Whatever the Numbers, Cloud Growth is Skyrocketing
A UBS research report sparked a lot of discussion this week with its estimate that Amazon Web Services’ total revenue will top $500 million this year and $1.1 billion by 2014. Analyzing the numbers is fine, but, as I discuss in my weekly column at GigaOM Pro, I think it’s most telling to look at the growth curve when assessing the promise of cloud computing.
When to Use Open Source in a Cloudy World
In a rapidly-changing development environment in which more and more companies are developing platform as a service (PaaS) offerings, is the allure of using open source to to build custom applications diminishing? After all, PaaS providers are looking to make customization easier for end users to achieve without having to delve into the source code.
team Engine cranks up on-demand high performance computing
team Engine, a new division of systems integrator FrontlineSystems, provides high performance computing (HPC) infrastructure for as little as one month at a time.
The service is particularly aimed at the visual effects, geo-science, mining, biomedical and financial industries.
"These businesses are exemplified by extreme peaks and troughs in data and infrastructure demand, which makes operating and managing in-house date centre facilities a financially unsound proposition," said Steam’s chief commercial officer Stefan Gillard.
Where will cloud computing take us in five-years time?
Cloud computing has a problem. The problem is that people, companies, programmers and (god forbid) bloggers and technology journalists all talk about it an awful lot. With issues such as security and migration challenges to discuss, we pretty much have an endless stream of material to debate over.
Yahoo Tests Infinite Browse Search on Yahoo News
Yahoo is well into its integration with Microsoft to make Bing its algorithmic search engine, but the Internet company is still responsible for the search user interface.
Yahoo Aug. 6 said it is previewing Infinite Browse, a new module for Yahoo News that adds relevant search content, such as images, videos and slide shows below news stories.
Because it is only being flight tested with a small number of users, most folks won’t see it on Yahoo News, so the company provided this screenshot of the feature.
IBM pushes cloud research in Poland
An agreement between IBM and Poland’s Wroclaw University of Technology will see the creation of the country’s first university cloud computing centre.
The deal is part of IBM’s global multipurpose cloud computing centre initiative, which is open to all institutes of higher learning. The objective is to support the teaching of cloud technologies as well as basing the centre’s everyday work on cloud systems.
The Wroclaw centre will offer at least 10 cloud-based courses to more than 1500 students. The new curriculum will be based mainly on IBM Tivoli software, IBM officials said.
The View from the CRM C-Suite
Where do you see the market going over the next few years?
Time to rethink the PC
For as long as many people can remember, desktop PCs have been a fixture on the office desktop, right there next to the phone, stack of yellow sticky pads and vinyl-covered can full of pens.
Office automation by means of client/server computing — with the desktop PC in a starring role — started going mainstream about a quarter century ago. And from that point on, information technology managers and budgeteers in charge of buying and taking care of those desktop computers have been plotting ways to make them disappear. Or, if not that, trying to minimize the costly problems the computers create.
5 ways to ease desktop PC-induced pain
It didn’t take long after the desktop PC earned a regular seat at the enterprise technology table in the early 1990s for agency managers to realize that PCs can be a real drag. Buying, managing, backing up, fixing and securing PCs are expensive, time-consuming tasks that spawn a seemingly never-ending ordeal.
The problem must be tougher than they thought because they’re still trying to fix it. Here is a rundown of what has been working, what hasn’t and what might work in the future.