Adobe's Creative Cloud fails at being a cloud
Sync feature suspended by Adobe FOR TWO WEEKS
The file-syncing part of Adobe's new Creative Cloud family of technologies has been intermittently broken for a week, taking the "cloud" part out of Adobe's "Creative Cloud" redesign of its products. Now Adobe is suspending it "for the next couple of weeks" to make updates.
The sync feature, which means files being fiddled with …
Google research chief: 'Emergent artificial intelligence? Hogwash!'
Google I/O 'We have to make it happen'
If there's any company in the world that can bring true artificial intelligence into being, it's Google, but the company thinks SkyNet is unlikley to appear in the Googlenet without help from the Chocolate Factory.
Though many science fiction writers and even some academics have put faith in the idea of emergent artificial …
Google may chuck Spanner into Datastore
Google I/O Needs to pretty it up or 'people would freak out'
Google may make its globally-distributed Spanner database available as a cloud service as the company tries to let developers fiddle with its innards.
The Spanner database* is the successor to the BigTable/Megastore architecture on which Google's just-announced Cloud Datastore is built, and has some more-advanced features, such …
Amazon slashes DynamoDB cost to counter Google Datastore
'Datastore? Cute. Here's a 4X price reduction on big reads.'
Amazon has overhauled its DynamoDB NoSQL datastore following Google's unveiling of a price-competitive service.
The changes to the row-based DynamoDB were announced on Wednesday, hours after Google launched its Cloud Datastore – a standalone version of App Engine's columnar storage underlay.
The Amazon changes let users scan …
Google forges BigTable-based NoSQL datastore
Google I/O Takes out BigTable, thwacks Amazon DynamoDB over the head
If you're Google, building cloud services for the public must be frustrating – after spending a decade crafting and stitching together software systems for use internally, when you try and sell them to the outside world you need to unpick them from one another.
It seems more like butchery than creation, but that's the name of …
Google platform cloud now takes PHP apps
Google I/O Google closes gap with cloud competitors
Google is adding PHP to Google App Engine as the company tries to appeal to developers of the widely-used language.
The addition was announced on Wednesday at Google's developer jamboree Google I/O. It means GAE now supports three widely used web languages – Python, Java, and PHP – and Go, a Google-sponsored language designed …
Biological chips go analog to boost efficiency
Analog chips run rings around digital ones at tiny scale
MIT boffins have figured out how to create synthetic analog organic circuits that can perform useful tasks without needing the sophistication that digital methods demand, which could lead to more efficient gloopy circuits and even more precise drug manufacture.
The advance, which could create technology for carefully managing …
Video services chug half of US net capacity
Amazon cloud serves up biggest, Google second biggest, Microsoft...?
Video services Netflix and YouTube consume nearly half of US internet capacity at peak times, demonstrating the massive scale of Amazon and Google's infrastructure clouds, but causing us to ask 'whither Microsoft?'
As of the first half of 2013, Netflix accounted for almost a third (32.5 per cent) of downstream traffic on US …
Engine Yard plugs PHP into its platform-as-a-service
Halves weakling instance prices, intros Riak support
Oracle-backed Engine Yard has added support for PHP apps to its platform cloud as the company tries to maintain feature parity against bigger companies with better infrastructure.
The PHP support was announced on Tuesday and takes EngineYard's roster of supported languages to three, including Ruby on Rails and Node.js. It sees …
CIA ups stake in database-as-a-service firm
Cloudant trousers $12m, opens San Francisco office
The CIA has maintained its influence over Cloudant by upping its investment in the database-as-a-service firm.
The $12m funding round sees Cloudant's existing investors In-Q-Tel*, Avalon Ventures, and Samsung Venture Investment Corporation up their shares in the company, and new investors Fidelity Investments, Rackspace Hosting …
Inside EMC's software-defined ViPR storage tech
ViPRware or the real deal?
EMC spent much of this year's EMC World talking up ViPR, its new system for managing, automating, and controlling storage infrastructure.
Tucci and the gang were scolded for the premature nature of the announcement – ViPR won't launch until late 2013, and it'll be late 2014 when it gets the features that truly differentiate it …
Facebook plans globe-spanning hardware deployment
Social network gets edgy with its infrastructure
Facebook plans to deploy sophisticated gear at the very edge of its network to cut the time it takes for denizens of the social network to interact with the site.
The plans – which are still in a very early stage – were revealed to The Register by Facebook at a briefing at Interop in Las Vegas this week. They will see the social …
Rackspace shares crater in drab results aftermath
Failure to lassoo public cloud pushes Texans off cliff
Rackspace's shares have fallen off a cliff after the Texas cloud company reported less than glowing revenues.
