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Cassandra trundles into 2.0 release

The Apache Software Foundation has announced the 2.0 release of the Cassandra database, bringing with it new features for querying and transactions. The release was announced by the ASF on Wednesday, and brings enhancements to the SQL-like Cassandra Query Language (CQL) to the database. Cassandra was developed initially at …
Jack Clark, 05 Sep 2013

Amazon hits back at Microsoft with Redis ElastiCache

Amazon has broadened its set of services for storing frequently accessed data, just one day after Microsoft announced a competing product. The upgrade to the Amazon Web Services ElastiCache was announced by Amazon on Wednesday, and see Bezos & Co make Redis a caching option for the previously Memcached-only tech. Redis is a …
Jack Clark, 04 Sep 2013

Cisco pours cash into log management startup

A remotely hosted log management company has garnered $10.5m in filthy valley lucre from Cisco, Data Collective Venture Capital, and others. The funding round brings Loggly's total funding to date to $20.9m. The company's hosted service lets companies upload server log files into a central repository, where they can then run …
Jack Clark, 04 Sep 2013

Microsoft soars above Amazon with cloud cache

Microsoft has launched a new Azure technology to give developers a dedicated storage layer for frequently accessed information, and its pricing and features trump similar tech fielded by cloud incumbent Amazon Web Services. The caching service was launched in a preview format by Microsoft on Tuesday, and marks the creation of …
Jack Clark, 03 Sep 2013

Rackspace cracks wallet on cloud 'developer discount'

Rackspace has is seasoning new developer accounts with cloud credits as the Texan company tries to lure punters into its bit barns. The "Developer Discount" program was announced by the company on Tuesday, and will see it give developers new to the service $50 of account credit per month. "Developers, hackers, devops people and …
Jack Clark, 03 Sep 2013

Microsoft cedes board seat to activist investor

Just a week after Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer announced plans for his retirement Redmond has offered activist shareholder ValueAct Capital a seat on the Microsoft board. Redmond announced the "cooperation agreement" in the late hours of Friday afternoon in San Francisco before the Labor Day three day weekend, which is an ideal …
Jack Clark, 31 Aug 2013

Microsoft takes second run at platform cloud

Microsoft is taking a second run at platform-as-a-service clouds with a set of features to be included in Windows Server 2012 R2 that may give Redmond some credible tech to take on a field flush with rivals. When Windows Azure launched in 2009 many media and analyst reports (El Reg excluded) thought the future for platform-as-a- …
Jack Clark, 30 Aug 2013
Great Wall of China

Tencent offers 10TB of free cloud storage for all

Given the recent revelations about mass data slurping by the NSA, we were relieved to hear that a Chinese company has begun offering a whopping 10TB of free hosting to privacy-conscious punters. After Chinese rivals Baidu and Qihoo 360 served up a terabyte of free cloud storage to punters, rival Tencent this week floated a 10TB …
Jack Clark, 30 Aug 2013
Seagate Delorean drive

Google goes back to the future with SQL F1 database

The tech world is turning back toward SQL, bringing to a close a possibly misspent half-decade in which startups courted developers with promises of infinite scalability and the finest imitation-Google tools available, and companies found themselves exposed to unstable data and poor guarantees. The shift has been going on …
Jack Clark, 30 Aug 2013

Amazon's GovCloud upgrade hints at CIA cloud tech

Amazon has brought its automatic application deployment and provisioning tech to its government cloud service. The launch of CloudFormation on GovCloud was announced on Wednesday, and means customers that use the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) compliant cloud service can now access Amazon's CloudFormation tools …
Jack Clark, 29 Aug 2013
cv_sidey

Red Hat mints OpenStack certification

Red Hat is getting into the business of OpenStack certification as the open source company tries to co-opt some of the enthusiasm for the cloud platform and turn it into cash. The Red Hat Certificate of Expertise in Infrastructure-as-a-Service was announced by the company on Monday, and sees the disciples of the red fedora offer …
Jack Clark, 28 Aug 2013

Couchbase database pelted in $25M of filthy Valley lucre

Venture capitalists are so eager to get involved in the burgeoning "NoSQL" database market, that startup Couchbase took a $25m round without needing the money. "We did not need the money. We had VCs tracking us that very much wanted to invest. The valuations were such that we decided to take on additional money," Couchbase chief …
Jack Clark, 28 Aug 2013

VMware bursts into public cloud with vCHS

Here is how the cloud infrastructure market works: you can compete with Amazon Web Services and commit yourself to punishing capital expenditures as you build out your data centers, or you can try and come up with a service that does something Amazon doesn't, and charge a premium for it. Take a guess as to which one VMware opted …
Jack Clark, 28 Aug 2013
EMC president Pat Gelsinger

