Author: David

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

GoodData and its Cloud BI Platform, which got started in the Czech Republic, have closed a $25 million C round from Tenaya Capital, along with Next World Capital and existing investors Andreessen Horowitz, General Catalyst Partners, Fidelity Growth Partners and Windcrest Partners. Tenaya, the old Lehman Brothers Venture Partners, gets a board seat.

The Big Data analytics start-up has raised $53.5 million to date.

It claims more than 6,000 customers, including Capgemini and Software AG, have adopted its widgetry to monetize their data and says it posted 600% bookings growth last year, more than doubling employees and customers…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

Contegix(R), a cloud computing leader, managed hosting and colocation solution company known for its Go Beyond(TM) philosophy, announces lower, more simplified pricing for its MiraCloud(R) hosting service.

Beginning today, all MiraCloud instances are being offered with a standard guarantee of 10GB HDD for Linux-based systems and a 20 GB HDD for Windows-based environments. These simplified packages are available on both monthly and hourly subscription levels. Monthly package pricing is as low as $7.48/month and hourly rates start as low as $0.01/hour. In addition to lower pricing and simplified hosting packages, all monthly MiraCloud subscriptions now include 200 GB of bandwidth at no charge…

Grazed from Economic Times. Author: Editorial Staff.

Symantec Corp unexpectedly replaced its chief executive, naming current Chairman and former Intuit Corp CEO Steve Bennett to run the world’s biggest maker of security software.

The company said Enrique Salem had stepped down on Tuesday, ending a three-year term during which he and the company had been criticized by investors for a string of financial disappointments.

Symantec, which had not previously said it was considering replacing Salem, also issued a quarterly outlook that was below Street projections as it announced the news on Wednesday morning…

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

Apple missed by Wall Street standards when it reported its Q3 numbers Tuesday and its stock tanked, dropping more than 5% after-hours, down roughly 31 bucks to $570 at best. It sold only 26 million iPhones, down 26% sequentially. Wall Street expected maybe 28 million or better.

On the other hand, it sold 17 million iPads, which was better than the 15 milion-16 million the Street figured. It also got off 6.8 million iPods and four million Macs, up 2% and better than negative 1% IDC is giving the industry.

At $35 billion revenues, although up 23%, it fell short of the $37.2 billion analysts expected. Ditto earnings. They were up 21% to $9.32 a share, but Wall Street wanted $10.35…

Grazed from MarketWatch. Author: PR Announcement.

DataCore Software, the storage hypervisor leader and premier provider of storage virtualization software, today announced the appointment of its first Chief Operating Officer (COO), Steve Houck. The new position was created to organize and drive DataCore’s rapid growth and market leadership in storage virtualization. Houck is a highly regarded veteran in virtualization, flash storage, cloud computing and data center technologies. His previous roles included vice president of worldwide channels for VMware, along with various global sales leadership posts at EMC Corporation. Houck has also held executive posts for global field sales and go-to-market strategy development at start-up ventures focused on cloud computing and flash storage, with the most recent executive role at Astute Networks, an innovative SSD technology company.

"DataCore’s industry leadership – combined with a top-notch management team and superb market conditions – presented a perfect scenario for all involved," stated Steve Houck, COO, DataCore Software. "The momentum toward storage virtualization adoption is palpable and SANsymphony-V 9.0 is head-and-shoulders above any other solution. I look forward to ensuring DataCore builds upon its success and reputation for delivering ‘must have’ technology."…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Do you want to put some of your work on the Google cloud but don’t have the tech wherewithal to do it? Google will point you to an array of partners to get you there.

On Tuesday, the company launched the Google Cloud Partner Program – a central spot for prospective customers to find vendors, consultants or ISVs with expertise in what you want to do. Partner programs are old hat among the software powers of the past. Microsoft, IBM, Hewlett-Packard all sport big, complicated programs that aim to woo value-added resellers, integrators, consultants — and try to get those partners to sell their products over those of competitors. All with varying degrees of success.

Now the cloud players are getting in on the act. Google already had a partner program of sorts to help push Google Apps and the Google Appliance into enterprise accounts. Amazon launched a formal partner program earlier this year and will host its first-ever partner event in Las Vegas in November. Microsoft, which is trying to move tens of thousands of partners into the Windows Azure cloud — or at least try to stop them from freaking out about it — is in a different position…

Grazed from GigaOM. Author: Barb Darrow.

Backblaze, the 5-year-old company that backs up everything on your PC for $5 per month, has snagged $5 million in funding from TMT Investments, an investment house out of the U.K.

San Mateo, Calif.-based Backblaze will use the money to staff up and expand its marketing efforts — and attack the masses of people who still do not back up their computers, CEO Gleb Budman said in a recent interview. Backblaze competes most directly with Mozy, now owned by VMware (via EMC) and Carbonite.

Taking outside money was not done lightly. The company was bootstrapped for its first year and a half and then it took in $390,000 in seed money. The company has been profitable since the early days, Budman said…

Grazed from EON. Author: Editorial Staff.

This is the year of accountability for cloud computing. Businesses are demanding that CIOs deliver value from their cloud projects. The acknowledged leader in cloud management, BMC Software (NASDAQ:BMC) has been helping its growing base of cloud customers to answer that call with measurable benefits to the business.

“There are few cloud management solutions successfully creating such a reality for customers.”

“Clouds have the ability to enable IT organizations to deliver high-performing business services faster and at lower cost, so the business remains competitive and consequently meets their revenue and profit goals,” said Ronni Colville, VP and Distinguished Analyst at Gartner. “There are few cloud management solutions successfully creating such a reality for customers.”…

Grazed from CloudStory. Author: Janakiram MSV.

The most common question that I get to hear from developers is – how do I get started with Cloud Computing? Many developers believe that targeting a Platform as a Service (PaaS) is all it takes to get onto the Cloud bandwagon. While PaaS abstracts the nuts and bolts of the Cloud infrastructure to ease the life of developers, many applications run on raw VMs deployed to run on Infrastructure as a Service. So, it pays to understand the behind the scenes architecture when developing Cloud ready applications. Though .NET and J2EE abstracted the underlying implementation, developers with the thorough platform knowledge fare better in their jobs. Similarly, knowing a little more about the inner workings of the deployment platform will help developers in the long term.

It is just not the understanding of the Cloud platform that will make them ready. Developers need to have a mastery over certain fundamentals concepts. Here are five concepts that the aspiring Cloud developers should focus on – …

Grazed from eWeek. Author: Darryl K. Taft.

IDC has released results of a study indicating that long-term, moving workloads to Amazon Web Services (AWS) pays off big-time for some – to the tune of an average five-year return on investment of 626 percent and a cumulative savings of $2.5 million per application.

Although AWS commissioned IDC to analyze the long-term implications of moving workloads to AWS, the market research firm maintains that the analysis was independent and impartial. The goal was to measure the impact of moving applications on developer productivity and business agility, and the new opportunities that businesses could address by moving resources onto Amazon cloud infrastructure services…