In a sign of the fractious affections of the financial market, the company's shares were down almost 25 per cent in trading on Thursday, following Wednesday's lackluster results.
Though Rackspace grew revenue 20.2 per …
Google's cloud dumps custom Linux, switches to Debian
Updated Debian 7.0 wheezes in as GCEL hobbles out
Google is moving the default software for its rentable cloud servers from a custom version of Linux to Debian.
The decision to make Debian the default image type for Google Compute Engine was announced by the company on Thursday. As a consequence, Google's stripped down Linux OS GCEL (Google Compute Engine Linux) is being …
MadeiraCloud trousers $1.5 million to explain AWS to bosses
There's money in ignorance
Amazon cloud manager MadeiraCloud has slurped $1.5 million from VCs who are betting that its visualization technology will make it easier for organizations to consume cloud infrastructure.
The investment by reputable VC firm Sequoia Capital highlights both AWS's dominant role within the market for rentable cloud infrastructure …
Amazon cloud floats into Microsoft data centers
AWS condenses inside System Center management software
Admins can now manage Amazon Web Services infrastructure resources through Microsoft's System Center management tool – an incremental update that belies Bezos & Co's increasingly flamboyant seduction of Redmond data centers.
The AWS management Pack for System Center 2012 - Operations Manager, and System Center Operations Manager …
Facebook crashes into networking with open switch
Puckering ensues at Cisco, Juniper, Brocade
Not content with shaking up storage and servers, Facebook is creating an open source switch to help it save money on networking equipment and stop it being dependent on technologies pioneered by any single company.
The switch was announced by Facebook's infrastructure czar Frank Frankovsky in a keynote speech at Interop on …
NuoDB gets .NET plugin
NewSQL pirates hijack SQL on Azure
The ambitious NuoDB database has received an update that lets it deal with .NET as the company looks to tempt Windows aficionados away from SQL Server.
The 1.1 "Starling" release of NuoDB brings with it a set of Microsoft-specific updates, along with more general product and user experience improvements, the company announced on …
Isilon OneFS snorts dedupe magic
EMC World 2013 Mavericks successor embraces OpenStack
EMC is preparing the next version of its Isilon OneFS NAS operating system, and is giving the technology a deduplication capability and support for object storage.
The next version of Isilon will integrate with EMC's ambitious software-defined storage ViPR technology, along with support for APIs from Amazon S3 and Atmos, Hadoop …
EMC: 'Hardware? We stopped doing that YEARS ago'
EMC World 2013 500 box fiddlers versus thousands of software coders
Storage titan EMC doesn't really believe in hardware any more – the value is in the software.
The company has been on a shift for the past decade to wean itself off of a dependency on proprietary gear, and has instead been pouring resources into developing clever software, EMC head honcho Joe Tucci told The Register at EMC World …
The real reason why Dell wants to go private: To fondle big Boomis
Cloud integrator waggles its new API tool
Dell has added an API management tool to its Boomi platform, which connects up clouds and in-house applications.
The new component - which monitors and controls software interfaces used to hook together various services within an enterprise - is included in an upgrade that also adds new integration and process management …
Boundary app monitor becomes a fortune teller
One Dashboard to rule them all
How do you solve a problem like poor performance in distributed IT stacks? If you're application performance manager Boundary, you do it by teaching your tech to not only analyse traffic on the network layer, but also listen to app-specific alerts from typical management systems, and use this to predict where bottlenecks are …
EMC throws ViPR into software-defined party
Software-defined storage snake slithers into service providers
If you can't beat it, eat it - that seems to be EMC's idea with the launch of ViPR, a scheme by the storage provider to gain a foothold in data centers infected with low-cost IT gear.
ViPR can work as a storage controller for traditional and newer infrastructures, and also talk to older systems, EMC announced on Monday at its …
Amazon releases cloud Support API
Who needs a phone call when you can make an API call?
Amazon Web Services now lets customers file support requests via an API, and has deepened the links between its performance-management software and the rest of its cloud.
The release of the AWS Support API for Business or Enterprise support customers on Thursday lets cloud punters open cases, check on their status, and resolve …
Rackspace fluffs .NET cloud support
'We were here first, Microsoft!'
Rackspace is making overtures to Microsoft users by broadening .NET support for its cloud and managed hosting, though these devs may be increasingly swayed by Azure.
The company announced a Cloud SDK for Microsoft.NET, and a PowerShell-based API client "PowerClient" for Rackspace public cloud services on Wednesday. The two tools …
Gaming app ENSLAVES punter PCs in Bitcoin mining ring
Some secret software to go with your deathmatch, sir?