VMware CEO Gelsinger: How we'll beat Amazon Web Services

VMware is at a crossroads. Few doubt the benefits it has brought to the data centre, or even to smaller organisations who appreciate how virtualisation helps to simplify operations of a more modest server fleet. But the technology world is also fascinated by the public cloud, which offers fast and cheap access to servers on …
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Microsoft gives away more data with SkyDrive upgrade

Microsoft has dramatically increased the default storage space available for customers of its SkyDrive Pro service. The upgrades were announced by Microsoft on Tuesday and see Redmond increase the overall storage space available for each user from 7GB to 25GB, and add other features as well. SkyDrive Pro is a store 'n' sync …
Jack Clark, 27 Aug 2013
management big_data4

Google adds 'Differential Snapshots' to cloud storage

There are only so many ways you can build a gigantic infrastructure cloud, so it is with little surprise that Google has introduced a snapshot feature already found in Amazon Web Services. The "Differential Snapshots" feature was announced by Google in a post to the Google Compute Engine Google group on Monday, and the Chocolate …
Jack Clark, 27 Aug 2013

CYBORG CLOUD comes to VMware

VMware just can't seem to make its mind up about Cloud Foundry. After tossing the open source platform-as-a-service cloud initiative out into a spin-off named Pivotal along with a grab bag of tech products like GemFire, Greenplum Database, Spring, and others, the virtualization company announced on Monday it was tapping Cloud …
Jack Clark, 26 Aug 2013

Amazon's weekend cloud outage highlights EBS problems

Problems in the Amazon cloud over the weekend crushed apps like Vine, websites like Airbnb, and numerous other services that depend on Bezos & Co's hulking cloud, and the problems were due to a familiar culprit – Elastic Block Store (EBS). EBS is a network-attached block level storage service for Amazon EC2 instances. Amazon …
Jack Clark, 26 Aug 2013
Zombie cloud

VMware's Project Zombie gives dumb servers BRAAAAINS

VMware has taken the wraps off the gigantic task-automation system that will marshal resources in its upcoming infrastructure-as-a-service cloud. "Project Zombie" was unveiled at PuppetConf 2013 in San Francisco on Friday by VMware's infernal zombie commander (officially: Automation Architect, Hybrid Cloud Services) Nicholas …
Jack Clark, 23 Aug 2013

Oracle launches paid support for 'free' NoSQL database

Oracle has added a paid support option to the "free" version of its BerkeleyDB-based NoSQL database. The addition of paid support to the Community Edition of the Oracle NoSQL database was announced by Ellison & Co.'s veep of database server technologies Andrew Mendelsohn in his keynote speech at the NoSQL Now! conference in San …
Jack Clark, 23 Aug 2013

Piston links with Cloud Foundry, forges CYBORG CLOUD

OpenStack company Piston is donating hardware and developer expertise to the Cloud Foundry community, as the infrastructure-as-a-service specialist seeks tighter ties with VMware-spinoff Pivotal's grand platform cloud. The partnership will see Piston become the community infrastructure provider for Cloud Foundry, which means it …
Jack Clark, 22 Aug 2013

NASDAQ halts stock trading, citing data-feed glitch

A technical problem halted Nasdaq securities trading on Thursday, putting stocks such as Apple and Microsoft into limbo. The glitch was due to problems with the trading systems that disseminate pricing quotes, and led to a freeze in the trading of NASDAQ-backed securites at 12:14 Eastern Time. In a statement, the Securities and …
Jack Clark, 22 Aug 2013

Amazon tightens grip on cloud market, report shows

Another day brings another wisp of data highlighting the difference in revenue between Amazon Web Services and the other megaclouds. This time the data is courtesy of analyst firm the Synergy Research Group, which says that for the second quarter of 2013, global infrastructure-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service revenues …
Jack Clark, 22 Aug 2013

Amazon extends IP configurability across virtual private cloud

Amazon Web Services has given developers more control over how IP addresses are configured for rented virtual machines within its virtual private cloud technology. The advance was announced on Wednesday, and it means admins can now choose whether or not to give public IP addresses to rented virtual machine instances when …
Jack Clark, 22 Aug 2013

NSA admits slurping thousands of domestic emails with no terror connection

The analysts at the NSA spent years gathering tens of thousands of emails between US citizens in violation of the US constitution, as a component of a single (discontinued) data slurping program, the agency has revealed. These emails were from people with no direct connection to terrorism, according to a secret opinion from the …
Jack Clark, 21 Aug 2013

