most powerful networks of data centers, able to handle more than three billion search queries a day. But it fell behind Amazon.com Inc. in the fast-growing business of renting out computing horsepower to others. Now, Google is making a renewed effort to catch Amazon. At a conference on Tuesday, Google will highlight new offerings that make it easier for customers to set up so-called cloud services more quickly.

Google executives say they’ve learned from past mistakes and are adapting the company’s offerings. It will be a tough sell. “Five years ago, when we were starting, Google’s service didn’t really exist and Amazon was the only complete option,” said Adam D’Amico, director of technical operations at Okta Inc., an identity-management startup that runs its business on Amazon’s computers…

Grazed from Barrons. Author: Grace L. Williams.

From Oct. 27 to 29, three Microsoft (ticker: MSFT ) insiders including iconic co-founder Bill Gates sold 12,525,000 shares for $578,746,953, an average of $46.21 each. Gates’ transaction was the largest, a 10b5-1 planned sale of 12,500,000 shares for $577,601,150. Gates now directly holds 285,492,934 shares, a stake of 3.4% in Microsoft, down from 3.6%. His most recent previous transaction was on July 30 when he sold 7,589,200 shares for $331,000,000, an average of $43.62 each, also through a 10b5-1 planned sale.

Frank H. Brod, corporate vice president, finance and administration, and chief accounting officer, sold 22,000 shares for $1,007,980. Brod now directly holds 115,708 Microsoft shares. His most recent previous transaction was on July 28 when he sold 1,500 shares for $66,100, an average of $44.04 each. Maria M. Klawe, a director, sold 3,000 shares for $137,895 in her first open-market transaction. Klawe now directly holds 23,105 Microsoft shares…

Read more from the source @ http://online.barrons.com/articles/bill-gates-578m-planned-microsoft-stock-sale-1415051937?mod=rss_barrons_inside_scoop

Grazed from TechCrunch. Author: Frederic Lardinois.

OpenStack, the fast-growing open source cloud computing platform that now has the backing of more than 200 companies, is holding its semiannual developer conference in Paris this week. With over 4,500 attendees, it’s the organization’s largest event so far. While this illustrates the interest in the platform, the project is also facing a set of new challenges with its growing popularity.

During today’s keynote a number of speakers noted that the project’s six-month release cycle makes it harder for large organizations to adopt the platform. The head of BMW’s datacenter Stefan Lenz, for example, noted that too many big changes happen from release to release. "We need more stability in the future," he noted. "But that doesn’t prevent us from using it right now as it is."…

Grazed from CloudTech. Author: James Bourne.

Human error is responsible for one in five data loss errors, according to the latest study from cloud provider Databarracks. The study, the fifth annual Data Health Check report, found that employee idiocy was the third most popular reason for data going missing with 18% of the vote, behind software failure (19%) and hardware failure (21%). Interestingly, corruption and theft were responsible for 15% and 7% of the poll respectively.

Yet it’s the larger companies who continue to foul up. 22% of large organisations listed human error as the main cause of data loss over the last 12 months, compared to 6% of small organisations. The report examines the cost of backup and disaster recovery. While a third (32%) of respondents spend less than half an hour on backup, a similar number (33%) take more than two hours or employ dedicated staff…

Grazed from ZDNet. Author: Steve Ranger.

For an industry run according to logic and rationality, at least outwardly, the tech world seems to have a surprising weakness for hype and the ‘next big thing’. Perhaps that’s because, unlike — say — in sales or HR, where innovation is defined by new management strategies, tech investment is very product driven.

Buying a new piece of hardware or software often carries the potential for a ‘disruptive’ breakthrough in productivity or some other essential business metric. Tech suppliers therefore have a vested interest in promoting their products as vigorously as possible: the level of spending on marketing and customer acquisition by some fast-growing tech companies would turn many consumer brands green with envy…

Grazed from ITWeb. Author: Editorial Staff.

Mining companies around the world are facing many challenges, such as managing unique operational complexities and staying profitable in tough economic times, under tremendous global pressures. "Cloud has long been touted as one of the Internet’s greatest success stories, revolutionising many industries by improving operations, efficiencies, accuracy and so on," says Richard Vester, director of Cloud Services at EOH. "Mining is no different, and we are seeing organisations in this sector realising the potential of cloud in transforming the industry, and slowly embarking on a cloud journey."

Vester says cloud is set to be a major driver for growth in the mining industry, which is very competitive, and deals with fixed resources. "Mining organisations who adopt cloud can look forward to vast improvements in operations and well as major returns on investments. At the same time, adopting cloud will greatly reduce general running costs."…

Read more from the source @ http://www.itweb.co.za/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=138964:Mining-benefits-from-cloud-adoption

Grazed from TheHill. Author: Cory Bennett.

U.S. tech companies are worried a German law under debate could bar them from doing business in that country if it is approved. The bill could require companies to turn over source code and proprietary data to the German government or to private critical infrastructure companies, The Wall Street Journal reported on Sunday.

U.S. companies see the language as a way to exclude them from government contracts, given German fears over the National Surveillance Agency’s (NSA) ability to access U.S. companies’ data. Although the bill is still in draft form, it is expected to eventually pass. The measure is the latest in a long string of incidents that have U.S. businesses worrying about lost revenue overseas following the disclosures of NSA spying programs…

Grazed from Forbes. Author: Patrick Moorhead.

This weekend was Formula 1 racing weekend. In my hometown, Austin Texas. Many may not believe it, but Austin is actually home to a US Formula 1 race track, and there are other international races here. Each year tens of thousands come from all around the world, representing the pinnacle of wealth, and they descend on Austin, the same town that boasts a “keep Austin weird” campaign.

As unlikely as that seems to be as a combination, it is similar to the combination of Stratus and high availability private clouds. When most think about the move to private cloud, they think about more conservative vendors like VMware VMW +1.57% and IBM IBM -0.4% leading customers down that path, but in reality, something that all of the big vendors still don’t have in their OpenStack solutions – high availability – is being delivered by Stratus, a company that cut its teeth on the idea of “always on” computing in the enterprise. Download our paper for detail on how they are making this happen…

Read more from the source @ http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmoorhead/2014/11/03/does-stratus-have-the-formula-for-success/