A competitive gaming company has admitted that for two weeks in April its software client was hijacking league members' PCs to mine Bitcoins.
In an eyebrow-raising turn of events, the company, ESEA Gaming, admitted on Wednesday that its software client had been running Bitcoin-mining algorithms on customer PCs since April 14, …
VMware sells WaveMaker to Pramati
That didn't last long
VMware has got rid of WaveMaker, an open source tool that helps casual developers build Java apps, after spending two years trying to develop the technology
The deal sees Java-specialist Pramati acquire "certain assets" of WaveMaker, according to a statement issued by the company. These assets include WaveMaker's core …
Is it me or did cloud marketing suddenly get really weird?
Comment PR bods are going ga-ga on cloudy fumes
As cloud computing shakes up the IT industry, marketing departments are going into overdrive attempting to somehow – no, anyhow – gain what they call "traction." And it's starting to get weird.
We here at Vulture West appreciate that companies need to get the message out there, but everyone is prone to cock-ups, and the …
Amazon goes legit with cloud certification plan
'Enterprisey enough for ya?' bellow Bezos & Co.
Watch out Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Dell, and HP. There's a new reassuringly dull certificate in town, and it's coming for your devs.
Amazon Web Services has launched a global certfication program so that technologists can get something to stick on their CV and use as a lever to extract more cash from current and future employers …
MongoDB gets incremental restores ... for a price
10Gen cranks monetization handle to lift MongoDB into the cloud
MongoDB steward 10Gen is trying to squeeze money out of heavy users of the open source NoSQL database, and has set aside almost a petabyte of raw storage to deal with initial demand for a new backup-and-restore service.
Like other companies that shepherd an open source product (Canonical – Ubuntu, Basho – Riak, et cetera), 10Gen …
SoftLayer hoists Riak NoSQL datastore onto its cloud
Basho hopes to mine rich seam of cloudy dev gold
Open source NoSQL datastore specialist Basho has teamed up with SoftLayer to hoist the free and paid-for versions of Riak into the cloud.
The availability of Riak and Riak Enterprise on SoftLayer's mid-tier infrastructure cloud sees Basho try and open up another shaft to let it tap the seam of cash that it, like other open- …
AppFog PaaS drops Rackspace IaaS
Low demand leads to shutdown as PaaS runs to private clouds
Platform-as-a-service provider AppFog is evaporating its cloudy bridge to Rackspace due to poor customer demand, in yet another case of the fluffy industry coming to terms with hard business realities.
AppFog provides an application infrastructure automation service – otherwise known as a platform-as-a-service (PaaS) – that lets …
If you spend THIS much on cloud, perhaps you need a rethink
Cloud makers reveal tipping point from public to private
There's only so much you should spend on commodity cloud services before you consider other options like getting a discount, moving back to your own servers, or to a private managed cloud, according to cloud providers and customers.
If you're spending more than $10,000 (£6,500) a month or so, then it's probably worth considering …
Amazon's cloud on track for $2bn in revenue in 2013
Analysis AWSome cloud swells with cash, objects
Bezos & Co's cloud looks likely to turn over at least $2bn in 2013 and potentially much more – a fact sure to put the frighteners on traditional IT suppliers scrabbling to come up with their own as-a-service infrastructure products.
Amazon recorded revenues of $750m within its "Other" category in the first quarter of 2013, up $ …
Actian grabs Amazon Redshift's secret sauce
ParAccel for analysing 20TB and above data stores
Actian has acquired database specialist ParAccel, whose technology formed the guts of Amazon's RedShift.
The acquisition, whose financial terms were not disclosed, was announced by Actian on Thursday. Amazon licensed ParAccel's tech for its major AWS Redshift data warehousing service, and led funding for its series E round in …
The Germans are coming - Software AG borgs LongJump
Code-free app design? Sehr gut
Software AG has acquired LongJump, an enterprise-focused company that develops a platform-as-a-service which lets folk build applications without knowing how to code.
The acquisition, whose terms were not dislosed, was announced on Thursday. It will see the MySQL-based technology be knitted into other components of Software AG's …
Rackspace plugs event monitoring into its servers
Expands cloud monitoring tech with 'Virgo' agent project
Rackspace has broadened the capabilities of its cloud monitoring technology by letting admins put an agent on their servers to get a clearer idea of how apps are using hardware resources.
The upgrades to Cloud Monitoring include server monitoring, a graphing feature for viewing old data, PagerDuty integration, and multi-data …
Heroku PaaS floats over to Europe
Geo-redundancy for the trendy Ruby cloud
Heroku's platform-as-a-service cloud has come to Europe, giving local developers a chance to reduce the latency of applications they've stuck on top of the application automation technology.