MongoDB speaks elephantese with Hadoop Connector upgrades

MongoDB steward 10Gen has increased the capabilities of its Hadoop Connector, which lets administrators shuttle data between MongoDB and HDFS and other Hadoop services. The updates were announced on Tuesday, and see the company add support for Mongo's Binary JSON (BSON) backup files into the connector, along with support for …
Jack Clark, 21 Aug 2013

Amazon legal filing flames IBM's 'materially deficient' CIA cloud

There's a war going on for the future CPU cycles of the US Central Intelligence Agency, and behind closed doors and under fluorescent lights, representatives of IBM and Amazon are spitting blood at each other as they vie for the contract. In a heavily redacted report made public on Tuesday, new details came to light as to why …
Jack Clark, 20 Aug 2013
Cloud security

FoundationDB ACID-lovers price up NoSQL database

NoSQL database startup FoundationDB has made its ACID-compliant tech generally available, after an extended beta that has seen over 2,000 people try out the company's unorthodox database. The FoundationDB database is a key-value store that also allows for different data models – such as JSON documents, graphs, and SQL (via …
Jack Clark, 20 Aug 2013
Genie

Amazon's cloud dwarfs all others, Gartner finds

The disciples of Gartner's Magic Quadrant have sallied forth to reveal the latest findings of their uncaring quadrilateral god – and the results show that Amazon is the one true cloud, followed at a distance by enterprise supplier CSC. The magic quadrant is Gartner's way of ranking technologies, and sees the analyst firm plop …
Jack Clark, 19 Aug 2013

Amazon DISAPPEARS from internet

Amazon.com has dropped offline*, amid widespread reports of trouble in the underlying Amazon Web Services infrastructure cloud. The problems began at about 11.50am Pacific Time on Monday in California, and Twitter quickly flooded with reports of people having trouble accessing both Amazon.com and the Amazon Web Services cloud, …
Jack Clark, 19 Aug 2013
SOURCE: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/959469

How much mazuma does it take to not be Oracle?

NewSQL database slinger Clustrix has taken on $10m in funding to help fund a shift away from expensive hardware appliances and towards commodity hardware. The Series D funding was announced on Monday, and will see the company take on filthy Valley lucre to help it take advantage of the shift to low-end servers that has occurred …
Jack Clark, 19 Aug 2013

WTF is... backend-as-a-service?

It was only a matter of time until a company like Firebase appeared, saw some success, and went into general availability, but that isn't helping with the nauseous term for its tech: backend-as-a-service. Software-as-a-service? Sure. Infrastructure? Bit expensive, but fine. Database? Mad idea, but okay if you have a lot of stuff …
Jack Clark, 17 Aug 2013

IT now 10 percent of world's electricity consumption, report finds

The information and technology ecosystem now represents around 10 per cent of the world's electricity generation, and it's hungry for filthy coal. In a report likely to inspire depression among environmentalists, and fluffy statements from tech companies, analyst firm Digital Power Group has synthesized numerous reports and …
Jack Clark, 16 Aug 2013
SOURCE: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/959469

Department of Interior dishes out $10bn for cloudy IT

The Department of Interior has announced a multi-billion dollar cloud procurement round that will see the land management organization shell out a maximum of $10bn across contracts with 10 major IT vendors. The pork barrels IT contracts were announced by the organization on Wednesday, and will see Aquilent, AT&T, Autonomic …
Jack Clark, 16 Aug 2013
Cloud security

Google follows Amazon with auto-encryption of cloud data

Google has tossed a crumb of reassurance to people with cloudy security concerns by adding automatic server-side encryption to Google Cloud Storage. The free security measure was announced by Google on Thursday and spun as a way to "make securing your data as painless as possible," according to a blog post by the company. The …
Jack Clark, 15 Aug 2013

GitHub code repository rocked by 'very large DDoS' attack

San Francisco–based GitHub, the online repository popular among software developers, suffered a major service outage on Thursday morning due to what it characterizes as a "very large DDoS attack." GitHub status page reporting major DDoS attack This major attack follows a similar one on August 4th The outage was first reported …
Jack Clark, 15 Aug 2013
axe_channel_teaser

Cisco readies axe for 4,000 employees

4,000 heads will roll at Cisco, as the networking giant prepares for another lean year in an IT market still recovering from the aftershocks of the global recession. The company's chief executive, John Chambers, announced the cuts alongside Cisco's financial results for Q4 2013 on a conference call on Wednesday. Cisco shares …
Jack Clark, 14 Aug 2013

Facebook tops up Apache Project graph database with fresh code

Facebook has shoved code back into the trunk branch of Giraph, an open source graph-processing Apache project that mimics Google's advanced "Pregel" system. The upgrades let Giraph process graphs with trillions of edges – the connections between entities in a graph database – and were announced by the company in a blog post on …
Jack Clark, 14 Aug 2013

Microsoft SkyDrive, Outlook stricken by cloud outage

Microsoft's Outlook, SkyDrive, and People technologies are experiencing problems, making it difficult for some people to access the cloud services. The issues began on Wednesday morning and affected Microsoft's hosted storage, email and contact services. Its Azure cloud coincidentally reported problems for SQL databases in the …
Jack Clark, 14 Aug 2013

Tier 3 debuts DIY cloud networks

Cloud operator Tier 3 has added reconfigurable networking to its cloud technology in an attempt to make it easier for resellers to massage the tech to suit their needs. The company announced the upgrades on Wednesday. They see Tier 3 implement self-service networking capabilities for its ESX-based cloud that will let customers …
Jack Clark, 14 Aug 2013

Ravello Systems arm cloud wranglers with hypervisor lasso

Cloud wrangler Ravello Systems has announced the general availability of its "cloud hypervisor" technology. The startup announced on Wednesday that after an extended beta it has polished the underlay and buffed the connectors of its hypervisor to a state fit for choosy enterprises. Ravello's technology lets admins lasso …
Jack Clark, 14 Aug 2013

Riak CS datastore cosies up to OpenStack

Open source datastore Riak Cloud Storage has recieved an upgrade to let it plug into the OpenStack control freak. The update was announced by Riak expert Basho on Tuesday, and sees Riak CS gain support for OpenStack's "KeyStone" authentication service, along with performance boosts and inter-node bandwidth optimizations. Riak …
Jack Clark, 13 Aug 2013

Amazon initiates TOTAL MOBILE DOMINANCE cloud strategy

As the landmasses of the world buckle beneath the combined weight of the fondleslabs and glossy mobs being churned out by China's industrial cities, companies are waking up to the need to control the technology, and so Amazon has added tech to its AWS cloud to give devs a cheap way to beam data out to Android, iOS, and Kindle …
Jack Clark, 13 Aug 2013

VCs flash cash for Looker's SQL-on-steroids business intelligence tool

Business intelligence is the site of a new goldrush as the twin marketing totems of "big data" and "cloud" collide, creating a supernova of splashy cash for canny firms. So it is with little surprise that a BI startup headed by former Greenplum exec Frank Bien and Netscape technologist Lloyd Tabb has announced $16 million in …
Jack Clark, 13 Aug 2013
eyeofSauron

Xbox 180: Microsoft scraps mandatory Kinect policy

In the wake of the NSA spying revelations, Microsoft has said gamers will no longer need to have an all-seeing, always-online eye and ear attached to their Xbox. Another day brings another reversal in Microsoft's summer of U-turns, and this time its the backtracking of Kinect being attached all the time. Microsoft's Xbox Live …
Jack Clark, 13 Aug 2013
Student with textbooks

Amazon Web Services passes the enterprise duck test

If it works like an enterprise piece of technology, has documentation like an enterprise piece of technology, and has enough ancillary costs to make it pound the wallet like an enterprise piece of technology, then it is probably ready for consumption by large companies. After rolling out a certification program for Amazon Web …
Jack Clark, 12 Aug 2013

Admins warned: Drill SSL knowledge into your Chrome users

Admins of Chrome shops unite – your users are dabbling with dodgy SSL, and you must teach them how to be safer online until Google updates its browser. That's the gist of a new report from Google researcher Adrienne Porter Felt and University of California, Berkeley graduate student Devdatta Akhawe, who trawled some 25 million …
Jack Clark, 10 Aug 2013

Juniper under bribery investigation by US regulators

Packet-pusher Juniper Networks is under investigation by the Department of Justice and the Securities and Exchange Commission, it has emerged. The regulators are pursuing the company over "possible violations" of the anti-bribery US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, the company revealed in its 10-Q filing with the SEC on Thursday …
Jack Clark, 09 Aug 2013
Eyjafjallajökull eruption 2010 by Árni Friðriksson

CANNIBAL CLOUD found devouring enterprise bit barns – report

Data center providers are expanding as enterprise facilities experience budget cutbacks, according to the bit-barn experts at the Uptime Institute. In the Institute's annual data center census, which surveyed 1,000 providers across the world, 63 per cent of third-party data centers – cloud, hosts, co-location facilities, and so …
Jack Clark, 09 Aug 2013
troll

Google shields open source cloud tech from patent trolls

Google has moved to protect developers of data center management software by adding more patents to its Open Patent Non-Assertion Pledge. By adding the 79 patents, Google is signalling that it will not prosecute people for making apps that involve these technologies unless they sue Google first, the company said on Thursday. …
Jack Clark, 08 Aug 2013