The Salesforce-owned company announced on Thursday that brave devs can try serving their apps from Ireland rather than America, if they …
Pivotal takes guts of Google, sells to enterprises
Small team aims to clone Google-stack for enterprises
Pivotal wants to build and sell the systems that run Google, but though its ambition may be bold, its claims are as yet more visions than statements of fact.
At a packed press event in San Francisco on Wednesday Pivotal executives unveiled their plans for the company, which aims to bring the sorts of technologies and techniques …
General Electric pours $105 MEEELION into Pivotal Initiative
Skunkworks lab for the industrial internet
General Electric is pouring $105m into Pivotal, a skunkworks cloud and big data company spun-out of VMware and EMC.
The investment was announced on Wednesday, several hours before Pivotal held its coming out party first major press conference.
"It's no secret that the cloud and big data are driving dramatic business …
Facebook plans vast data center in Iowa
Plonks FarmVille into farm land
Facebook's fourth gigantic data center will be in Iowa, a state already favored by major infrastructure operators due to its renewable utility options.
The new data center in Altoona, Iowa, will be the company's fourth dedicated bit barn, along with facilities in Prineville, Oregon; Forest City, North Carolina; and Luleå, Sweden …
Salesforce: Internet of Things is 'third wave of computing'
Benioff & Co dive into social networks, connected devices
Salesforce is desperate for more of the world to get wired up with little sensors, so it can get at this data and hook it into its suite of technologies, then sell companies on the benefits of an increasingly data-led sales strategy.
This lust for an instrumented world was outlined by Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff in …
AMD pins future growth to embedded marketplace
G-Series SoCs to turn sliver of revenues into wedge
AMD has announced a new range chips for embedded devices, and said it hopes that 20 per cent of its revenues in Q4 2013 will come from that market, rather than the 5 per cent currently.
Embedded chips are one prong of AMD's new pitchfork of profitability along with servers and ultra-low power tablet chips. The chip giant is …
CA piles into API management with Layer 7 acquisition
If stuff is moving to the cloud, you might as well own the transfer point
CA Technologies has hopped into API management via the acquisition of Layer 7 technologies as the company continues to reinvent itself for the software-as-a-service era.
The acquisition follows a similar move by Intel to acquire Mashery last week, and API Management company Mulesoft's announcement it had trousered a further $37m …
Yahoo! Axes! Yet! More! Products!
Phoenix strategy still in flaming destruction mode
Yahoo! chief Marissa Mayer is taking her scythe to more product lines as she funnels resources into mobile in an attempt to take the beleaguered web giant into more profitable climes.
The company will axe its Yahoo! Deals, Yahoo! SMS Alerts, Yahoo! Kids, and the Yahoo! Mail and Messenger feature phone apps, executive platform …
Ants have careers; you don't want them
Jury out on whether as crushing as rat race, but it's close...
Ants don't have a career ladder, they have a career hole, and only the wiliest of the insects can avoid falling down it according to the latest research.
A particular genus of carpenter ants (Camponotus fellah) exist in a complex social structure, where their first jobs see them caring for the queen and her offspring, and as the …
Google shakes up US utility with green power tariff
Pays more on electricity to pay less on Greenpeace damage control
Google is using its giant pile of money to try and change how utility companies work, so that more businesses can buy their power from renewable sources.
As part of a $600m expansion of its North Carolina data center, Google's local utility provider Duke Energy has pledged to develop a renewable energy tariff for Google and …
Amazon's flash-backed database gets EVEN FASTER
Relational features for the non-relational DB
Amazon has tuned-up its flash-backed DynamoDB database so that more complex queries can be done in less time.
Amazon announced the upgrade on Thursday, which sees the cloud computing company add in a "Local Secondary Index" (LSI) feature that lets admins create five additional indexes across which to query, letting the DB do …
Amazon: S3 cloud contains two trillion objects
'We've doubled our big number in a year'
Amazon Web Services now has over two trillion objects within its S3 storage cloud, just one year after Bezos & Co. smashed through the one-trillion ceiling.
Each Amazon object, they say, can range from "range from zero to 5 TB in size," but Amazon does not disclose the size distribution of stored objects. An object consists of a …
Facebook launches data center ticker tape
Bit barn efficiency metrics on a minute-by-minute basis
Facebook has heaped pressure on major data center operators to be more transparent, publishing a dashboard that gives up-to-the-minute figures on the efficiency of the social network's gigantic bit barns.
The dashboards for the company's Prineville, Oregon, and Forest City, North Carolina, datacenters were made available on …
